John Seddon – författare

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

In his acclaimed 2008 book "Systems Thinking in the Public Sector", John Seddon blew the whistle on public sector 'reform' and the flawed gospel of quasi-markets, competition, targets and inspection. He showed how thousands of people in the UK and elsewhere had been engaged at a cost of millions of pounds, to impose and enforce targets that simply made things worse...Those people are still there - from the Audit Commission down - and the quasi-market model is still creating waste, driving up costs, damaging services and destroying morale. Now a new book spells out the alternative. "Delivering Public Services that Work" brings together case studies from 6 different public sector organisations, in the UK and New Zealand, that are using "Systems Thinking" to bring about rapid and extraordinary change. These Case Studies show: how they did it, step by step; how they overcame initial resistance and hostility from staff; how they rolled-in (rather than rolled-out) the programme across other departments/services; the astonishing results that have been achieved; and, the unexpected benefits that can accrue (a 44 per cent drop in staff illness in one case).

"Command and Control is failing us. There is a better way to design and manage work - a better way to make work work - but it remains unknown to the vast majority of managers."An adherent of the Toyota Production System, John Seddon explains how traditional top-down decision making within service organizations leads to managers

Behind the doom-laden headlines, a quiet revolution is taking place in the public sector. In the police...hospitals...local government...social welfare...costs have been significantly reduced, services have improved exponentially, and there is a real 'danger' of improving morale. There is now no politician or executive in any branch of local government or any area of the public sector who can say: "It won't work here". The evidence is clear: it does work here, and right across the board. It's four years since John Seddon's first assault on the regime of 'choice', targets, delivery, inspection, incentives, 'free market' reforms and back-office 'economies of scale' that was paralysing UK local authorities. In 2010, and in response to calls for evidence that Seddon's Vanguard Method really did offer the kind of dramatic improvements that he claimed for it, a first collection of Case Studies showed Vanguard's Systems Thinking approach at work in (mainly) housing and housing benefits departments.This latest collection spells out the kind of dramatic performance improvements that have been consistently achieved in the NHS, the emergency services and a wide range of local authority departments. Taken together, the briefings and case studies offer compelling evidence for anyone in the public sector (anywhere in the world) trying to transform service delivery on a falling budget.

La reforma de la Administracion Publica es un asunto pendiente en muchos paises. En algunos se han llevado a cabo programas de mejora en la eficiencia pero no se ha conseguido mejorar la calidad de los servicios ni reducir los costes, sino todo lo contrario: un aumento de los costes y la necesidad de repercutirlos a los ciudadanos aumentando impuestos y recortando servicios cada dia peores. Ello se debe a que estas iniciativas han sido llevadas a cabo haciendo las cosas equivocadas. Creer en "targets", incentivos e inspecciones, en la economia de escala, y servicios de "back-office" compartidos son ideas equivocadas que han minan los intentos de reformar las Administraciones Publicas. En este libro John Seddon explica estos programas y sus desastrosos resultados en varios servicios como la gestion y concesion de subvenciones, servicios sociales y policia en el Reino Unido. Una descripcion del despilfarro que se lleva acabo con nuestro dinero, el de los contribuyentes, que somos los que pagamos estos caros e ineficientes programas.En lugar el desastre actual aboga por un enfoque sistemico en el que las personas son lo primero, se reduce el despilfarro y la responsabilidad sustituye a culpabilidad. Es un enfoque que se ha probado exitosamente en muchas organizaciones tanto publicas como privadas en todo el mundo y que necesita ser adoptado por los Gobiernos de todo el mundo y sus consejeros.

In The WHITEHALL Effect, John Seddon explains how and why it is that governments repeatedly fail to deliver what our public services need and exposes the devastation that three decades of political fads, fashions and bad theory have caused. Although his examples come from the UK, he and his colleagues at Vanguard consult with government and public sector bodies in 10 countries and the problems he identifies (outsourcing, incentives, targets, standards, inspection) can be found in all Western political systems. With specific examples and new evidence, he chronicles how the Whitehall ideas machine has failed on a monumental scale - and the impact that this has had on public sector workers and those of us who use public sector services. The WHITEHALL Effect provides fresh insights into some of the most challenging issues of our time (because of their impact on health, education, policing and all public services) and reveals the unprecedented opportunity we now have to create the public services we all deserve.