Speaker: John Seddon, Vanguard

Registration: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7205803759730356740

The Vanguard Method reveals good news and not-so-good news. The good news is that there is massive scope for improving public services – better services at much lower costs. The not-so-good news is that it represents a challenge to conventional management assumptions. Because of that leaders have to be open to changing the way they think about management.

The evidence for results is peerless; frequently better services are being delivered at as much as half the original cost. John will give examples.

The first step in the Vanguard Method is to study the ‘what and why’ of performance. The Vanguard Method rejects the idea that change requires a plan. Studying reveals the flaws in management thinking, exposing thinking as the primary cause of poor performance. For this reason it is the leaders who have to start the studying. John will describe what is learned when public services are studied; how conventions like economies of scale, transaction-cost management, targets, standardisation and many other conventional ideas actually impede performance.

John will describe the principles being used to redesign public services, illustrating these with examples of radical improvement.

John Seddon is the leader of the Vanguard organisations, now active in nine countries. He is the originator of the Vanguard Method, the means by which service organisations change from a conventional command-and-control design to a systems design. John has received numerous academic awards for his contribution to management science and won the first Harvard Business Review / McKinsey Management Innovation Prize for ‘Reinventing Leadership’ in 2010. His latest book ‘The Whitehall Effect’ explains how New Public Management had hoodwinked politicians into a dysfunctional role in mandating changes that have consumed resources and worsened public services.