John Seddon

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John Seddon is a British occupational psychologist and author, specialising in change in the service industry. He is the managing director of Vanguard, a consultancy company he formed in 1985 and the inventor of 'The Vanguard Method'. Vanguard currently operates in eleven countries. Seddon is a visiting professor at Buckingham University Business School.

Seddon's prominence grew following attacks on current British management thinking including the belief in economies of scale, quality standards such as ISO9000 and much of public sector reform including "deliverology", the use of targets, inspection and centralised control of local services. The ''Daily Telegraph'' described him as a "reluctant management guru", with a background in occupational psychology.

He is critical of target-based management, and of basing decisions on economies of scale, rather than "economies of flow".

Seddon has published seven books. In his 2008 book, ''Systems Thinking in the Public Sector'', he criticised the UK Government reform programme. He advocated its replacement by systems thinking. His book ''The Whitehall Effect'' was published on 5 November 2014. In it he articulates a more productive role for government in public-sector reform. His latest book, ''Beyond Command and Control'' was published on 30 September 2019 and promises to expose the inherent fallacies contained within command and control management.

Seddon won the first Management Innovation Prize for 'Reinventing Leadership' in October 2010. Provided by Wikipedia