Seddon, J. (2003). Freedom from command and control: A better way to make the work work. Vanguard Education.
A British occupational psychologist and founder of the Vanguard consultancy, John Seddon has spent his career studying service organisations: banks, insurers, call centres, public services. This book shows why command-and-control management (numerical targets, departmental budgets, procedures handed down from the top) often damages what it claims to improve.
His most useful idea is failure demand: the calls, letters and chasers that exist only because something was not done, or not done right, the first time. In a council housing service, his team counted 80% of 1,200 calls. Seddon proposes designing the organisation from customer demand and the flow that answers it, starting by studying the work as it is really done, seen from the outside in.