hypergogue

John Seddon from Vanguard talks on why public services (and, by extension, many businesses too) have got it totally wrong.

Summary: don't fix it, blow it up.

Here's some of the main points (as I noted them down so they're may be mistakes in emphasis; if you're interested you'd be better off making time to watch, though it is an hour or so):

People skills are over-rated

Training new managers in 'people skills' is 5% work ie it's the icing on the cake and we'd be far better off teaching new managers about systems as that's where 95% of the problems are.

Value demand vs failure demand

Value demand is the the work that organisations should be dealing with ie it's what they're designed for. Failure demand is the work organisations do fighting fires or dealing with their own waste. Standardisation, targets and measurement all create failure demand.

A model for Organisational Development and Service Design

Focus on High-frequency Predictable Value Demand ie the stuff that you do a lot of. Train people to deal with the predictable and to recognise the unpredictable. When workers encounter unpredictable situations, they should be able to pull support in so the work stays with them. Learning is done just-in-time/on-the-job and is vastly more efficient and more effective. (Seddon's particularly unkeen on the 'dumb front-end', outsourcing and back offices).

You can't do the wrong thing right

Targets are always arbitrary. As soon as you create a target, you create a new de facto purpose for the organisation.

And, John Seddon's parting note:

The people who do the work should be empowered to change the system.

It's a very UK-centric talk (and very public sector-centric too) so I'd imagine that, if you don't do any work with these kinds of organisations or aren't as politically-motivated as John Seddon, you'll struggle to follow some of the examples.

And I'm not sure how much of Seddon's anger and passion are self-servingly sanctimonious; I can't help but think he'd be more effective if he toned it down a bit and tried to appear a little less smug. People like this run the risk of accumulating acolytes and preaching to the converted. (They also put themselves up as sacrificial Sebastian-style scapegoats, absorb flak and make the rest of us look 'moderate' in comparison. My comment is meant as question rather than criticism.)

My comments:

On people management skills are over-rated: every part of me screams at this and it goes against all my instincts. But I think he's probably right. This makes me very uncomfortable and I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with this.

Value-demand vs failure-demand: I've written about this myself in a more homely style. Of course I agree. It reminds me of fire safety training. You go on a course which consists of time spent learning all the stupid codes for fire extinguishers which are created by the people who do the frickin' course. Change the fire extinguishers already!

On a model for service design: again, I've written about this, though in a slightly oblique fashion. From a Learning & Development perspective, JIT/OJT learning's always going to be better if you can arrange it. The problem is often that people can't arrange it - Seddon's saying something pretty radical here about 'training' and work and showing that the dividing line is often completely artificial. I approve.

On targets: anybody who plays games knows that the points are the game. The way a game decides on who wins and who doesn't win comes to dominate play in a way nothing else can. I've worked in loads of organisations where staff are cynical about their work because the targets don't chime with mission statements and values.