The Whitehall Effect ~ John Seddon - Online Notes
Links below take you to the chapter notes:
Introduction 1. Prelude Part 1: The industrialisation of public services 2: Call centres 3. Back Offices 4. Shared Services 5. Outsourcing 6. Information Technology Part 2: Delivering services that work Introduction 7. A better philosophy 8. Effective change starts with ‘study’ 9. Better thinking, better design 10. ‘Locality’ working 11. IT as pull, not push Part 3: Things that make your head hurt 12. Targets and standards make performance worse 13. Inspection can’t improve performance 14. Regulation is a disease 15. It’s the system, not the people 16. Incentives always get you less Part 4: ideology, fashions and fads 17. Choice 18. Personal Budgets 19. Commissioning 20. Managing demand 21. Nudge 22. Procurement 23. Risk management 24. Lean 25. IT: features over benefits Part 5 Change must start in Whitehall 26. Beware economists bearing plausible ideas 27. Whitehall is incapable of doing evidence 28. Getting a focus on purpose |
15. It’s the system, not the people
1] Joseph M. Juran (1904- 2008) taught ‘Juran’s Rule’: “Whenever there is a problem, 85% of the time it will be in the system, 15% of the time it will be the worker” as quoted in Myron Tribus, 1993, The Germ Theory of Management, SPC Press. View Similarly, Dr W Edwards Deming (1900-1993) taught that “The fact is that the system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance”. See Deming quoted in Peter R. Scholtes, 1998, The leader's handbook: making things happen, getting things done, McGraw-Hill, p.296. 2] John Seddon, 2003, Freedom from Command and Control, Vanguard Press, p.126. 3] BBC News, 19 June 2012, ‘Francis Maude: Shake-up “not attack on civil service”’. View 4] See a video and articles on the subject of ‘Culture change is free’. 5] See a video of a sales leader in a financial services company studying her team and seeing the ‘95/5’ principle for herself. 6] The Sunday Times, 9 February 2014, ‘Trust charges taxpayer for private ops’. Byline: Richard Kerbaj. 7] House of Commons Health Committee, 18 December 2012, Health Committee 2012 accountability hearing with the Care Quality Commission. View |