Your System Is the Problem (Here Is How You Fix It) - With John Seddon

Welcome to the 100th episode of A Job Done Well—where we celebrate the art of calling out corporate nonsense and replacing it with something that actually works. This week, we’re joined by John Seddon, a management thinker so influential he’s got his own Wikipedia page (unlike James, who may or may not have written his own). John’s spent decades proving that traditional management—targets, incentives, standardisation—doesn’t just fail to improve performance; it actively makes things worse.

John’s approach is simple: stop incentivising the wrong things. Most organisations reward behaviours that undermine their own goals. Engineers rushed to fix boilers in 15 minutes? They’ll be back six times a year. Call centre agents hitting sales targets? They’re hanging up on customers who won’t buy. Incentives don’t drive performance—they drive gaming, cheating, and a race to the bottom.

Highlights include:

• Why failure demand—work caused by previous errors—is crippling your team (and how to spot it).
• How to redesign systems so your team can actually use their judgment (instead of following scripts).
• The Aviva case study: How blending call centres boosted capacity by 20%—without adding staff.
• Why specialisation is a myth, and how it’s costing you more than you think.
• How to make your boss curious about what’s really going wrong.

If you’ve ever watched your team chase targets while the real work piles up, this episode is your wake-up call. John’s not here to sell you a quick fix—he’s here to help you burn the rulebook and start again.

Key Points:

1. Incentives create perverse outcomes—people game the system, not improve it.
2. Failure demand is a symptom of a broken system, not lazy staff.
3. Specialisation sounds efficient but creates silos, inefficiency, and frustration.
4. Redesign systems around customer purpose, not internal targets.
5. Leaders won’t change unless you make them curious—show, don’t tell.

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