During the nineties a third of the public sector in Australia was retrenched. Right now in NSW the new O’Farrell government is pushing through at least 5,000 public sector job cuts. It’s being mirrored around the world to offset debt and budget blowouts.

It’s curious thing to do though isn’t it — to make cuts before driving efficiency measures? Yet it seems attempts at driving efficiency often fail. The reason, says John Seddon from Vanguard Consulting in the UK, is because too many public sector departments are governed by command and control thinking. The alternative approach is covered in his book Systems Thinking In the Public Sector: the failure of the reform regime … and a manifesto for a better way.

Listen to this interview in full on BNet >

CPD co-hosted a seminar with John Seddon during his recent Australian visit.