John Seddon

John Seddon is a British occupational psychologist and author, specialising in change in the service industry. He is the managing director of Vanguard, a consultancy company he formed in 1985 and the inventor of 'The Vanguard Method'. Vanguard currently operates in eleven countries. Seddon is a visiting professor at Buckingham University Business School.

Seddon's prominence grew following attacks on current British management thinking including the belief in economies of scale, quality standards such as ISO9000[1] and much of public sector reform including "deliverology", the use of targets, inspection and centralised control of local services. The Daily Telegraph described him as a "reluctant management guru", with a background in occupational psychology.[2]

He is critical of target-based management, and of basing decisions on economies of scale, rather than "economies of flow".[3]

Seddon has published seven books. In his 2008 book, Systems Thinking in the Public Sector, he criticised the UK Government reform programme. He advocated its replacement by systems thinking.[4] His book The Whitehall Effect was published on 5 November 2014. In it he articulates a more productive role for government in public-sector reform.[5] His latest book, Beyond Command and Control was published on 30 September 2019 and promises to expose the inherent fallacies contained within command and control management.[6]

Seddon won the first Management Innovation Prize for 'Reinventing Leadership' in October 2010.[7]

  1. ^ Teaming Up With Local Teens, 18 June 2005, The Guardian. Accessed 3 August 2007.
  2. ^ "Bootcamp tactics won’t win the battle", Stefan Stern, Daily Telegraph, 16 February 2006.
  3. ^ Freedom from Command and Control: a better way to make the work work, John Seddon (2003), Vanguard Press. (ISBN 0-9546183-0-0)
  4. ^ Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: Case Studies 'Delivering Public Services that Work (Volume 1)' Edited by Peter Middleton Foreword by John Seddon. Triarchypress.com (2010-03-09). Retrieved on 2013-07-26.
  5. ^ "The Whitehall Effect".
  6. ^ Beyond Command and Control, John Seddon et al (2019), Mayfield Press. (ISBN 152723956X)
  7. ^ "Announcing the M-Prize Winners: Audacity, Imagination, Experimentation", Polly LeBare, 22 November 2010 Management Innovation eXchange (MIX)