Human Resources
Freedom from
command and control
n the name of modernisation, the public sector the services – removing all the causes of failure
I has been subjected to ‘command and control’
management thinking. It is a regime of targets,
specifications and inspection that has, in truth, under-
demand, and then to decide whether they are best
provided through a call centre or not. Those authori-
ties that are following this route will have better
mined public sector performance. service at lower cost, but will fail to meet the
The bureaucracy associated with the regime consumes Government target.
resources across the whole of the public sector. This The specifications industry has grown by leaps and
waste is just the tip of the iceberg. The costs of bounds. Many of the people who work to produce the
demoralisation are incalculable. People are demor- specifications do have experience of the relevant serv-
alised because so much of what they do has little ice, but as Deming taught us, experience is no
bearing on the purpose of their work. Imagine what it substitute for knowledge.
feels like to get an ambulance to a person in more
Benefits processing is just one example of bad specifi-
John Seddon, than eight minutes when, regardless of the care you
cation. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
give, you are deemed to have failed. By the same
Managing has promulgated manuals detailing the requirements
token, you could get to someone in seven minutes,
Director, who dies, and you have succeeded. Targets remove
in managing benefits. The Chancellor, Gordon Brown,
insists on no investment without reform. He is invest-
Vanguard, people’s sense of purpose.
ing in excess of £200m in implementing centrally
reflects on the specified alterations to the way benefits processing is
‘The specifications industry has
difference managed. I am confident he will not get a return. The
grown by leaps and bounds. Many
between setting specification makes the work worse, as I shall illustrate.
of the people who work to produce
targets and If we think of benefits processing as a system, at a
the specifications do have
achieving them… high level, it has three parts: a front office, where
experience of the relevant service,
claimants are dealt with; a back office, where the ben-
but as Deming taught us, experience efits are calculated and paid; and these two are
is no substitute for knowledge.’ usually connected by electronic means – a document
image processor1; documents are scanned and held on
Command and control is appealing; you set targets
a central database. As is the case with all specifica-
and then expect people to achieve them. If, as is to be
tions, those who write them think of things they can
expected, resources become an issue, you engage in
measure which seem consistent with doing things
discussions about increasing resources and, whenever
properly. While there are a massive number of stan-
possible, tie resources to particular ‘solutions’ or speci-
dards and targets in the DWP specification – all of
fications. But are such ‘solutions’ based on knowledge?
which need establishing and monitoring, creating a
Local authorities have been told by Government to
bureaucracy – here are the essential few that sub-
have call centres by 2005. Many local authority serv-
optimise the system:
ices, like planning, benefits, housing and so on, don’t
● Front office – time to see claimants and time to
work very well and so have high levels of ‘failure
respond to correspondence;
demand’ – demand caused by a failure to do some-
● Back office – the percentage of claims paid in a
thing or do something right for the customer. The
consequence of moving that work to a central loca- certain time.
tion, providing only electronic means for people to I have little doubt you will be thinking ‘why?’, for these
talk to each other, is the institutionalisation of waste. seem like quite reasonable things to focus on. Yet, as
It is no wonder the dialogue moves to resources: more with every example of public services I have studied,
work has been created. The right answer is to improve these kinds of measures actually create disorder. When
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Human Resources
Fig 1: End-to-end time to manage benefits ‘As with all
government
local authority personnel study benefits processing as applicant’s point of view. Anything from one day to
specifications,
a system, they learn that there is a high level of failure 134 days can be expected from this system. The causes
demand in the front office, people ‘progress-chasing’ of variation are in the way the work is designed and
the focus is
and, more importantly, waste (‘dirty input’) – people managed. The DWP specification is creating disorder on activity
not coming in with everything that is required to in benefits processing. management and
determine their claim. People in the front office send measurement.
