Symptom: Clients feel the need to "own the group" in order to control priorities and get what they want.
When clients realize that the organization's products are critical to their success, they demand absolute control over what they buy.
In fee-for-service settings, control over purchase decisions is clearly in clients' hands. However, when a staff department directly receives a budget to provide its products and services, clients may be disenfranchised.
The worst case is when the organization sets its own priorities. Then, they become the "villain" who tells people that they can't have what they need. And clients lose all control of one of their critical factors of production.
Client resentment often grows to the point where they demand decentralization of the staff function. They think that the best way to control priorities is to "own" the headcount.
You don't need to own your own grocery store to control what you eat. This is because you control spending power (not people), and can buy just what you want. Particularly with regard to staff functions within companies, clients may not understand that control over priorities (which they legitimately want) can be accomplished without starting a decentralized version of the staff function.
The internal economy can give clients control over priorities and purchase decisions without dedicating headcount to each client group. It does so by allocating "spending power" rather than headcount, i.e., "chips" that represent money or hours of work.
Another (more generic) way to state the problem is as follows:
