Action Learning and Practice - The John Seddon Method for Public Sector Transformation - Self-Enlightenment, Coercion, Or Both

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ESSAY REVIEW

The John Seddon method for public sector transformation self-enlightenment, coercion, or both?

Delivering public services that work, volume one, edited by Peter Middleton,foreword by John Seddon, Axminster, Devon, Triarchy Press, 2010, 132 pp.,15, ISBN 978-0-9562631-6-2

Introduction and context

Vanguard Consulting, and their combative leader John Seddon, have created ahuge noise and significant demand for their services by asserting that theirspecific approach can deliver unimaginable benefits in the public sector, andeven more so by attacking targets, managers, ministers and other consultingapproaches. What strikes some as egregious arrogance, others as the answerto their problems and provides the endless stream of publicity that outspokenblame can easily generate has also led to a strong and committed client basein the public sector. This book offers case studies of the Vanguard approachin practice, demonstrating in detail how organisations have achieved the prom-

ised results. So these are consultancy case studies and should be seen as such.Unlike academic case studies, all involved have a vested interest in presenting apicture of success. But those who approach this book with healthy scepticismabout the true results will, by and large, find a pleasing level of detail andexposure of both the method and the challenges that were encountered alongthe way. The result is an admirably well-edited, signposted, usable collectionof six case studies, written by clients or clients with Vanguard consultants(although Seddon and editor Peter Middleton are credited as authors on thespine, and Middleton only on the flysheet).

Determining the success of the book

A book which sets out to be didactic and descriptive is by nature hard to reviewwithout duplicating the course of much of the content. The questions by whichthe reader might judge the success of this book are likely to be as follows:

. What is the method? Does it work? Is it systems thinking?

. How can we begin to apply this method ourselves?

. What are the challenges and how might we overcome them?

Given the focus of this journal, I will also ask to what extent the Seddonapproach aligns with or uses the principles of action learning. I will refer to

ISSN 1476-7333 print/ISSN 1476-7341 online

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2012.656892

http://www.tandfonline.com

Action Learning: Research and Practice

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What has action learning learned to become? (Pedler, Burgoyne, and Brooks2005), both for its excellent overview and for a number of useful comparativeframeworks, principally Revans classical principles (pp. 589) and theauthors development of Lyotards purposes of knowledge into a framework

positioning speculative knowledge (for its own sake), practical knowledge(for organisational improvement) and emancipatory knowledge (personaldevelopment) at the apexes of a triangle (pp. 623).

Those involved in the public sector will be hugely aware of the debate(often generating more heat than light) arising from John Seddons accusationsand blame, and the responses of those accused, and will want to understand howthis under the bonnet look at organisations sheds light on those discussions.And those of us familiar with the challenges of proving that organisational inter-

ventions truly have impact will be interested in understanding whether theclaimed successes are real and whether they are sustainable. Potential pointers

to lack of stability could include failure to change underlying cultural andorganisational patterns or it could be that apparent successes are the result ofthe Hawthorne effect1 (whereby behaviour during and immediately precedingnearly any kind of intervention will be modified and usually produce betterresults, simply as a result of the attention, but which may not last). The under-lying question here is whether the approach helps the whole organisation tolearn to change itself in a systematic way or whether interventions in limitedareas are successful in the short term.

What the approach is not a number of attacks on other approaches

There is very little of John Seddon himself in this book, but in the two scantpages of the forward, one can get a flavour of his prophet and saviourstance, the prophetic build-up and the subtle oversell It is now ten yearssince I first became involved in the public sector. At that time I was criticalof central governments attempts at change but found public sector managerstoo fearful to heed my criticisms and advice . . . things have changed. Manypublic sector managers are actively rejecting bad and unproven directives . . .profound improvements evidenced [in these case studies] give an indicationof the good that can be achieved across all public services. I anticipate thatthis will be the first of a series . . . the improvements [through the Seddonapproach] are always greater than would have been thought achievablethrough conventional planning and change management (my italics). Nofalse modesty here! This assertion of special expertise is in direct contrast tothe assumption in action learning both that participants have the knowledge

and understanding to resolve their problems and the Revans classical prin-ciple (Pedler, Burgoyne, and Brooks 2005) that action learning works withproblems (no right answers) not puzzles (susceptible to expert knowledge).

He also attacks both the Audit Commission and practitioners in the overlap-ping field of lean. In the case of the former, he explains some of his criticisms

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and complains at being the subject of an ad hominem attack from an officer ofan organisation he has variously described as bullying, coercive, behaving likethe worst of managers, announcing CPA with a plethora of meaninglessblather, offering prejudice over knowledge, a purveyor of bad management,

clumsy and ill-informed, etc.2

In the case of lean (despite the Vanguardapproach having being described as lean over a number of years3), he dis-misses a significant body of work being deployed with some demonstrableresults across sectors with the line if you are not in the business of producingcars at the rate of demand, the tools associated with solving the associated pro-blems are unlikely to be of much help to you.

