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^[1] 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.^[2]

He is critical of target-based management, and of basing decisions on economies of scale, rather than "economies of flow".^[3]

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.^[4] 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.^[5] 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.^[6]

Seddon won the first Management Innovation Prize for 'Reinventing Leadership' in October 2010.^[7]