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

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. *The unexpected benefits that can accrue (a 44% drop in staff illness in one case).