The unattributed section What is systems thinking? also attacks anotherpaper tiger command and control management apparently the dominant

model in the UKs public sector. Table 1 contrasts command and controlthinking with systems thinking (from which the continually developing

nature of the approach can perhaps be judged by comparing it with theversion of the same diagram from seven years ago, reproduced on page 69 ofthe same book). We are also told that:

The key characteristic is that command and control organisations are drivenfrom the top. A goal is set of, say, 3% cost reduction (Gershon Review, 2003). . . or of using IT to improve efficiency (Varney Review, 2006), and the organ-isation is obliged to respond to achieve the arbitrary target. The problem is thatthe target is set by people separate from the work and with no knowledge ofhow the work is carried out. Instead of engaging the workforce, a premium is

placed on their compliance and how they perform against the target. This chan-nels their ingenuity away from serving customers to achieving the target.

Table 1. Command and control contrasted with systems thinking.

Command and control thinking Systems thinking

Top-down Perspective Outside-in

Functional specialisation Design Demand, value and flow

Separated from work Decision-making Integrated with workBudget, targets, standards,activity and productivity

Measurement Designed against purpose anddemonstrate variation

Extrinsic Motivation Intrinsic

Manage budgets and the people Managementethic

Act on the system

Contractual Attitude tocustomers

What matters?

Contractual Attitude tosuppliers

Partnering and cooperation

Change by project/initiative Approach tochange

Adaptive and integral

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Well, one wants to respond yes and no! Yes, this is a huge problem, but does itadequately or completely describe a style of thinking and of management?People even managers, even councillors are not stupid and work intelli-gently with, and if necessary around, many of these externally imposed

targets. Bigger impacts are perhaps derived from the same kind of problemsdriven by traditional accountancy, but this is not discussed. After 10 years ofinvolvement in the sector, does Mr Seddon not understand that in localgovernment (his stomping ground), only a few eager-beaver councillors andexternal consultants who do not really know the sector quote the latestcentral government dictat as though everyone were keen to jump to it? Thisis certainly an issue, but if [s]taff constantly look upwards for directionrather than outwards to their customers, the causes seem to be more

complex than is being credited. A systems thinker should know better than touse a few examples to adduce a whole management approach and mindset

and then label it as the root cause of much bad service and low levels ofinnovation in the public sector.

There is also a related diversion into target-setting and its problems [t]hepurpose of this book is to provide evidence that targets are causing vast amountsof waste in the public sector. They are, and I have seen it myself but thebook, wisely, does not focus on this area but focuses on the positive side ofhow to actually improve.

The one-page overview of how to start in half a day in your organisationand the five pages on what is systems thinking? continue in a similar vein. The

half-day exercise is simply about getting involved with customer contact andunderstanding the drivers (necessary or unnecessary) of contact and the trueend-to-end time for resolution (likely to be longer than half a day, of course).A brilliant place to start, indeed. But does this justify the claims that theSeddon approach enables greatly improved services, lower costs and happier

staff. It allows all but the most dysfunctional of government performancetargets to be greatly exceeded? Indeed, if this is the case, why are the targetssuch a huge problem worth attacking with this level of gusto and vitriol?

What is the approach and is it systems thinking?

The scant regard paid to the whole body of systems thinking work comesinitially in a single sentence: Systems thinking emerged after the 2nd WorldWar and several variants have since developed. The systems thinking methoddescribed here was created by Seddon (2003, 2008) as a framework to enableorganisations to achieve higher performance. It is also claimed that this

approach is unique because it was developed by working in partnershipwith both private and public sector organisations for over two decades, aclaim which would be challenged by some let us limit ourselves to action

research practitioners for one! Another dubious claim swiftly follows [t]hebig differentiator with this. . . method is that it starts with obtaining knowledge

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about how your organisation is actually functioning. Other methods assume thatthe problem to be solved is known. For any practitioners reading this, doesyour approach assume that the problem is known from the start? Or do you,like the action researchers, and the Senge-style systems thinkers, and any old

hack mapping a process, actually start with a lens which you consider to bemore or less useful and see what opportunities for improvement emerge?However, all this build-up is necessary to justify the lofty tone: Due to theremarkable results [the Seddon approach] makes possible, this proprietarymaterial has been placed in the public domain. Let me be clear no harmand a great deal of good should come from application of many of the ideasin the book but unique? Even proprietary might be an exaggeration. TheVanguard Method, it is claimed, uniquely combines two main components:

1. Systems Theory how organisations work. 2. Intervention Theory howto make successful change. Italics mine, but I think it is fair for anyone who

believes that they use both an organisational theory and an interventiontheory to challenge this claim and to look for detailed evidence that theSeddon approach has a fully developed, and better, version of either.

