Pursuing an unquestioning belief in economy of scale, managers of service organizations have industrialized their operations. Front- and back-offices, glued together by IT systems are now the norm. But being normal is not the same as being right. Building on the work of W. Edwards Deming (‘we invented management, we can re-invent it’) John Seddon has pioneered the development of a ‘systems’ approach to service organization design. The systems approach exposes the wrong-headed nature of conventional management, it explains why so many IT projects fail and it helps us understand why so many service organizations have failed to improve performance with ‘lean’ and ‘six sigma’ tools and why such interventions often drive costs up. This talk outline the counter-intuitive truths, describe the systems approach to organizational change and will argue for a different way to develop IT that costs less and delivers more. Prepare to be challenged, disturbed and inspired.
