In his acclaimed 2008 book "Systems Thinking in the Public Sector", John Seddon blew the whistle on public sector 'reform' and the flawed gospel of quasi-markets, competition, targets and inspection. He showed how thousands of people in the UK and elsewhere had been engaged at a cost of millions of pounds, to impose and enforce targets that simply made things worse...Those people are still there - from the Audit Commission down - and the quasi-market model is still creating waste, driving up costs, damaging services and destroying morale. Now a new book spells out the alternative. "Delivering Public Services that Work" brings together case studies from 6 different public sector organisations, in the UK and New Zealand, that are using "Systems Thinking" to bring about rapid and extraordinary change. These Case Studies show: how they did it, step by step; how they overcame initial resistance and hostility from staff; how they rolled-in (rather than rolled-out) the programme across other departments/services; the astonishing results that have been achieved; and, the unexpected benefits that can accrue (a 44 per cent drop in staff illness in one case).

Peter Middleton is Senior Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast and an acknowledged specialist in service and software quality. Winner of the North American Shingo Prize for Applied Research Excellence in 2007, he has worked with organisations like Hewlett-Packard, Northrop Grumman, Software Productivity Consortium, IBM, Tata Information Systems and the Delta Institute, Copenhagen. John Seddon trained as an occupational psychologist and is known around the world for his pioneering work on change in public and private sector organisations. He translated and adapted the Toyota Production System (TPS) for use by service organisations. He is also known as an informed and controversial critic of management fads and much of the theory that has underpinned public sector reform. He is a leading advocate of Systems Thinking in business and the public sector and a widely published author who lectures at seminars, conferences and universities around the world. He is Managing Director of Vanguard Ltd, a consultancy specialising in organisational change, and a Visiting Professor at Cardiff and Derby Universities.