One challenge to this comes from Geoff Elliott,4 an outspoken critic whosays that:

Seddon doesnt seem to understand that a system can link processes and activitieswhich can be analysed using traditional TQM (total quality management) andquality methods and also at the same unbounded messes which cannot beaddressed using quality tools and techniques. All organisations both public and

private operate simultaneously as closed and open systems.

Much later in the same section, the work of precursors such as Ohno (1992),Deming (1982) and Ackoff (1987) is acknowledged, and another interestingdefinition of systems thinking is given:

Whilst all systems thinkers agree that a system is the sum of its parts and the partsmust be rearranged as one, this approach is unique in that it starts and ends withthe work.

Do systems thinkers agree with this? What would it mean to rearrange the partsas one? Does the Seddon approach start and end with the work and, if so, is itunique in doing so?

The somewhat frustrating paragraph entitled What is systems thinking? inthe first case study is worth quoting in full:

In the time we have spent learning and applying systems thinking to our organ-isation, we have come to understand that it is an approach to how organisationsdesign and manage their business that has far reaching implications for everyaspect of organisational life. Primarily, systems thinking is a perspective from

which an organisation can understand and then improve the service that itdelivers to customers. However, what is so challenging and therefore is so

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powerful about this perspective is that it shows much of what traditionalmanagement thinking would regard as good practice to be a part of the problemnot the solution. (p. 3)

As throughout, if you substitute the Seddon method for systems thinking,

this reads perfectly sensibly. However, this clearly demonstrates that thesystems thinking in the title and throughout refers to one particular lens orapproach a perspective, to quote, not to the broader discipline of comingto perceive and understand how things work systemically. Systems thinking,of course, is far more than a perspective from which an organisation can under-stand and then improve the service that it delivers to customers, but the Seddon

method is precisely that. Furthermore, the Seddon method is challenging to tra-ditional management (see Figure 1), but that this is where its power is derivedfrom is an assertion not an argument.

Of course, any systemic perspective is likely to produce challenges to exist-ing mindsets, but what Figure 1 demonstrates is that the Seddon approach is (a)predicated on an assumption that an existing command and control set ofassumptions and beliefs is in place (and is false and unhelpful) and (b) thatthe new set of assumptions and beliefs on the right-hand side are true. In thisunderstanding, I am indebted to Richard Veryard, who on his Demanding

Change blog continues:

Vanguard clearly regards the new set of assumptions and beliefs as true; thus thequestion about changing how managers think becomes a tactical question

how do you create a learning environment in which managers adopt the Vanguardprinciples for themselves, without obvious coercion. So the new beliefs (content)are primary, and the process of arriving at the new beliefs is merely a secondarymeans to an end. This is where the Vanguard notion of Systems Thinkingdiverges radically from those schools of systems thinking that focus primarilyon the process of thinking deeply about systems, and regard the insights thatemerge from this process as important but secondary.5

These case studies, then, provide an opportunity to reflect on whether thoseapplying the Seddon method are simply adopting a new set of (presumed

Figure 1. The Vanguard method.

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more effective) assumptions and beliefs or whether they are developing andchanging their assumptions and beliefs in an insightful way based on reflectingon both their results and the influencing factors: true double-loop learning.6

The section concludes with the Check-Plan-Do triangle, with check

described as understand the current organisation as a system, plan as ident-ify levers for changes, and do take direct action on the system. Interestingly,while the diagram is cyclical, this continual element is not referred to. Nor is theCheck-Plan-Do loop referenced to Joiner, who introduced this as Can-DO(Check-Plan-Do-Act) in Fourth Generation Management (McGraw-Hill,1994, p. 49 in most situations . . . it is more appropriate to start the cyclewith Check), which is not listed in this books bibliography. The model forcheck, looking at organisational purpose, customer demand, process achieve-

ment, process analysis, process constraints and underlying assumptions, isadmirably simple and clear for something similar, see Total Quality Manage-

ment by Develin and Hand (Accountancy Books, 1993).

What do the case studies reveal about the method and its application?

And so to the meat of the book. The six case studies are neatly divided into thirds the first two deal with housing benefits in district councils and the final two withwhole-organisational transformation in housing associations. The centre twocases studies are outliers, one an organisational development-led interventionin various parts of Stockport district council and the other on change work

undertaken by Central Otago district council of Alexandra, New Zealand.

