Attempts to lead service organizations like manufacturing lines are fundamentally flawed
In a world obsessed with efficiency, scale and the emerging opportunities for automation, most organizations still treat service work like manufacturing: standardized units, predictable flow, tight control, strict measurement. But the manufacturing metaphor may be dangerously misleading – an insight that’s at the core of John Seddon’s challenge to orthodox management thinking.
Seddon invites us to see service organizations not as factories producing identical widgets, but as complex systems where work – and demand – varies all the time, shaped by human need, context and feedback. Drawing on systems thinking, his work rejects the notion that factory-style control and standardization can ever deliver good service. Rather, they result in a vast waste of time and energy.
This stems from what Seddon terms “failure demand”: the demand generated only because something was done badly, or not at all, first time round. Fail to meet a customer’s need just once and you risk being pulled into a vortex of reactive work: complaints, re-work, extra calls. In many of the service organizations studied by Seddon, failure demand amounted to the majority of work.
What makes Seddon powerful isn’t just his critique, but his alternative. His Vanguard Method sets out a different architecture for organizing service, built on careful assessment of what demands come in, how variable they are, what people need, and how work flows through the system.
Critically, he treats variability not as a nuisance to be eliminated, but as a fact of service reality – and a signal that tells us where to build resilience into the system. This is a subtle, but profound, inversion of conventional management logic. Rather than flattening variation, the design absorbs it, via autonomy, adaptability and structural flexibility.
Why does this matter? If your mental model of the organization is rigid – roles, processes, KPIs, silos – Seddon’s systems view feels radical and unsettling. But for anyone working on dynamic organizations rooted in fluidity, adaptability and human-centered design, his work offers powerful building blocks.
Firstly, it cancels out the myth that economies of scale are the only path to efficiency. In service contexts, tight centralization and standardization often produce suboptimal economies – not of scale, but of mess. Secondly, it emphasizes demand and purpose – not what managers think should happen, but what users actually need. That aligns perfectly with mission-led organizations’ efforts to prioritize value over output. Thirdly, it embeds systemic feedback loops, where variation, failure demand, customer experience and system performance are continuously visible. This creates a scaffolding for adaptive leadership, incremental learning and sustainable transformation.
That all makes the Vanguard Method a systemic blueprint for work for leaders designing organizations that must respond to complexity, volatility and human needs – ones that breathe, adapt and reconfigure themselves in service of real demand.
Seddon’s influence can be seen in the example of a multinational, multi-brand outsourced service provider. It knew that automation technologies can make a huge difference in offering customer self-service 24-7, but they fall short on exception handling and the human touch. So, to avoid failure demand, this global giant invested in both technology and enhanced human capability among its 100,000 operatives. Customer satisfaction and net promoter scores showed huge increases: the approach both helped provide great service and helped win new contracts.
The truth is that many organizations still cling to hierarchical designs and mechanistic control that stopped making sense long ago. Yet people and services are not simple parts on a line.
John Seddon’s work helps leaders ask deeper questions. What if the success of an organization were measured not by throughput or compliance, but by how well it meets real demand, absorbs complexity and releases hidden capacity? What if ‘management’ meant caring for systems, not policing people?
For any leader curious about dynamic, human-centered, future-ready organizations, this may be the most radical act: to see service as a system and design accordingly.
Perry Timms is founder and chief energy officer of PTHR, a consultancy aiming to create better businesses for a better world. He is a TEDx speaker, top-selling author, and a member of HR Magazine’s Most Influential Hall of Fame
