Videos

Vanguard's Barry Wrighton outlines the growing conventions that: - strategy and good governance requires separation from operations in order to make board-level decision making objective, - changes to 'the work' can be specified away from the work and the new specification can be inspected for compliance. With examples from Financial Services, Desktop Services, and other sectors, Barry describes what senior leaders learnt about the consequences of these assumptions. Confronting these conventions with counter-intuitive truths improves service, lowers costs, improves efficiency and revenue, and improves morale: Barry explains how. John Seddon, Vanguard's Managing Director, introduces Keith Mansfield, former Friends Life senior leader. Keith describes his reality running a call centre and how learning to see differently changed his perspective on decision making, target setting, skill sets, and reducing costs.

It's a counter-intuitive truth: the secret of great service and low costs is to give customers what they need. Vicky Harston explains why understanding what matters to customers and doing just that is critical to delivering good service, improving staff morale, increasing revenue, and minimising what Taguchi describes as 'economic loss to the system'. Using examples from public and private sectors, Vicky explains why organisations don't typically do what matters to customers and how their 'command and control' thinking binds them to responding in ways that: - make service worse, - make staff embarrassed and lowers morale, - reduce revenue, and - drive costs through the roof. Leaders perceive they have control through standardisation, such as standardised scripts, policies, and procedures. Vicky explains the counter-intuitative truth that leaders lose control through standardisation. It fails to absorb the variety in demand: worsening service, driving up costs, reducing revenue and lowering morale. Understanding demand is key to learning what matters to customers and what they need. Vicky describes the typical results leaders achieve when they do this and the strategic choices that become available to leaders as a consequence. Vicky and John Seddon, Vanguard's Managing Director, answer questions from the audience after Vicky's presentation.

Will Pyke describes what has shocked leaders in 'break-fix' systems when they learn for themselves how their thinking about the work, the people who do the work, and the way the work is done drives behaviour leading to poor service, increased costs, inefficiency, and low morale. Whether studying this archetype in: - home repairs, - utilities, - IT help desks, - roadside recovery, - highway repairs, - insurance claims, or, - emergency services, Will highlights key characteristics of the design and management of the break-fix system and how the notion of 'control' sub-optimises performance. Learn what studying typically reveals and the counter-intuitive truths about the things leaders put in place to control performance.

Toby Rubbra outlines the journey that leaders take when they go beyond traditional 'Command and Control' thinking. Toby describes one leader's experience, which begins with an overflowing diary managing multiple projects, change initiatives, and service delivery traffic lights. With a growing curiosity about what she was doing and how she was doing it, Toby outlines how Andrea learnt to make the invisible visible. This enables leaders to support others to lead and, crucially, to make informed choices about where and how to change. Next on the journey, Toby describes how a leader's current 'Command and Control' operating assumptions drive strategies and actions. These have unintended consequences on service, cost, revenue, and morale. Supporting managers to see the same things for themselves is key to going beyond traditional 'Command and Control' thinking. Toby describes choices leaders have in designing learning opportunities for their teams and transforming their operations, with surprising results. John Seddon, Vanguard's Managing Director, introduces Keith Mansfield, former Friends Life senior leader. Keith describes his own experiences of going beyond 'Command and Control' thinking and the results that were achieved by doing this.

Simon Pickthall, of Vanguard Wales, addresses to the fundamental questions of: - where to study, and - what to study? and how to do this quickly. Using examples from People Centred Services (for example Police, Fire, Social Services, Health, Troubled Families), Simon outlines principles that can be applied in any service system, whether in the public sector, the third sector, or the private sector. The complexity of People Centred Services masks what matters to the people it is designed to support. Simon highlights how the Vanguard Method is applied to understand what matters and create a system that enables people to achieve what matters. Simon describes a 'long weekend' programme for understanding the logics behind the current system and what you can do to change them to improve service, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve morale.

The Vanguard Method comprises two things: systems theory and intervention theory. Ibrar Hussain focusses on the latter: how we change. Many people describe the Vanguard Method as 'common sense', 'not difficult', and 'obvious'. Ibrar describes some of the methods that Vanguard experts use to help leaders understand how their current thinking determines performance: i.e making the invisible visible. Why is intervention theory important? 'Command and control' thinking is ubiquitous. The only way to go 'beyond' command and control thinking is to navigate a route from where we are to where we could be. Ibrar outlines how intervention theory is the means by which we navigate that route. Chin and Benne's research in the 1960s found three approaches to change: coercive, rational and normative. Ibrar explains that the Vanguard Method is normative and highlights what an effective normative design to support un-learning current thinking and re-learning new thinking looks like.