Application to Housing Benefit processes and management

The two case studies concerning housing benefit do not include any cross-refer-ences for similarities or differences, but both (understandably) treat the proces-sing of housing benefits as a closed (limited) process or system. The firstchapter proper deals with East Devons housing benefits change. Each casestudy opens with a series of bullet points identifying the learning it seeks to

illustrate, and these are simple and powerful: in essence, that to improveservice, one must learn about current management assumptions and theirflaws; understand purpose from customer perspective; understand customerdemands precisely and come to the realisation that poor service generateswork; and understand that targets, organisation and process design and manage-ment can be part of the problem. These seem to be powerful, even brilliant,insights for improvement graspable and applicable. Clearly, one would not

ordinarily approach action learning with such an explicit set of assumptions,nor would one expect to conclude with such a degree of certainty at the end.However, there seems to be nothing objectionable about them in principle

and indeed they suggest the start of rich veins of enquiry (more than thefixed conclusions).

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It is worth noting that in the final point, what I will call the Vanguard argu-ment form is employed:

[The data showed that] setting staff targets was part of the problem. Theproblem was how the system was designed and managed. People were doingwhat they were employed to do. Targets are not the way to improve systems,indeed they sub-optimise a system and make performance worse.

By system in this case, it seems that what is meant is the approach to runningcustomer-focused processes and the organisation design in question (and poten-tially some shared norms, management approaches and so on) essentiallya closed system. Once this is established, the argument appears to follow theform:

A (setting staff targets) is part of the problem.The problem is B (system design and management).The problem is not C (implicitly: people behaving in ways they were not

employed to do).A does not solve the problem.A makes the problem worse.

This is clearly a circular argument, but all apparently founded on the data.However, the final step Targets . . . sub-optimise a system and make perform-ance worse cannot be a generalisable result of this argument (which is not to

say that it might not be true).One can, however, begin to see how the Seddon approach provides a useful

perspective (this phrase is used more than once in the case study). Figure 1introduces the Vanguard Model for Check an overview of the simple

framework used:This rather confusing diagram is the Seddon approach in a nutshell: identify

purpose, measure whether demand is supporting or allowing that purpose,whether the organisation is fulfilling the value demand (that which doessupport or allow purpose), and how efficiently it is doing so, and thenexamine the system conditions and thinking influencing that behaviour.

Note that there are significant predetermined data-gathering steps before thefinal two elements, which appear closest in form to action learning, are intro-duced. One might argue therefore that the problem domain is predetermined,which as we will see has important implications in comparing and contrastingthe Seddon approach to action learning.

First case study East Devon District Council

The insights generated through the Seddon lens are explored in this case study

the basic insight being that the demand coming into the system is not bestunderstood (as perhaps would have been understood through standard

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performance reporting) as processing units of new applications, changes ofcircumstances, etc. Instead, the demand really is a mish-mash of differentrequests and requirements based on users testing and exploring the organis-ations responses and trying to make it do for them what they require. This is

classified into valuable and preventable demands across three differentcontact channels (post, telephone and face-to-face), showing between 25%and 58% of preventable demand: 42% of demand placed on the servicearose because our system had either failed to do something or to do somethingright for our customers.

Capability is then measured based on the simple measure of full, end-to-end time to resolve in line with purpose (in customer terms) Time(days) taken to pay the right person the right amount of benefit. This is depicted

in a simple run chart which shows (unlabelled) an average and upper controllimit. All these data demonstrate that there were clear opportunities for

improvement, and a basic process flow diagram highlighting hand-offs, loop-backs, failure levels and process problems is offered to depict Benefits as aSystem. This is clearly a useful way to generate an overview of a processand some of the issues and is of course a particularly closed and limited typeof system. Working from the premise that, having observed the work beingundertaken through sampling cases, employees were doing what was expectedof them, the team then identified a number of issues around the managementof the process. These include functional working (with attendant hand-offs),functional specialism (with delays when individuals not available) and a

number of other issues which will be familiar to those who have doneprocess improvement work.

It is important to note that while the data-gathering approach was predeter-mined, the customer purpose measure of time to pay the right person the rightamount is presumably derived as the result of Vanguard consultants facilitating

discussion. It is certain that it is essentially the same as in other Vanguard-ledconsultancy projects. It is my personal prejudice that this is a fundamentallysensible measure for a service of this kind (though not, perhaps, the onlypossible such measure). An element of paternalistic guidance inherent in theprocess (the consultants know best) and faith that the right set-up will leadto positive results is not necessarily a bad thing. But it surely militatesagainst a truly emergent or action-learning-based approach. This appears tobe an example on the part of Vanguard of what Argyris and Schon call thegap between espoused theory and theory-in-use.7

The learning from this approach was the inadequacy of our methods ofmanagement, that each of these issues had spent so long under the radarand that each had been brought about because of a supposedly positivelogic. This was clearly revelatory and exciting and led to real changes andimprovements. By experimenting with alternative and sometimes opposing

logic, and adopting some clear, shared principles, significant performanceimprovement is achieved setting out new principles for the process, creating

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measures of meeting the purpose of the service and generating shared visibilityand the teamwork that followed. As a practitioner helping public sectororganisations to improve, I would be very proud of the results documented inthe case.

