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When I commenced my PhD a decade ago, one of the people I had a couple of mini 'debates' with was John Seddon: one on the issue of Phil Crosby's (1980) comment: 'Quality Is Free' (and his book of the same title); and the other to do with this thing called business process reengineering (or BPR), which Seddon derided as a 'fad'.
I stuck with this BPR thing, though, for the next four years, because the core of my study (and consequent thesis; Chamberlin, 2008) was around the implementation - or otherwise - of business process reengineering in the public sector (specifically, in two local authorities), and one of my appendices recounted this discussion with John on BPR: although, I admit, it was my own interpretation of it.
I have massive respect for John Seddon, his (ie the Vanguard) 'method', and read each of his books as soon as they're out. Like the latest...
If you haven't yet bought, and read, The Whitehall Effect (Seddon, 2014) - about the 'waste' inflicted upon our UK public services, across the piece, and how, 'for the 35 years since Margaret Thatcher was elected, successive administrations [have] consistently made things worse' - then you should. If you are involved in managing any sort of 'service' organisation - whether public or private - especially one of any size, then you need to read the book. It will open your eyes. Even though you didn't think they were closed!
In essence, this latest book by Seddon is still about the need to take a teleological, evidence-based, systemic approach to delivering public services, as opposed to the fatuous, 'policybased evidence' that is spouted daily by politicians on Radio 4's Today programme, and in the national press.
Whether 'quality' is 'free', or not, Seddon's comments (2014: 55) that, 'the counter-intuitive truth is that as quality improves, costs fall', and later (p 149), that, 'quality really is cheaper', are pure Crosby. Three decades ago, Crosby's subsequent best-seller, Quality Without Tears (Crosby, 1984), took a similar - though not the same - approach to embedding the then burgeoning 'quality movement' with some sort of systemic underpinnings. He called it his 'Four Absolutes Of Quality Management' (ibid, p64), fig 1:
Crosby's second 'absolute' was defined as...