Walker v Seddon - the debate goes on

Readers' comments (117)

• Chris Bilsland | 22-Jul-2009 1:07 pm

  I think the comments here are really good - vital reading for the Audit Commission I would say. I wonder if David Walker will report them in? If not, he's in danger of repeating the mistakes Marks & Spencers customer research people made when they didn't report to their Board the first signs that customers were finding M & S "tired" - and that nearly brought the company down
  
  My own view? The Audit Commission has done a brilliant job but thats in the past and if it didn't exist we wouldn't now invent it. Looking forward, its not likely to be much relevant to the decade of challenge we face from next year. I would:
  
  reverse the audit element into the NAO and creat Audit England ( like Audit Scotland)
  scrap the rest and put the savings in to a national invest to save fund
  deduct double that figure from the block grant ( for some of the savings from the extra cost everyone is complsaing of )
  give 10% of that to the LGA to fund an excellent programme of Peer Review ( but without the 4* ratings and public naming and shaming)
  Put the rest of the savings into the national invest to save fund for authorities fighting the impact of the recession to bid against.

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• chris jessop | 22-Jul-2009 2:31 pm

  It is precisely because the target setters, regulators, and other walk-on bit players of the fragmented services systems that now make up public service, that any focus on the citizen - the paying customer - has been lost.
  
  Seddon is absolutely bang on the money [as it were] to draw attention to the dis-benefits the Audit Commission, and the rest, have brought to public service.
  
  I used to work for the AC. I have worked with NHS and other service and workforce regulators. I have undertaken serious case reviews when things have gone horribly wrong for those who use social care and/or NHS services. The repetitive theme pulsing through all of these has been the pressure on managers and staff to hit the target - but miss the point of what they are doing - because they have to follow chopped-up rules andreasoning, rather than focus wholely on the citizen .
  
  I absolutely endorse Seddon's analysis of the Kafka-esque madness of contemporary UK public service. And yes - abolition of the Audit Commission would be one change worth hastening in to signal a sea change in how we provide services to our citizens.

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• Lindsey Campbell | 22-Jul-2009 2:44 pm

  David Walker has indulged in a personal attack on John Seddon and has failed to even consider his viewpoint. If he were really interested in improving services, he would attempt to listen. Many, many people working in the public sector believe that John Seddon is right. David Walker has a duty to try to understand why they think this. To improve, you have to understand the what and why of performance. Setting arbitrary targets and measuring against those does not not help improve performance. In fact, it causes performance to deteriorate. Millions of taxpayers are suffering as a result. We deserve better.

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• Stephen Hall | 22-Jul-2009 2:53 pm

  If David Walker had taken the issue head on his argument would be far more robust. Instead he falls back on evidence that supports the debate he wants to engage in. Once again Central Government use arguments to justify themselves that have no bearing on the issue in hand. Please David... PLEASE engage with just one point made by John. Take the stroud housing point and explain, using facts, why they should go back to the old way of doing things just to hit targets?
  
  That being said good targets can drive success. Having something to aim for, to aspire to is important to all service delivery. Some local authorities given the chance would focus on the quick wins and crowd pleasers rather than tackling big issues on climate chnage and recycling targets.

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• Peter Gardner | 22-Jul-2009 3:03 pm

  As a senior manager in a District Council the evidence is very clear - the Audit Commission's approach is centralist and out of touch with the services we provide. It shows a lack of understanding of what's important to residents and the local community most of the time.
  Systems thinking is an immense improvement in that it enables officers at all levels to engage in what they really want to do - provide good services for customers - it's worked brilliantly for us and liberated the staff who have been through it and will save us money by only doing the work we need to.
  The Commission's approach has led to limited progress and takes us backwards at times - it also adversely affects the experience of the customer.
  If the Audit Commission want to look at the evidence then they can visit here and I'll get the staff who did the really hard work to take them through why systems thinking works.
  Or we can discuss why the Use of Resources system is going to move my Council from a level 3 to a (lower) level 2 when we have continued to improve! The reason - it's a new higher standard - raising the bar - so it was wrong before and now they have got it right??

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• John Little | 22-Jul-2009 3:09 pm

  The last resort of an intellectually bankrupt organisation is to engage in personal attacks on those who have the timerity to suggest that the 'emperor' has no clothes. Clearly the Audit Commission, as represented by its communications managing director, is well past being relevant to public service.
  
  The sooner David Cameron removes this unaccountable quango the better off we will all be. The personal attacks by David Walker on John Seddon show the real issue with the Audit Commission. The AC arrogantly sees itself as having a right to exist no matter what it asks organisations to do and whether or not those things are adding any value to the public. The AC are ill-informed on what matters to the public. Equally they are ill-informed about what is actually happening in the organisations they inspect.
  
