I have no connection with John Seddon and his Vanguard consultancy company – indeed, many moons ago, I worked for one of the ‘big consultancies’ that he criticises so much in his books and the following podcast – nevertheless, I have long since thought he peddles powerful ‘productivity improvement advice’ which produces astonishing results, in stark contrast to the management fad failures forever being rolled out by others e.g. Total Quality Management, BPR, Balanced Scorecards, Lean, Agile – frankly, I’m amazed that his ideas have not become much more popular with all businesses, especially services in both the private and public sectors – decades ago, it used to be said that a manager would never get fired if he chose IBM as his supplier – nowadays, it seems the same attitude applies as managers blinkeredly follow each other when they ‘need to do something’ and buy whatever the ‘big consultancy boys’ are peddling at the time
The following was in an email which introduced Seddon’s podcast
The last few years have seen a rush to digital services, but how well is it going? In this podcast John Seddon illustrates the two big mistakes being made with the rush to digital, which result in poor-quality services and higher costs, and he explains how to approach digital services to ensure they work brilliantly for customers (and cost a lot less).
You can listen for free: https://www.patreon.com/posts/john-seddons-36199816
Hang on in there – listen again to make sure you understood what is being said – then change your ways, or stick!