Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: The Failure of the Reform Regime.... and a Manifesto for a Better Way [Paperback]

This waste of our money is just madness. Do you ever wonder how the Government came to make such a pig's ear of running the public services...? The argument compellingly made in this book...is that the Government has designed failure into almost everything it does on our behalf... it is culpable because it has failed to listen to people who know better how to run services on behalf of the customer. --Philip Johnston, telegraph.co.uk

...essential reading for every national and local politician, every public servant or indeed anyone who cares about public services. It describes and explains how command-and-control thinking is having a devastating effect on our public services but more importantly identifies how we can go about putting it right! A cracking read from the first page to the last. --Steve Greenfield, County Trading Standards Officer, Suffolk County Council

This book is uncomfortable, challenging and very direct. It offers huge learning and insight. It is buttock-clenching in places. It stimulates different thinking and methods that should be strongly encouraged and welcomed in the pursuit of excellent public services. A superb read. --David McQuade, Deputy Chief Executive, Flagship Housing Group

The free market has become the accepted model for the public sector. Politicians on all sides compete to spread the gospel. And so, in the UK and elsewhere, there's been massive investment in public sector 'improvement', 'customer choice' has been increased and new targets have been set and refined. But our experience is that things haven't changed much. This is because governments have invested in the wrong things. Belief in targets, incentives and inspection; belief in economies of scale and shared back-office services; belief in 'deliverology... these are all wrong-headed ideas and yet they have underpinned this government's attempts to reform the public sector. John Seddon here dissects the changes that have been made in a range of services, including housing benefits, social care and policing. His descriptions beggar belief, though they would be funnier if it wasn't our money that was being wasted. In place of the current mess, he advocates a Systems Thinking approach where individuals come first, waste is reduced and responsibility replaces blame. It's an approach that is proven, successful and relatively cheap - and one that governments around the world, and their advisers, need to adopt urgently. "A refreshing deconstruction of the control freakery of the current performance regime. It could do for thinking on business improvement what An Inconvenient Truth has done for climate change." Andrew Grant, Chief Executive, Aylesbury Vale District Council "This is the must-have book. It correctly identifies why the present regime is failing our citizens and customers, but more importantly it gives the reader a proven method by which to bring about real improvement in service performance and cost." Dr Carlton Brand, Director of Resources, Wiltshire County Council "This book is uncomfortable, challenging and very direct. It offers huge learning and insight... A superb read." David McQuade, Deputy Chief Executive, Flagship Housing Group "If ministers, local authority leaders and chief executives only read one book this year this is it. A true beacon of sanity in an increasingly insane regime; ministers should read this and recognise the error of their ways." Mark Radford, Director of Corporate Services, Swale District Council

Professor John Seddon is a widely-published occupational psychologist and management thinker credited with translating the Toyota Production System (TPS) for service organisations. John began his career researching the reasons for failures of major change programmes. This led him to W. Edwards Deming, who taught him the importance of understanding and managing organisations as systems and Taiichi Ohno who showed the practicality and power of doing so in manufacturing. The economic performance of the TPS is legendary. John is Managing Director of Vanguard, a systems thinking consultancy practice for service organisations, and Visiting Professor at the Lean Enterprise Research Centre, University of Cardiff. He is an entertaining, controversial and informed public speaker