  The amount of time and money spent by many organisations in preparing for inspections by the Audit Commission and pretending to meet their target regime is the real scandal. I am aware of several organisations that have squandered over £100,000 each preparing for each AC inspection.
  
  I don't know of anyone who thinks the AC and its specification regime has ever added any value to anyone other than consultants who help organisations prepare for the AC inspection. I do know of organisations who think up silly scams to fool inspectors by having catchy internal programmes and coach their staff for weeks on what answers to give inspectors.
  
  Leaders who are career minded often drive their organisations to 'play the game' with the AC. Therefore, poor leaders do bad things and are duly rewarded with further promotions, because of star ratings, thus perpetuating the belief that compliance is more important than serving the public.
  
  John Seddon's apparent crime was to tell the truth as seen by his organisation. What he and his people appear to have seen is that complying with AC requirements actually makes organisations worse off than if they had not bothered to comply.
  
  Let's hope that in these financially constrained times the next government will dispose of the Audit Commission. Then Mr David Walker can go and get a real job!

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• 

  Jon Harvey | 22-Jul-2009 3:10 pm

  Back in January 2003, James Strachan the then new Chairman of the Audit Commission went on record to say to MPs: "The problem we have faced time and time again is the slavish devotion to targets, many of which have not been set very intelligently. It's a surefire way of not getting improvement in public services. People see targets set by government, monitored by them, and with responsibility for their validation. There is a real danger that people will not believe them,"
  
  (Full report http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,11032,871947,00.html)
  
  What happened?
  
  We need a 21st Century approach to performance improvement and John Seddon talks a great deal of sense. I hope that either this government or the next heed his words!
  
  http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2009/07/bonfire-of-targets.html

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• Chris Harrington | 22-Jul-2009 3:18 pm

  Why don't we all just adopt the Systems Thinking approach, do just enough box ticking to satisfy the AC, improve all of our services and then wait until the AC just naturally disappears.
  
  Once the customer is happy because their demand is always met with value, there will no longer be any need for the AC.
  
  Rather than spending a lot of (wasted) energy arguing with the AC and trying to tell them how bad a job they are doing, why don't we just put all our efforts into proving how good it can be.
  
  This will be the best use of our resource; if they aren't interested don't involve them. Let them play in a corner on their own with their out-of-date toys while we work to improve our services for the public, while, by default, watching the AC wither away in a puff of their own pointlessness.
  
  Don't try and make then commit suicide, or even try and collude someone else into murdering them for us by trying to persuade Mr Cameron to disband them - let’s just slowly and surely cut off their oxygen supply.

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• Graham Putlle | 22-Jul-2009 3:20 pm

  Interesting that DW suggests that CPA assessments were not targets...hmmmm maybe in his view, but the reality on the ground is THEY WERE PERCEIVED as TARGETS!!!!
  
  All tax payers are anxious about money and getting value for it, however they like me would be appalled at the ludicrous ways we go about spending thousands to report on pennies!
  
  His riposte that politics dont figure is wildly off the mark as JS has been banging on about getting ministers out of management for years. It is precisely because of politics and the desire of politicians to be seen as "achieving" and "delivering" that we have the ludicrous targets that we have.
  
  JS has been attempting for years to draw attention to the stupidity of managing services by centrally imposed dictats, instead of letting local services understand what their particular needs are and then deliver them in the most efficient way possible. These are as anyone who works in LG know the causes of waste and also the very reason that blockages occur when we try to make serious improvement.
  
  Bear in mind that the system favoured by DW, is self perpetuating to the point that the best way to get ahead for those more interested in their personal careers (you know who you are) will of course focus on what gets counted, (the targets and performance measures). This means of course that services get worse but the measures look good!
  
  DW suggests that he follows the evidence, well may I ask where is this evidence, show us real hard data from a customers perspective that service works better in an economies of scale environment..... will I wait a long time?

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• Peter Shaw | 22-Jul-2009 3:20 pm

  At the end of the day it seems there are systems thinkers and non-systems thinkers. I know what camp I'm in. Now 40 years on let's remember it systems thinkers sent a man to the moon. I wonder, in hindsight, what heights AC will claim to have scaled.

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• Hugh Williams | 22-Jul-2009 3:34 pm

  There is a well known expression which goes "Guilt breeds aggression". It comes to mind as I read of this personal attack on John Seddon.
  
