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‘Systems Thinking in the Public Sector’: a book review
14/12/09
Not the most enticing title but this book is both thought-provoking and readable. Seddon, an occupational psychologist, translator of the Toyota Production System for service organisations and visiting professor at the Lean Enterprise Research Centre, contends that the UK public sector regime is dysfunctional and that all that is holding it back from success is to ‘learn that we got it wrong then do the right thing’.
Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing and Seddon leads us through the ideology and theory of past economists and politicians, throwing in illustrations about the widely held view of man as a ‘fundamentally rational creature concerned only with self-interest’. These theories, Seddon suggests, are what has led to a measurement culture in the public sector – where staff learn to do the things that are being measured, not necessarily the things that add most value to the service they are providing.
‘Failure demand’ results from a failure to do something right for the customer, resulting in increased contact from customers , which is remedied by putting in Customer Relationship Management Systems and call centres, all of which may eventually be outsourced. So public sector organisations are generating increased cost by not getting it right in the first place.
So if that’s what happened before, how do we learn and get it right next time? Refreshingly, Seddon does not provide a self-help manual. In fact, he throws down the gauntlet in the last chapter - ‘get rid of the whole thing’. Of course, by this time we have read enough case studies to give us ideas about how a different way of looking at delivery - ‘systems thinking’ – could be used to get it more right than wrong.
This book is a good read for anyone who has tried or is trying to help public sector organisations improve their effectiveness. It has a healthy mix of psychology, stories, theory and practice, and for those who like it, Seddon promises more to come.
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