Is the improvement sustainable; does it help the whole organisation to

learn to change it systemically?

The conclusion, as positive as it is, might disappoint practitioners who saw in(5) and (6) of Figure 1 the possibility of action learning or at least real force fieldanalysis, of which this seems to be a simplistic version at best.8 Rather than truedouble-loop learning, what seem to be happening here are three things:

(1) Natural improvement of an organisation at Capability Maturity ModelIntegration (CMMI) level 19 (i.e., a very low level of process maturity)once the process is documented and visible accompanied by improve-ment according to the Hawthorne effect.

(2) Clients being guided by a practitioner to realise that some of their

assumptions which appeared to suggest plausible ways to improveperformance had, in application, a negative effect on performance.

(3) This experience is used to replace one set of beliefs with another, which(in the short term at least) prove more effective in supporting performance.

Interestingly, ongoing learning is explicitly referenced in the conclusion: weknow that our improvement journey is not yet over, though there is a cleartension: In adopting a systems thinking approach to our organisation wehave started to hard-wire a new framework for leadership, management andservice delivery which we know will keep us improving into the future.True continual learning will no doubt develop and change the 9 leadership prin-ciples and 14 management principles codified here. But the three core principlesbear repeating here: Its the system not the people . . . the role of managementand leadership is to help those in the work to find solutions to the problems thataffect their work, measure the right things or pay the price, and it is byunderstanding how current thinking has resulted in the current design and thecurrent focus that a service can identify its greatest levers for change andimprovement. Even if the intervention has merely replaced one set of beliefsand assumptions for another, this does appear de facto to open the possibilityfor double-loop learning.10

The great question left unanswered (and perhaps for the sequel whichSeddon predicts in the introduction) is how, given that East Devon isworking with Housing Benefits as a pilot, the approach to improving therest of the organisation has fared. The approach is certainly an optimistic

one: It is with confidence therefore that we have embarked on furthersystems thinking service change in other areas of our business . . .

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Second case study Stroud District Council

The second, from Stroud District Council, is also based on Housing Benefits(although, intriguingly, following training of 13 people including the ChiefExecutive in the Seddon approach, 6 pilots were apparently started). Again,

the key points that begin the case study are very interesting analysis of cus-tomer contact is a good start to improvement (as is starting from the clear objec-tive of fulfilling customer expectations as quickly and efficiently as possible),people who work in the processes should be involved in the change and thecounter-intuitive act of putting more resources at the start of a process toensure only correct work enters the system can produce considerable savingsin time and processing effort. The latter, of course, seems likely to be con-ditional on the type of the process and the inputs. The most interestingfinding, and one which would be fascinating to explore more fully, was that

staff now have a sense of accomplishment and pride in their work, reflectedin sickness levels falling by 44%. The three or four key points above illustratethe undifferentiated mix of statement of method and assertion of principle,which you may note is already becoming a common theme.

Initially launched as a cross-organisation shared learning project and thenwith internally trained staff, after initial improvements, the project reportedlyran into problems and had to be relaunched with the involvement of a Vanguardconsultant not the only time this potentially disempowering message appearsin the book. A controlled prototype was then launched focused on managingdemand and contact to ensure real understanding of the customer enquiry and

a really appropriate response. This is presumably more highly featured asStroud apparently found 90% failure or avoidable demand, compared withonly 55% in the previous example commentary as to the comparison

would have been interesting here. However, whether this is a pragmatic andconditional response to circumstances or potentially a generalisable finding isleft unclear (Sense and Respond by Parry, Barlow and Faulkner (PalgraveMacmillan, 2005) takes a similar approach much further through whole-organisation transformation in a systemic way).

Interventions in Stockport and Central Otago (NZ) Councils

The next two case studies in Stockport Council and the Central Otago DistictCouncil of Alexandra, New Zealand present examples very much led from anorganisational development (rather than a service management, operationalimprovement, efficiency or process) perspective. The Stockport example

focuses on the challenges imposed on local government, principally listingthose emanating from central government (a good, and thorough, summaryof pressures which will be all too familiar to those working in the sector). It

also talks about the challenges to management of adopting really differentapproaches and the emergent nature of systems thinking. The starting point

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is not a plan, but rather spending time with front-line work to obtain specificknowledge of the reasons for the demands on the system. We can note thatthis is context-specific teaching,11 but this challenging part of the Seddonapproach, rejecting as it does traditional project management (presumably by

analogy with all targets sub-optimise the system), is not fully addressed.The organisation took two years to build up to and develop their approach,and almost two years after a senior manager saw John Seddon speak, Vanguardwere procured for clear approach and commitment to transfer capability. TheOD team then ran interventions in human resources and IT. An important aspectof the approach is the reference on page 32: the absolute requirement for seniorleaders to be not only committed, but also to take ownership of interventionswithin their areas of responsibility and to remain close to what is going on

. . . it is not possibly to simply rubber stamp the strategy and then turn attentionto other issues. Clearly, such engagement is important for any transformation,

but many who use different consulting approaches will feel that with this levelof engagement, visibility of work processes and organisational commitment,any reasonable approach to process or organisational change might have agood chance of achieving similar results. Perhaps the secret of the Seddonapproach is that the antagonistic rhetoric creates the justification for this levelof commitment.

