Delivering Public Services That Work

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 show: 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; and, the unexpected benefits that can accrue (a 44 per cent drop in staff illness in one case).