John is a world leading authority on organisational change and on both the theory and practice of the application of Lean to service organisations.

Biography

Professor John Seddon, author of the best-selling “Freedom from Command and Control”, is recognised for his translation of Taiichi Ohno’s innovation (the Toyota System) for service organisations. Change in service organisations is much faster than in manufacturing, but it starts with leaders being prepared to change the way they think. John has a reputation for being controversial, challenging but informed.

John is an occupational psychologist, researcher, management thinker and leading authority on change in organisations, making significant contributions to the role of human factors in quality. He is an outspoken critic of ISO 9000. He is often asked to write for the broadsheet press and management magazines.

John’s early career was concerned with understanding behaviour in organisations. When his work began to take him overseas he developed an interest in the impact of “country culture” on organisational behaviour. This caused him to question much of what was accepted tradition in management training and education.

John is Managing Director of Vanguard Education Ltd and Vanguard Consulting Ltd, a consultancy specialising in organisational change.

John acknowledges the influence of W.E Deming and Taiichi Ohno on his work and today he describes what Vanguard does as a combination of systems thinking - How Work Works and intervention theory - How To Change It.

Books

John is a world leading authority on organisational change.

	Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: The Failure of the Reform Regime.... and a Manifesto for a Better Way by John Seddon John Seddon argues powerfully for the government to forget sticking plasters like CRM and citizen empowerment and says don’t tweak the system. Ditch it. Systems Thinking in the Public Sector gives example after example of exactly how the system fails from housing benefits and care for the elderly to call centres like Consumer Direct. Drawing on Seddon’s extensive experience working as a consultant with UK public sector managers, this is a fiercely uncompromising, yet rigorous manifesto for change.
	Freedom from Command & Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service by John Seddon An adherent of the Toyota Production System, John Seddon explains how traditional top-down decision making within service organisations leads to managers who are detached from employees and remote from operations. He demonstrates that decision-making based on purpose-related measures (such as putting customers first and improving services) can help managers reconnect with operations, see waste, and exploit opportunities for improvement.
	Freedom from Command & Control: A Better Way to Make the Work Work by John Seddon This is a management book that challenges convention and aims to appeal to a wide target audience. Seddon argues that while many commentators acknowledge command and control is failing us, no one provides an alternative. His contention is the alternative can only be understood when you see the failings of command and control by taking the better - systems - view. There is little in the book that you would find in a normal management curriculum. Seddon is scathing and controversial about leadership theorists, maintaining that leadership is being able to talk about how the work works with the people who do it.
	The Case Against ISO9000: How to Create Real Quality in Your Organisation by John Seddon ISO 9000 claims to be a standard for quality management but John Seddon argues it has nothing to do with quality, being based on entirely different theory. organisations register to ISO 9000 because they are obliged to - market-place coercion works on the principle of “you comply or we won’t buy”, and registration is no guarantee of quality. In this attack on one of the sacred cows of business today, John Seddon shows how the ISO standards are not only failing to deliver the improved quality they promise, but in most cases are actually damaging the companies that have implemented them.
	I Want You to Cheat!: The Unreasonable Guide to Service and Quality in Organisations by John Seddon Illustrates many key principles which need to be understood when improving the performance of organisations. By cheating Seddon means that we should do the sensible thing rather than what is expected according to a bureaucratic rule.