‘Command and control is appealing;
what they have for scanning, to meet service require- Managing activity
ments, and ask the applicant to return with whatever you set targets and then expect
always sub-
else is required. Document image processors – ‘scan- people to achieve them.’
optimises flow.’
ners’ – require that work is sorted and batched into
The local authority whose data is reported in Fig. 1 has
like work types: driving licences must be scanned as a
re-designed benefits payment processing, removing all
batch, bank statements must be scanned as a batch,
major causes of variation and, as a consequence,
and so on. This means that applicants’ information is
removing failure demand. Their customers are happier
separated and thus needs to be re-connected elec-
and they process all benefits in eight days. The
tronically. Inevitably, documents are poorly scanned,
national average, I am told, is 60 days. As with many
duplicated, lost or wrongly sorted; applicants are fre-
local authority services, the essence of the solution is
quently asked to bring in things they have already
to control the work at the start of the flow. If benefits
provided. In the back office, the clock for the perform-
applications arrive ‘clean’, they flow easily and time is
ance measure begins when all of the required
reduced. As a consequence, quality and capacity
information is to hand. Achieving this is hampered by
improves. Nothing in the DWP specification would
the way work is designed and managed.
have aided these people in making this change;
To open up these problems, you need to start by look- following the specification obviates improvement. As
ing at the end-to-end time for processing benefits with all government specifications, the focus is on
from the applicants’ point of view, establishing a activity management and measurement. Managing
measure of capability. Fig. 1 is the capability chart for activity always sub-optimises flow.
one local authority. Ministers have been attracted by the idea of
The capability measure shows that it could take any- economies of scale. Aping what has been done in the
thing up to 134 days to process a benefit from the private sector, they encourage the creating of front
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Human Resources
associated with sending annual reports to
people who have no interest. Designing
against demand ensures that those who
transact with the services have a good
experience and will thus talk well of
the fact.
Giving up targets
When I gave evidence to the House of
Commons Select Committee, reviewing
the impact of targets on public sector
performance, I noticed that all of those
giving evidence who sat atop the public
sector hierarchy accepted that there were
problems with targets. They even
accepted targets caused ‘cheating’. But
they also claimed the cheating was mini-
mal. All of those giving evidence who
actually do the work in the public sector
gave examples to show that cheating was
‘Designing against ubiquitous and systematic.
demand is a Fig. 2: Command and Control vs. Systems Thinking
The question I always ask is ‘how do you
smarter and more set a good target?’ I have never had any-
and back office ‘factories’ for service provision. But it is body convince me that there is a good method. If you
practical way of
often a mistake to treat telephone work as function- rely on experience, your past will constrain your
improving public ally separated from other work. In the private sector, future. If you involve those who have to deliver (the
services than that service has worsened as costs have risen. To attack new ‘localism’), you are involved in a negotiation; you
dictated by the costs, the private sector now outsources work to India. are not involved in developing knowledge about how
current Is this a solution? Does it pay to outsource high levels the work works and how to improve it.
specifications.’ of failure demand? Instead of targets, people need what I call ‘capability
In the police, we have a problem with 999 services get- measures’ – they are not like targets. Targets are arbi-
ting clogged with ‘non-999’ work. The proposed solution trary: capability measures tell you the truth about
is to have a new number. It is a mad idea. In the few what you are achieving. Targets are plucked from the
forces where demand has been studied, the demand into air: capability measures are derived from the work.
999 lines and non-999 lines is essentially similar. Targets require a separate bureaucracy for reporting:
The solution is to design against demand, to turn off capability measures do not – they can be used by
the causes of failure demand – it’s all under your con- those who do the work to understand and improve
trol – and to design your services against the value the work, something that is impossible with targets.
demands. This is a simple idea that organisations in the Look at the results in the case of benefits. Would any-
private sector are using to improve service and reduce one have given a rationale for a target to process all
costs. Think of any service you encounter; if the organi- benefits in eight days?
sation you are trying to get service from knows what The first requirement in improving the public sector is
matters to you – the value work – and does that and a fundamental change in thinking. It begins with
only that in responding to your demand, the service Ministers; we shouldn’t hold our breath.
will be good and it will be provided at the lowest cost.
John Seddon This article is based on extracts from ‘Freedom from
Managing Director Designing against demand is a smarter and more prac- Command and Control: a better way to make the
Vanguard
tical way of improving public services than that work work’, by John Seddon.
1 Nelson St
Buckingham MK18 1BU dictated by the current specifications. Ministers like the Reference:
Tel: 01280 822255 idea of asking communities what they want. It creates ‘Freedom from Command and Control: a better way to make the work
office@vanguard work’, Vanguard Education, 2003. [Link]
[Link] a rod for the organisation’s back; you end up with 1 The DWP guidance provided a field day for IT suppliers selling
[Link]- [Link] ‘wants’ that cannot be delivered and colossal waste scanning equipment.
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