Freedom from Command & Control
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Freedom from Command & Control

Rethinking Management for Lean Service

John Seddon
Productivity Press, 2005
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Editorial Rating

8

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Recommendation

This brief book offers a lot in a small package. Although the customer-driven systems management strategy that John Seddon outlines is hardly new, he offers a fresh discussion about applying it to service organizations. Although this management tactic has proven itself indisputably, many managers and most organizations will find it radical. The author clearly, concisely illustrates its merits with numerous examples from a range of industries, with particular reference to the successful Toyota Production System. However, Seddon is frank about the kind and degree of opposition that reform will encounter. He also debunks other management systems in light of this approach. getAbstract highly recommends this book to all managers with the note that you can only implement its findings if you enjoy the full support of top management.

Summary

Push and Pull

In the early twentieth century, engineer Fred Taylor laid the foundation of "command-and-control" leadership when he wrote the "theory of scientific management," separating work from decision making. Managers made decisions and workers worked. For example, Taylor directed a worker named Schmidt to do what he was told and only what he was told. Taylor raised Schmidt's productivity, but he may have sacrificed a great deal more in doing so. Taylor says that Schmidt, even at his previous low level of productivity, managed to buy a plot of ground and build his own house. Imagine how much Schmidt might have done for the enterprise if he had been encouraged to apply that energy, creativity and initiative to his work.

The Ford assembly line embodied command-and-control management. When Toyota's Taiichi Ohno visited Ford, he saw that finished vehicles moved off the line as regularly as heartbeats. Ohno recognized the phenomenon of flow in the line, but he believed that the customer should determine that flow. In other words, manufacturers should build cars in response to the pull of customer demand, not the push of a production quota.

When Ford pioneered...

About the Author

John Seddon is an occupational psychologist. He is also the author of I Want You to Cheat and In Pursuit of Quality: The Case Against ISO 9000. He is managing director of an organizational change consultancy and visiting professor at Cardiff University.

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