The specific approach to the interventions is only lightly discussed, high-lighting some of the problems in the process thrown up by the check phaseand some of the impressive outcomes from the redesign phase. Interestingly,

these appear to have been focused on the more transactional, closed systemsof helpdesks and Contracts and Payroll. Stockport has undertaken significanttraining and development in the approach at all levels, as well as a generallydescribed leadership programme and coaching, and approaches are nowbeing scoped in Taxi Licensing (a transactional process). There are also

plans in train to scope Social Transport, a multi-agency and potentiallymore complicated area, and Street Lights, as well as intention to use thissystems thinking approach to challenge the value added by the CouncilsContact Centre strategy perhaps a reflection of the potential risk of confron-tation with existing approaches. Some other risks and challenges of thisapproach are well documented, from the real challenge of creating change ina four-star, improving strongly organisation, the need (given the lack oftraditional project or programme planning) to take a leap of faith, and thechallenge to management authority and existing approaches. The case studydoes not address how the approach which engages and uses the knowledgeof the people in the work deals with at the same time releasing capacityand so providing the much needed efficiencies (i.e., making people redundant).Perhaps a hint of this dynamic is given in recognising that those in theCheck team can easily be seen as being favoured. . . the almost evangelical

enthusiasm of the Check team. . .

actually resulted in alienating some ofthose still working in the original system. What are addressed are [f]eelings

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of stress and dejection . . . when employees realised how their current thinkinghad led to poor performance. The disclaimer that the Seddon approach isbased on the belief that variation in performance is mainly due to the systemand not the workers stands somewhat in opposition to the sales pitch, which

blames people squarely (from the introduction: I was critical of central govern-ments attempts at change but found public sector managers too fearful to heedmy criticisms and advice). It is noted that the jargon of waste and failurecan increase initial feelings of worthlessness, blame and guilt and that inter-ventions can have short-term negative impacts on performance.

The case study concludes with the positive if, as yet, inconclusive findingthat the early signs are that systems thinking really does have the potentialto deliver on what it promises i.e., improved services and reduced costs. . .curiosity has been generated and take-up, though slow, is gathering pace.The ultimate conclusion is that local learning would suggest that designing

the service around the needs of the customer, based upon demand, provides amuch better solution than central guidance and third-party inspection.

In coming to the Seddon approach in Central Otago in New Zealand,attempts were made over 15 years to find or develop an approach, andthough early attempts with only remote assistance from Vanguard consultingshowed substantial early gains followed by a period of regression, a greatercommitment to learning and applying the approach showed real results. Thepressure here was not reducing budgets, but managing increasing costs in abooming economy. The approach taken for planning and building consents

shows the importance of listening to customers, understanding their needsand separating for planning purposes the different needs (segmentation). Italso points to the importance of a positive reframing of purpose from com-plying with regulation to to help people develop appropriately. It is importantto note here that purpose in Seddons terms is a single, unifying mission state-

ment for a service or team, not the purpose which systems dynamics woulddefine as simply the action (or multiple actions) of the system. Good solidprocess analysis (including some statistics and basic process maps, and rep-etition of the key diagram of the Seddon approach from earlier in the book), pro-vides powerful examples of how the processes were generating their owndemands, which was completely unnecessary to meet either organisational orcustomer needs a familiar story to process improvement practitioners.After several iterations of process redesign, real cost and time savings wereachieved. Another unlabelled run chart shows processing speed improvementbased on weekly averages. A similar example in roads shows the revelationof messy three-way control relationships and tender costs adding massivelyto complexity. The major finding is that when attention to cost and budget isreplaced with attention to flow and waste, costs have declined without thefanfare or upset normally associated with centrally driven change. The

author of the case study, previously the organisations chief executive,

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appears to have been so converted by the approach that he has now become aconsultant delivering the approach in New Zealand.

