Gordon Diffey

Comment on: Walker v Seddon - the debate goes on

Gordon Diffey's comment 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.