In this unique seminar John will:

• present examples of profound public-sector performance improvement; better service at much lower costs and a transformation in morale
• illustrate how these economic benchmarks were achieved by getting rid of targets, central control and inspection
• show how studying service organisations as systems reveals the massive scope for improvement and the folly of conventional management thinking
• explain why economy of scale is a myth and why, therefore, conventional approaches to shared services fail
• illustrate how managing costs drives costs up and how managing value drives costs out of services
• explain the three steps to sharing services that are guaranteed to deliver better services at much lower costs (but end up nothing like first imagined)
• describe how local services are better, cheaper, and deliver benefits beyond efficiency

John will also illustrate many of the counterintuitive truths that wait to be discovered by managers of service organisations, for example;

• Cost is in flow, not transactions (it illustrates why out-sourcing transactions to ‘low-cost’ suppliers fails)
•  Understanding demand is the greatest lever for improvement (managers wrongly assume that all demand is work to be done and miss this huge opportunity)
• Performance is governed by the system (hence people management practices are next to worthless)
• Standardisation should be avoided (it drives up costs and worsens service)

And John will explain the Vanguard Method; studying service organisations as systems enables managers to get knowledge (unlearning and learning) as the prerequisite for effective, significant and sustainable change.