Stewardship

I was reading through the One MSIS guiding principles this morning and I came across a word I hadn't seen in awhile -- stewardship.  I was reminded of a book I read by Peter Block by the same name.  Peter started his career as an expert in consulting.  Born out of his work in that area was a realization that stewardship is a concept lost on far too many people these days.

What is stewardship?  I could give you the dictionary definition, but you could look that up for yourself.  In practice (where it really matters), stewardship is about taking ownership of something and placing sufficient value on it to commit the effort to care for it the way you would a prized possession.

Peter Block is now primarily a government consultant.  He switched gears when he had the realization that citizens no longer seem to understand their role as stewards of their government.  They feel more like customers.  They pay taxes and expect services.  The problem is, they don't really want to pay for all the services they want.  This is bad stewardship.  Block teaches (mostly local) government officials how to engage citizens in taking ownership of their government and actually engaging in activities that solve problems.

When One MSIS calls upon us to be stewards of the UMMS technological infrastructure, what does that mean to you?  What do you own?  What can you do to make it better?  I see many examples of good stewardship around here.  I suspect most, if not all of us have an intrinsic understanding of the concept of stewardship, even if we haven't put a name to it.  Working in an organization full of good stewards is not just rewarding to the people we serve, it is also rewarding to each other and ourselves.