  Hugh Williams

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• Tanya Roberts | 22-Jul-2009 3:47 pm

  Regrettably, the AC works on the 'Rules for Fools' system - no initiative, no structure, and with no incentive to improve.
  
  Times up, chaps.

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• david smart | 22-Jul-2009 3:55 pm

  It's revealing that Walker does not seriously engage with Seddon's arguments. His response is largely ad hominem.
  
  But what else would one expect? Typical modern management methods - as mandated by the Audit Commission - result in playing the targets, rather than doing the work. That's just what Walker does in his piece. Or to put it another way: he plays the man, not the ball.
  
  Result = failure.

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• Gordon Diffey | 22-Jul-2009 4:01 pm

  I am sorry that David Walker has taken the personal approach in trying to refute John Seddon’s reasoned argument rather than trying to understand what John is actually saying. I will concede that John will not win prizes for diplomacy, but when you get below his style to analyse his arguments and put them into practice you find that they work.
  
  I have been a user of John Seddon's "Lean" approach to making system's thinking work for over 9 years now in a variety of organisations. Systems thinking works because it truly builds the service up from the bottom, with the consumer or customer's needs in mind. If done correctly, in the public sector context, it will let the citizen and voter feel that they have indeed been listened to and that the services are for them rather than to fulfil targets.
  
  Here John and I will have a minor disagreement in that I do see some value in the use of tools to analyse problem areas in a system. These highlight areas where the system has to change and but they are not mechanisms to produce solutions. I also can see the need for analytical work to ensure that an organisation is making improvements or moving forward by meeting customer expectations. However, I am totally with John Seddon in agreeing that centre driven targets will not drive improvement because they are such a blunt and crude instrument. In addition, targets may well have apparently improved in one area, but in my experience to achieve them, Public Sector staff have to focus on the targets rather than the customer (or voter). Moreover, the targets are what the Government perceives is the public wants, whilst systems thinking looks at what the public actually wants and endeavours to use the scant resources to achieve that. So many times I have seen that meeting targets becomes the driving force for staff rather than providing the service that customers (voters) want. That is not their fault it is the System.
  To give you an example of this muddled thinking, social housing targets pushed targets to build more high density housing in the form of flats. Indeed, it can be argued that Housing Associations were “rewarded for building more flats”. The people do not want them; the designs are often claustrophobic and crammed together. The people want other forms of housing; this is one factor that has now led to an over-supply of flats.
  Come on David Walker I know that John has dared to suggest that the Audit Commission should be abolished, but attacking him will not convince us that it should stay. If you truly believe that you have an argument that stands up to scrutiny let us hear it in a reasoned way. You are more likely to get the audience to listen – let us have grown up discussion rather than the hype that we have been accustomed to hearing Government and its agencies. That just smacks of defending the indefensible, rather than making people believe you have areal argument. Come on David rewrite your response to the article with some sound intellectual discussion.

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• Brian maskell | 22-Jul-2009 4:12 pm

  Seems to me that many of the comments in the article and the responses are more heat than light. What is required is reasonable debate. The systems thinking approach is a very different way of working to that of the targets & audit approach. They are not only different, they are contradictory.
  
  Someone who is invested in the targets/audit approach will have a lot of difficulty understanding a systems approach. Most systems thinkers have NO difficulty understanding the targets/audit methods because these are the traditional management methods we have all suffered from throughout our careers and are taught in the business schools.
  
  From my personal experience, the systems thinking approach produces vastly better results than traditional management, irrespective of the industry. (The "Toyota or Torquay" jibe displays lack of understanding.) The systems thinking approach is difficult to achieve because it requires the leaders within an organization to think and work differently. To make radical change to their management style.
  
  The results of systems thinking - when introduced well - is much higher service to the customers (voters, tax-payers, citizens/subjects, etc), much higher customer satisfaction, faster & more nimble organizations, lower costs, and higher work satisfaction of the employees. But this does not happen quickly or by magic. It comes from sound thinking, careful and consistent hard work, tenacity in the application of systems thinking, and ...... I have to say this ....... the elimination or ignoring of top-down targets.
  
  Brian Maskell
  bmaskell@maskell.com

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• Peter Lightbown | 22-Jul-2009 4:56 pm

  David Walker is a perfect example of why public sector services will never improve. His outdated views and support of a regime of compliance is laughable and lets be honest, if the Audit commission model worked so well why aren't we now enjoying top quality services after 12 years of this governments management.
  He accuses JS of not understanding the political context etc in which many public sector orgaisations operate. David, wake up, thats the problem. Politicians who are involved in specifying the kind of regime you support and enforce are in most cases completely devoid of any real work place experience, how can they possibly know how to manage complex public services effectively. Politics is one of the very few 'professions' where you can rise to a place of phenomenal power having spent not a second understanding anything about the work being carried out.
  