Wider organisational transformation in Flagship and Glasgow

Housing Associations

The final two examples are from Flagship and Glasgow Housing Associationsand (perhaps due to the smaller and less unwieldy nature of the organisations)demonstrate more whole-organisational change. It is perhaps noteworthy thathousing associations, in my experience, tend to resist rather strongly beinglabelled as public sector organisations, often seeing themselves as publicservice businesses, due to their history and business model. Flagship beganwith a reading and study programme again the Seddon approach diagramsare repeated, this time attributed to the earlier book, Freedom from

Command and Control (2003). The horrifying findings from their analysis ofthe processes and results of processes in their own organisation, and the

changes they have introduced, demonstrate that they really have achievedpublic services that work (better). Ironically, one result has been theopening of a 24/7 [call centre], something often criticised by Seddon. Realexamples of the types of barriers to successful service delivery from the auditand inspection regime are provided: [o]ur customers want repairs donewhen they want them done. Restrictions imposed by regulators often conflictedwith the wishes of our customers and so led to use being penalised for not

meeting prescribed timescales if we attended when customers asked us to.The group has created seven process improvement principles do what

matters to our customers, get it right at first point of contact, only do thevalue work, minimise hand-offs, minimise waste, do clean work in end-to-end flows, and design against demand, broken down organisational bar-riers, reorganised, and created Community Managers, based in the fields,to look after all demands (and administration work around those demands)from a specific geographical area of houses. This, of course, begs the questionof how (in the absence of command and control), the quality and consistency

of this work are managed and how organisational risk and probity are managedand maintained. The answer appears to be that fewer managers now workdirectly with these Community Managers asking them questions about theirmeasures, processes and improvement, and from top board down, supportingthe changes this perspective suggests. It seems that there has been a shiftfrom application of one mindset and approach to another, potentially close toaction mentoring or coaching (Pedler, Burgoyne, and Brooks 2005).

However, in this case, there seems to be an interesting but potentially sub-merged conflict between the specification of principles and the supportingapproach of questioning about method.

Glasgow Housing Association likewise suggests a whole-organisational trans-formational change, with 45 interventions in a year, although (despite numerous

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clear improvement) they strikingly admit to not yet having gathered real evidenceof changes in customer satisfaction! (In fact, they point to Investors in Peopleaccreditation as a possible proxy measure; just the sort of generally plausible,specifically sub-optimal sort of process which Seddon so roundly critiques.)

Refreshingly, they call their programme Common System, Common Sense.Vanguard want us to believe that their combination of staff-led process

analysis using some basic process improvement and total quality managementtools and light-touch force field analysis is the direct intellectual descendent ofAckoff, Deming, Taichi Ohno the Toyota Production System for services,as they style it. Perhaps the elegant, common-sense and impactful interventionsdepicted in this set of cases have much to recommend them. But perhaps, ingenerating the wow factor which can power through the usual constraints,

parameters, barriers and hesitations with which organisational systems naturallytend to hedge around process and service improvement initiatives, there is more

than a hint of the Wizard of Oz to Mr Seddon a loud voice which can achievemany things, but only because the potential was actually there all along. Thisbook and the task of this review were enthusiastically recommended to meunder the email header systems thinking works its official! In this case,as in the Wizard of Oz, once we take it apart to see how it works, we caneither be disappointed that there is not really that much to it or be excited atthe possibility for potential change in our own work and organisations itpoints to with, or without, the interventions of Vanguard Consulting.

Conclusions

There clearly is a method here, although systems thinking does not seem to bethe most appropriate name for it. It should immediately become clear that thegoals of the method are primarily practical knowledge (service improvementand cost reduction), perhaps with an undertow of emancipatory knowledge(inasmuch as we can deduce from Seddons attacks on managers and Minis-ters and all forms of top-down authority). Likewise, if it can be comparedwith anything in action learning, there is more connection with the classical

principles we take directly from Revans than with the more personalproblem-oriented group of six approach commonly applied. The requirementfor action as the basis for learning, the opportunity for profound personaldevelopment and problems being aimed at organisational development are allrelatively familiar. But the predetermined, codified approach, the expert-driven interventions (tending to portray closed systems as puzzles susceptibleto expert answers, not problems with no right answer) and the inherent conflict

between challenging existing thinking and asserting a new way of thinking takeus away from action learning. Seddon talks about intervention theory, but asfar as I am aware, Vanguard Consulting do not reference Argyris work on this

or define in any way what they mean by it. This makes it difficult to know whatthey mean or how effective they are at using it. The obvious conclusion is that

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rather than presenting a theory of the organisation and a theory of interventionas claimed, the entire Vanguard consulting project is an intervention designed tochange thinking in an organisation in a predetermined way. One of the necess-ary steps of this process is that those who had created the workplace system

(principally the managers but, as we saw in the Stockport example, also theworkers themselves) must learn that they were wrong and to be blamed fortheir circumstances. There seems to be something intrinsically problematic inthe way Seddon tends to formulate this, but it does match well with my personalexperience of developing enthusiasm for the Vanguard approach, when in arelatively junior role, partly because of the high degree of common sense andinsight which it offered, but also (and perhaps primarily) because it allowedme to be right and my managers to be wrong. The implication is that using

some of the analyses and tools of the Seddon approach combined with a trueraction learning approach which recognised the primacy of the knowledge and

the complexity of the interactions in the organisation might unlock significantlydeeper layers of learning and long-term organisational transformation.

