Kings, Castles, Cows and ……Computers ?

I live near Warwick Castle and at this time of the year the staff perform lots of pageants and battle re-enactments with Knights jousting, pig roasts and “ye olde country faire” type activities. All good fun. Seeing the Knights and watching the displays got me thinking about history and what happened back home when the Knights went off to fight. Where did they get the money to raise their armies? Who looked after their property whilst they were gone? The answer, I remembered from my O Level history, were the Stewards.

In order to respond to the call from the King to join him in battle, Knights used to appoint a Steward to look after their estates (the castles and the cows) whilst they went off to war. A Steward had a duty to manage the Knight’s estate to the best of his ability, and wherever possible, to better it for when the Knight returned (larger; more profitable; more productive). Often these duties would involve management of the whole household (the family, the household servants; the tenant farmers etc etc …) as well as the physical assets. There was, in effect, a duty of care that a Steward had to observe in carrying out his responsibilities. This would often go above and beyond simply “care and maintenance” but also require the Steward to balance the many, often competing, desires of different groups of people affected (arable vs livestock farmers; freeholders vs tenants; householders vs local villagers). In addition, the Steward was expected to do this for the benefit of the Knight’s estate alone, and not to take advantage of his position of trust by making a personal profit without the consent of his principal.

In effect, the Knights “outsourced” estate management in its entirety, whilst they concentrated on their “core skill”, namely fighting battles. Whilst there were no measurable and regularly reported SLA’s in place for this type of arrangement, a Steward would very quickly get “feedback” on his performance from the Knight on his return – success was often rewarded by the grant of land or a share of the spoils of war; failure, however, would often result in summary execution. Perceptions would have been more important here than the number of sheep pens successfully repaired as shown in the accounts. The report by the Lady of the House or the gossip from the Local Innkeeper would often be the more crucial evidence – especially in the judgement of whether the Steward had acted fairly or for personal profit at the expense of the Knight’s dependents.

It strikes me that this concept of Stewardship could be adopted in outsourcing arrangements. A Service Provider becomes such an integral part of the Customer’s business, that they must accept that they have a similar sort of a duty of care to that business. I appreciate that this is something terribly difficult for the Lawyers to define, but I think that a legal definition would be irrelevant. The actual behaviours of a Service Provider matter more than any finely crafted words. I firmly believe that a Service Provider operating with the mindset of a “Steward”, regardless of the finer points of any legal contract, would serve both parties well. Such a mindset would trigger any number of conversations between Service Provider and CXO that would only serve to build up the good faith necessary for a successful outsourcing engagement. Improvement in the level of trust between the parties is likely to be rewarded with a higher degree of loyalty to the incumbent Service Provider at contract renewal time. Consistent and well meaning behaviours through time are crucially important at such moments of truth, and no amount of PowerPoint slides showing SLA targets met ever defuse perceptions of poor behaviour.

My message can be summarised as:
Service Providers: If the penalty for perceived failure to deliver value was the loss of your Senior Account Director’s head at the hands of an irate CxO, what would you be worried about as he/she rode up the driveway and past the gatehouse of the castle?
If you are not performing well, what should you do differently?
Even if you believe you are doing well, how is your performance perceived ?

Customers: Is your Service Provider acting as a Steward or as a Transactional Supplier ? Are you sharpening your sword ? ….or are you consulting the map for a nice little parcel of land with which to say “thank you” ?

In conclusion; Good Stewardship will keep you ahead