The Whitehall Effect: How Whitehall Became the Enemy of Great Public Services - and What We Can Do About it

by John Seddon

John Seddon is back. This time with an uncompromising account of Whitehall's effect on our public services. And it's a damning read. 'The Whitehall Effect' chronicles how the Whitehall ideas machine has failed to deliver on a monumental scale - and what we can do about it. We have a breathtaking opportunity to create public services that truly serve. But only if Whitehall changes. --- Why don't public services work very well? One key reason is that they have been 'industrialised'. Part 1 explains why call centres, back offices, shared services, outsourcing and IT-led change almost always lead to service failure. It explains, in particular, why 'economies of scale' are a myth. Part 2 proposes a better (and tried-and-tested) alternative to the alienating and unresponsive experience of industrialised public services. Good services are attuned and sensitive to peoples' needs. Where the 'industrialised' approach tries to drive down costs but invariably drives them up, the better approach - managing value - drives costs down significantly. Part 3 challenges conventional thinking and received wisdom about public services. Targets, inspection and regulation have to be part of the solution, don't they? Seddon explains why they're actually part of the problem and shows that the most effective lever of change and improvement is to stop 'managing' the people (public sector staff and managers) and start managing the system they work in. Part 4 discusses some of the current fads in public-sector reform: 'choice', 'managing demand', 'nudge' and 'lean'. Politicians pursue them because they are plausible and fit their narrative, the story they like to tell about reform. But these fads only make public services worse or, at best, detract from the opportunity at hand. The opportunity John Seddon describes is breathtaking. We can undo the costly debacle of public sector 'reform', but only if we first change Whitehall. In Part 5 he describes how Whitehall is systemically incapable of listening to and acting on evidence and finally turn to how Whitehall needs to change if we are to turn away from the mistakes of the last 35 years and realise the profound opportunity open to us.

Genres: Nonfiction, Management, Business, Politics

247 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 4, 2014

Reviews

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Failure demand - the failure to do something or do something right for the customer is at the heart of this book.

For anyone familiar with Seddon's work he is pretty clear that 95% of performance is related to the system at work and not the individual, therefore 'managing staff' is largely a waste of time. It's pretty hard for managers to accept that motivation, performance related pay, engagement (and at the other end of the scale 'work harder') has absolutely no impact on performance. I am not sure I agree with Seddon here but what I do agree with quite strongly is that acting on the system is the most important thing to do to improve performance.

Seddon fills his book with examples of public sector organisations NOT providing a good service to the populace which in turn creates failure demand and future demand and for someone who works in the public sector I heartily agree with him. It's not just about 'getting it right, first time, every time' - it's about making sure that we are 'getting things right' from the customer's perspective and not our internal version of 'right'.

This is more than another 'systems thinking' book although thankfully Seddon does go into detail of his method of how to act on the system for those unfamiliar. This book is more about how political interference from the Thatcherite era onwards has managed to make public services worse, despite spending more money on them than ever before. It describes what is now a couple of generations of meddling that have tried to 'fix' a problem that has simply not worked. For that reason it is a book that deserves a much wider readership than those working in the public sector - it is of interest to the whole country in my opinion.

I would hardly describe Seddon as a leftist (you'd need deep pockets to get his consultancy to come and work with you) but it's startling how so many of his conclusions are similar to another book I read recently about how the British Establishment run society for the benefit of their selves at the expense of others.

Key considerations are that public services are set up to serve the public needs. Consider Universal Credit - the one size fits all approach to benefit payments. On the face of it benefit claimants getting one benefit that meets their needs rather than a myriad of payments makes sense. However, the project is significantly delayed and significantly over budget. Moreover the system should be to pay the right money quickly to those who need and are entitled to it quickly. Instead it is a system designed to reduce benefit expenditure and treat claimants like scroungers and to look for scroungers - indeed I find Job Centre's function is to find ways to get people of benefits or sanction claimants rather than enable and help find claimants well paid, rewarding and secure employment (which in turn REDUCES cost on the benefits system as fewer people cycle in and out of it).