Ultimately, the largest and most important claim is that these case studiesdemonstrate real improvement. This is well supported by the evidence pre-sented. The Seddon approach to organisational change clearly can work andhas worked in these examples. The authors from the sector come across asenthused, positive and dedicated and describe significant personal learning:many have found this journey to be the most stimulating experience of theircareers (p. xi), in line with the classical principle of profound personal devel-

opment resulting from reflection upon action. Yet while they are clearlygenuine cases, their selection and the fact that a number are co-authored byVanguard consultants mean that they do not provide independent evidenceof the benefits of systems thinking in the public sector.12 A large number oforganisations have tried the Seddon approach, with reported successes and fail-ures hopefully further successes can be found for subsequent volumes, butwill the lessons learnt from the failures also be reported? What were thereasons for them? Without this fuller picture, the book will indeed enableyou to begin to apply the method in your organisation but is presumablylikely to stimulate a call for help to Vanguard when the first problems emerge.

Perhaps more importantly, the broader question is: does the Seddonapproach lead to sustainable improvements? Does it provide for ongoing

improvement without the need for radical specific interventions, creating asituation where the underlying systemic problems are identified and addressedby the organisations itself. There are some tantalising hints that some of thismay be happening in some cases, but nothing that provides real evidenceeither way.

Ultimately, for those committed to action learning, the idea that the contro-versy and polarisation which John Seddon creates may play a direct role in the

success or failure of his method in application (as well as generated interest andawareness) may prove the most interesting question of all. While his books13

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should be part of the required reading list for those seeking operationalimprovement, particularly in the public sector, John Seddon remains (in moreor less direct contradiction to his description in The Times) merely anotherconsultant with a product to sell.14

Notes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect.2. Vanguard monthly email newsletter passim.3. www.lean-service.com, http://www.lga.gov.uk/idk/aio/4626517 (A new programme

from Vanguard: Lean Fundamentals).4. Personal correspondence Geoff is athttp://www.linkedin.com/pub/geoff-elliott/0/

143/680.5. http://demandingchange.blogspot.com/2010/05/changing-how-we-think.html.6. A good overview and discussion can be found in Smith (2001) Chris Argyris:

Theories of action, double-loop learning and organizational learning, the encyclo-

pedia of informal education, as available at www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm.7. When someone is asked how he would behave under certain circumstances, the

answer he usually gives is his espoused theory of action for that situation. This isthe theory of action to which he gives allegiance and which, upon request, he com-municates to others. However, the theory that actually governs his actions is thistheory-in-use (Argyris and Schon 1974, 6 7).

8. Developed by Kurt Lewin, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_field_analysis.9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model_Integration.10. See Smith (2001).11. Mabey and Thomson (2001), Horne and Stedman Jones (2001), referenced in

Pedler, Burgoyne, and Brooks (2005).

12. Vanguard news, April 2011, referring to the book, emphasis theirs.13. I Want You to Cheat! The unreasonable guide to service and quality in organis-

ations, Vanguard Consulting Ltd, 1992, Freedom from Command and Control:a better way to make the work work, Vanguard Education, 2nd edition 2005,and Systems Thinking in the Public sector: the failure of the reform regime anda manifesto for a better way, Triarchy Press, 2008.

14. The Times, July 31, 2009 New way thinker John Seddon aims at council targetshttp://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/public_sector/article6733600.ece.

ReferencesAckoff, Russell L. 1987. The art of problem solving. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Argyris, C., and D. Schon. 1974. Theory in practice: Increasing professional effective-

ness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Deming, W. Edwards. 1982. Out of the crisis. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute

of Technology, Center for Advanced Educational Services.Horne, M., and D. Stedman Jones. 2001. Leadership the challenge for all? London:

Chartered Management Institute.Mabey, C., and A. Thomson. 2001. The learning manager: A survey of management

attitudes to training and development at the millennium. London: Institute ofManagement.

Ohno, Taiichi. 1992. Toyota production system: Beyond large-scale production.Cambridge, MA: Productivity Press.

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Pedler, M., J.G. Burgoyne, and C. Brooks. 2005. What has action learning learned tobecome? Action Learning: Research & Practice 2, no. 1: 4968.

Seddon, John. 2003. Freedom from command and control: A better way to make thework work. Buckingham: Vanguard Education.

Seddon, John. 2008. Systems thinking in the public sector: The failure of the reform

regime and a manifesto for a better way. Axminster: Triarchy Press.Smith, M.K. 2001. Chris Argyris: Theories of action, double-loop learning and organ-

izational learning, the encyclopedia of informal education, as available at www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm.

Ben TaylorRedQuadrant Ltd, London, UK

Email: [email protected]

# 2012, Ben Taylor

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