Beyond Command and Control

by John Seddon

This book offers to solve the UK productivity conundrum, dramatically improve health and care services while reducing their cost and much more besides. And it is no promise or dream; it is evidenced by those who have followed John's prescription, which is to change the way they think about management. Beyond Command and Control exposes the fallacies in command-and-control management (and they are not what people expect them to be). It also gives practical illustrations of what it has taken for leaders of service organisations to cross a management-thinking Rubicon. The results are compelling, the means unusual.

Genres: Leadership

170 pages, Hardcover

Published October 1, 2019

Reviews

[Toni Tassani · Rating 4 out of 5]

The creators of the Vanguard Method discuss command-and-control management, stressing the impact of “control”. They explore the impact of “failure demand”, budgeting, HR and the do a hard criticism of Agile, as a management fad (in their words).
I liked very much the comments about the agile, as a reflection.
Their proposal of study first, beware of the intervention and take into account double-loop learning, is very interesting (even though not new).
I didn’t like that they don’t back their reflections with nothing more than opinions, and they are very hard on other people’s ones.
I didn’t like that some parts the text are just a sales pitch of their consultancy and the Vanguard Method. It could have been 5 stars.

[John Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal book - the website has a lot of good material to get you thinking in different directions than the masses. I've worked in federal government and large industry for many years. This is one of the first books that i see as really moving the needle as to transforming some of these environments. I think his work can be expanding to work in environments other than service desks and service environments. I am currently working on how this works in product development environments (software).

[Andreas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Droning commercial for Vanguard. Repeats points from his other books and talks.