  As for Mr walkers views on economies of scale etc he displays the breathtaking ignorance displayed by many senior staffers brainwashed in to believing something because they hear it enough times.
  
  A few years ago i worked on the planning of the implementation of the 101 'non-emergency' number in a region of England. The premise of the contract was on a service being managed locally with the Home Office paying a certain fee for every call taken. They predicted each yr that the number of calls would rise and therefore service costs would rise also. The service would take calls 24 hrs per day but filter them to other service providers e.g. local authorities who did not operate those hrs......result, lots of callers ringing back to find out the progress of their service request, surely an obvious outcome??
  Home Office had no concept that they were proposing to introduce a service that would result in no service improvement, no motivation for the service provider to reduce calls by improving service and an ever increasing bill. Economies of scale don't apply!!
  (U)fortunately, after hundreds of thousands of pounds had been spent in planning the implementation the Home office realised they had no money to fund it! I rest my case.

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• Angela Moore | 22-Jul-2009 5:24 pm

  Oh dear Mr Walker - the cracks in the purpose of the Audit Commission really are beginning to show!
  
  "It’s noteworthy in the Seddon view of the world how absent citizens and voting are" - Citizens, from the Systems Thinking viewpoint are the be all and end all of good services (they being the main base of customers in the LA context) so are implicit in John's writing - if Mr Walker had bothered to look a little deeper before he responded he may just have spotted that fact.
  
  Instead, Mr Walker appears to see Citizens only from a political standpoint - but do politics really have any importance to you as an individual when you are out of work and can't afford your rent, or need help simply to live your normal life with some degree of dignity? Citizens don't talk in terms of "value for money" - this is a Government / Audit Commission concept - Citizens simply have needs that they have at least some right to expect to be met.
  
  "Councillors, media and the maelstrom of politics don’t figure" - although if you study the system you will see that they do - in a political context they will appear as major causes of system conditions, and so as massive contributors to waste. Councillors are meant to represent the people - they are not gods - if they do what they should and do it well then they will 'keep the job', be well respected by all, and will be a very valuable asset to delivery of good service ... but if their motivations are different then they simply become part of the problem.
  
  The Audit Commission behave as if they themselves, and not the citizen, are the customers of Local Government - and as they weild so much power, its a brave LA that chooses to ignore them - so instead of using resources to provide what real customers need, we use them to service our false ones - we play the game so much that winning the game, and not delivering the best services possible, becomes the objective.
  
  So, please Audit Commission, stop dictating what's 'good' and let real knowledge and understanding, as is held by those actually doing the day job, lead the way - stop drowning innovation and real improvement when it doesn't fit your model, and stop rewarding LAs for playing the game well rather than doing the job well!

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• Lance Fennell | 22-Jul-2009 6:25 pm

  David Walker is right about one thing: there is a political context. When things go wrong it would be a brave politician who answers media questions, 'It's OK because we're using systems thinking now, so things will get better". Being that it is often counter-intuitive, systems thinking isn't easily understood at first (as David Walker demonstrates), and telling the Daily Mail that targets are being abandoned (the subtext being that it's now a freeforall) would be political suicide. The myths that there are always economies of scale benefits, that targets improve performance and that managers and civil servants know best simply because of their status are deeply ingrained in the national psyche. I have heard politicians say 'I know the targets make things worse, but you don't get elected if you don't have targets for improvement'. John Seddon's question the AC should ask gets to the heart of what customers care about; the problem is that politicians are likely to care more about getting elected.

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• jon cotterell | 22-Jul-2009 7:17 pm

  Time really is up for AC.
  Next year everyone will have an opportunity to vote for a representative that supports the way forward provided by Lean Systems.
  I am a process improvement analyst. I was made redundant recently and when I tried to sign on I found a process crying out for improvement. It took 1hr10mins to complete a process of which 15mins were necessary. Three weeks later I have received a letter stating more information is required! Customer experience appalling. JobCentre staff de-moralised with a creaking system duplicating effort. Staff comment that this year's target is 'quantity' and next year's will be 'quantity'...
  JC

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• Stephen Thorne | 22-Jul-2009 7:28 pm

  David Walkers response is disgraceful. Rather than try to understand the logic behind John's comments, he has chosen to resort to a personal attack.
  
  John Seddon is right. It's a shame that David Walker is not interested in understanding how to improve performance, if this requires him to challenge his current perceptions.
  
  Is this really the mindset we want from a man in his position? I don't think so.

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