Valuable presentation of John Seddon about Lean Services

I watched a nice presentation at InfoQ of John Seddon about Lean Services. He makes a valuable point about identifying costs not in activity but in the process.

Some key points John mades in re-thinking lean services:

1. Do not apply same principles from manufacturing to services

2. Study your process and follow a piece of work from entrance to exit (value work and wasted work)

3. Study demand and see which is predictable and address it using another system

4. Identify system's conditions for creating waste, not activities performed by people

5. Change is emerging, something you never plan for

6. Putting control in the hand of the workers give you more control than you ever had

7. Never manage with targets, never manage with other arbitrary measures unless you're going over a clif

8. Use measures that derive from purpose and put them in the hand of the workers

Both inspirational and controversial I might say.

More resources about him, including podcasts can be found here. 

Hope it helps.