John Seddon Comments on Managing Costs

Business Guru to Share Tips on How to Beat the Credit
Crunch

A Scottish business conference will be featuring a favorite of
this blog, John Seddon, author of many books including
“Systems
Thinking in the Public Sector: The failure of the reform regime…
and a manifesto for a better way”,
and (I hope) a future podcast guest.

Professor John Seddon, who in the past has been
described as a ‘reluctant management guru’, is famous
for challenging the orthodoxy of many leading management change
programmes which are still in use today.

Here is a post
with links to Seddon’s view on targets and programmes for
ambulances in the UK.

This quote below is brilliant and sums up a lot of the Lean mindset
(a branch that traces back to Dr. Deming):

“At times like this the knee-jerk reaction is to
manage costs, little knowing that managing costs drives costs up.
Managers need to learn how to manage value; then costs fall
naturally.”

Do you examples of where “managing costs” has helped
drive costs up in your organization?