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

by Peter Middleton, John Seddon (Foreword)

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 *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).

132 pages, Paperback

First published March 9, 2010

Reviews

[Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read a few books about Systems Thinking with particular attention to the Vanguard Method and I think this little gem is my favourite so far.

This short book is a series of case studies explaining how different public sector organisations implemented systems thinking in their organisations. It's a lot less theory and a lot more 'how we did it'. After reading the case studies I really felt emboldened in my belief that systems thinking is effective in the public sector. I also wanted to pick up the phone and speak to the authors of the studies, especially as the studies are more or less a decade old. I'd be interested to know if the work they did was sustainable, if changes had impacted on their ability to deliver a systems perspective (such as political changes or leadership changes).

I also felt the case studies were very honest. Now I'm sure that the authors (invested in the Vanguard method as they are) sought out case studies which worked well, but there is some honest reflection in here. The barriers they faced and the lessons learned, what they got wrong, what they wished they knew are all covered.

The book isn't pitched as an introduction to systems thinking but I think it serves as a good introduction all the same. The 'Check' model is introduced strongly and features in many studies. In many respects it is stating the bleeding obvious. Before you act on the system you need to understand it. Many books on Vanguard introduce the theory but shy away from the intervention (what they did with what they learnt). The reasons for this is that they don't want to prescribe the interventions into a toolkit, 'you know your systems' etc. Partly I think this is to maintain the 'viability' of the consultancy. This book promises to go into detail in the 'how we did it'. I'm not sure it really achieves this but then again, the case studies would need to be significantly longer.

This is a superb book, that is a call to arms to look at a different approach to delivering innovation and improving outcomes in the public sector.

Great stuff.