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

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

Business & Money

Seddon, John

Economics

Triarchy Press Ltd

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. *The unexpected benefits that can accrue (a 44% drop in staff illness in one case).

Delivering Public Services That Work - Volume One: Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: Case Studies

Middleton, Peter

Business Culture

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.The eighteenth-century fascination with Greek and Roman antiquity followed the systematic excavation of the ruins at Pompeii and Herculaneum in southern Italy; and after 1750 a neoclassical style dominated all artistic fields. The titles here trace developments in mostly English-language works on painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theater, and other disciplines. Instructional works on musical instruments, catalogs of art objects, comic operas, and more are also included. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:++++British LibraryT114389Includes: 'Upon this performance of penmanship, a poem. By N. Tate'. A variant has no price on the titlepage.[London] : Sold by R. Parker, under the Piazza Royal-Exchange; J. Holland; B. Lintott; J. Dewell. Ann. Dom, 1705. [4],4p.,plates ; 2°

The penman's magazine: or, a new copy-book, of the English, French and Italian hands, after the best mode; ... after the originals of ... John Seddon. ... Supervis'd and publish'd by Thomas Read, ...

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Gale ECCO, Print Editions

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Discourses On the Person of Christ, On the Holy Spirit, and On Self-Deception;

Religion & Spirituality

Nabu Press

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:++++British LibraryT147417Includes: 'Upon this performance of penmanship, a poem. By N. Tate'. With 16 leaves of plates.[London] : Ann. Dom., 1705. [4],4p.,plates ; 2°

The penman's magazine: or, a new copy-book, of the English, French and Italian hands, after the best mode; after the originals of the late incomparable Mr. John Seddon.

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

"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 who are detached from employees and remote from operations. He demonstrates that decision-making based on purpose-related measures (such as putting customers first and improving services) can help managers reconnect with operations, see waste, and exploit opportunities for improvement. Through extensive case material, he differentiates between command and control and systems thinking and illustrates how the latter leads to improved service, revenues, and staff morale. He also posits that the service industry is fundamentally different from manufacturing, and shows how Toyota production principles must be transformed for application in service organizations.

Freedom from Command and Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service

Productivity Press

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.

The Whitehall Effect: How Whitehall became the enemy of great public services and what we can do about it

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