Systems Thinking in the Public Sector

Systems Thinking is one of those concepts that immediately made sense to me and helped me to understand what was wrong about the things that felt wrong about what was happening at work.

At the time I was on my way out of Lambeth Council in a cloud of frustration but took the opportunity to attend a conference on Systems Thinking run by Vanguard and hosted by their guru (if I can use that word positively) John Seddon.

A series of case studies helped to explain not on that another approach works but also why it works and why the government's top-down approach of target setting cannot work. This is possibly most obvious with school league tables which tell us nothing other than children are getting better at passing the tests.

Now Systems Thinking in the Public Sector is fully explained in a very readable yet thought-provoking book by John Seddon. It is so good I took it on holiday with me!