Systems Thinking from Heresy to Practice: Public and Private Sector Studies

An exploration into the application of systems thinking to a variety of public and private sector service organisations. Written in accessible language by leading experts (practitioners and management theorists) it draws out the distinctions between conventional approaches to change in both service and manufacturing organisations and those using systems thinking methods. The work illustrates the counter-intuitive truths revealed by studying service organisations as systems and uses case studies to demonstrate how organisations have been re-designed using systems principles and the strong impact these have on performance and morale.

Keivan Zokael is a management consultant, researcher and systems thinker. He is an Honorary Fellow at Warwick University, UK, and Head of Research at SA Partners as well as a founding editorial board member of the Lean Management Journal. Previously he was Director of MSc in Lean Operations Management (Service) at the Lean Enterprise Research Centre, Cardiff University, UK. Keivan has authored numerous articles on lean thinking as well as various reports for government departments and industrial bodies on lean and systems thinking. He has acted as an advisor to the Auditor General for Wales and regularly delivers short course training to executives from different industries. His areas of interest are systems thinking, operations and supply chain management, and lean and green.
John Seddon is a widely-published occupational psychologist and management thinker credited with translating the principles behind the legendary Toyota Production System for service organisations. John began his career researching the reasons for failures of major change programmes. This led him to W. Edwards Deming, who taught him the importance of understanding and managing organisations as systems and Taiichi Ohno who showed the practicality and power of doing so in manufacturing. Based on what he learned he developed his own methods for change, which he describes as a combination of systems thinking - how the work works - and intervention theory - how to change it. John is Managing Director of Vanguard, a systems thinking consultancy practice for service organisations, and a Visiting Professor at both the Lean Enterprise Research Centre, University of Cardiff and the Derbyshire Business School, University of Derby, UK.
Brendan O'Donovan is Head of Research at Vanguard Consulting. He has recently completed an MSc in Operations Management at Cardiff Business School, UK. Having previously worked for a city council, Brendan has undertaken research projects for Cardiff University and recently co-authored a report for the Wales Audit Office on the subject of systems thinking in the Welsh public sector.