John Seddon – Manifesto For Improved Regulation

John Seddon – Manifesto For Improved Regulation

John Seddon’s latest campaign is for better regulation of i.e. UK public services. Here’s his manifesto:

MANIFESTO: A better method of regulation

In every organisation there is a systemic relationship between purpose, measures and method. The
system works for you or against you.

The problem with the UK’s system of regulation has been that politicians and regulators specify
measures and methods. This is diametrically wrong, killing the experiment and innovation on which
improvement depends. Politicians and regulators should not be involved with management and
delivery. Instead, to them should fall the important and necessary role of establishing the purpose of
the service (a purpose defined in terms of the citizen or the customer). Isn’t that, after all, what every
MP should be most concerned about?

This simple change will shift the locus of control from the specifiers to those who are being
regulated. The leaders of our public services will then be responsible for making their own decisions
about how they will achieve the purpose laid down by Parliament: that is, the methods and measures.
Indeed, they will be obliged (as they should be) to make these decisions, For some this will be a big
challenge.

This, in turn, will change the nature of inspection. Rather than inspecting against centrally specified
checklists and protocols, the inspector will ask about the choice of measures and methods in use. The
inspector will then go on to observe their effect on the ground, where services are delivered.

Seeing the methods and measures in action will provide real transparency. No longer will ingenious
actors be able to cheat the system. The measures in use – how are we doing in terms of achieving our
purpose? – will be used to inform and improve service quality and to give a true picture of
performance to regulators and citizens.

Changing the locus of control from the regulator to the regulated will provide much-needed
opportunities for innovation. New and better solutions can only emerge when service leaders are free
to make choices about methods and how they measure their effectiveness. Leaders should be free to
‘pull’ help from the many available sources. No longer will the regulator mandate what it believes to
be right. Of course, inspectors will learn a lot about what is working, but they should only signpost
useful innovation for others to consider.

Inspection judgements will be based on knowledge and objective criteria. Improvement will be
palpable, as will failure to improve. Learning from each other, both parties will contribute to a
growing fund of well-founded knowledge about what works and what doesn’t.

Changing the locus of control drives out fear, which is the blight of our current method. Its cousin,
demoralisation, is felt by every public servant who knows that they are being prevented from doing
what matters by burdensome and unnecessary documentation, which can now be limited to that which
is useful in meeting the purpose of a service.

Regulation based on how well an organisation achieves the purpose it has been set will avoid the
persistent problem of regulation running behind events, shutting the stable door after another horse has
bolted. Having a clear statement of purpose will enable regulators to apply sanctions immediately if
and when an organisation is found to be undermining its allotted purpose.

It is time to liberate public servants from the prison of suspicion and distrust that our current
method of regulation locks them in, demeaning their professionalism and casting them as part of the
problem rather than as active creators of solutions.

To the contrary, our proposed model of regulation assumes that people are motivated by pride in
their work, that they are vocational – they want to serve – and that they are eager and able to use their
ingenuity and initiative to serve that purpose. Their behaviour is a product of the system; it is only by
changing the regulatory regime that we can expect a change in behaviour

The full Manifesto is available at the Vanguard site.