Seddon has a number of examples of systems doing things customers do not want and Whitehall's interference but certain elements recur again and again. There is the consideration of targets. Targets manage outputs rather than focus on what is needed. When a target is not of relevance to the customer then it is more than worthless as it is the meeting of targets that is the primary function. When we consider the school system, league tables exist to identify 'good schools' and give parents 'choice'. Surely the role of the education system is to provide all children with the best possible well rounded education and opportunity to learn and grow. However, schools spend all their time trying to get kids through 'tests' and other metrics which prevent teachers from developing kids to reach their potential. The gifted and those that need development have their needs left unmet.

Targets in the health service often come under similar scrutiny - pledges to reduce waiting times etc. sound good on a manifesto but do recipients of health care want 'a shorter waiting time' (and all the methods used to fiddle what waiting time is and isn't) or do people want to receive the health care they need quickly. The catastrophic failure of NHS Direct is identified with 'number of calls' being seen as a measure of the success of the take-up, despite 'number of calls' translates to 'number of people who have to call again and again', in particular since they are often signposted incorrectly due to the people in the service asking questions from a checksheet that cannot but fail to take into account people's complex needs.

The myth of choice improving standards is exploded here. 'Choice' has led to an increased privatisation and increased costs to the public sector. People don't want choice and competition when accessing services - they want their needs met. It's not a case of choosing 'hospital A' or 'hospital B' - it's about how best one can get the treatment required. Indeed, social care is examined here and the 'choice' of personalised budgets which has led to commissioning teams and relevant support costs which fail to account for complex needs. Yes, the 'customer' may have 'choice' but in reality the 'choice' is for who the local authority commissions from. Evidence is presented that 5% of social care users consume 50% of the budget. Rather than bounce these people from one service to another Seddon argues that people's individual needs should be identified and then met, if necessary share this work with other agencies. If half the people calling about housing benefit actually want something else let's provide the workers with the tools to help and actually engage those with expertise in meeting needs.

Outsourcing functions also comes in for criticism. As someone who has left a 'public / private' partnership I can share that outsourced functions are paid by activity. Therefore it is not in the interests of the private provider to reduce activity if they are paid by output rather than reducing demand. It's a common problem - 'we have a backlog', 'let's get in the private sector to clear it' then wondering why the backlog never actually goes down. It's because the nature of the demand is never fully addressed. Call centres and a separation of the front and back office is rightly criticised. I don't need my call handled in ten rings - I just need my call handled by someone who can help.

A worthwhile book into systems thinking in particular relation to the private sector - recommended not just for those interested in systems thinking and business analysis, but managers, leaders, workers in the public sector and outside and more importantly the public. For it is the meddling that prevents poor service that costs money, not the hard work of those providing the service despite their best efforts.

[Schopflin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring and depressing at the same time. Seddon effectively demonstrates that we can save money and deliver better services by concentrating on the purposes of those services. Ideology dictates that we use call centres and digital-only services to save money. For some services, using expert mediated help at the point of enquiry will save far more money by solving problems the first time around. The depressing bit is - central government dogmatically ignores the real life improvements made from Seddon's approach.

[Andrew Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm always convinced by John Seddon when he gets down to detail. He can irritate people with his grand gestures and generalisations when he's speaking on a public platform, but his analysis of the way British (and may other) public services are run is incontestable when he gets down to detail.

For this book he's moved away from an overarching 'systems thinking' approach and, instead, focuses on the overarching nonsense of 'industrialising' our public services. Call centres, economies of scale, centralised back offices, shared services and outsourcing get picked off one by one. As does Whitehall's 'ideological thinking': targets, inspection, regulation. The facts have been rigorously checked by his own research team, gone over by former Observer management columnist Simon Caulkin and checked again by us (disclosure: I edited the book for Triarchy Press).

Finally he proposes a better, well-evidenced, tried-and-tested approach to running public services. And, as we had to in our maths exams, he shows his workings.

My only disagreement with him is in his objection to 'Nudge' - I think it's a good idea.

That said, anyone who's involved at any level in specifying the way that our police, health, education, housing, roads and social services are run REALLY OUGHT TO READ THIS BOOK. Every MP ought to read it for a start.