Freedom from command and control

is an excellent book by John Seddon (isbn 978-0-9546183-0-8). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

You cannot 'motivate' someone… You can provide conditions in which employees are more likely to be motivated or demotivated, but it is a conceit to believe that managers can motivate people.

There are two jobs: job one to serve the customer and job two to improve the work.

If design is separated from process, work becomes a prescription.

Deming often asserted that knowledge should not be thought of as experience.

The value of knowledge is its use not its collection.

Leadership , in my view, is about influencing.

Some followers of Deming are unhappy with this adaptation [Check,Plan,Do] of his cycle. I believe Deming wrote about 'plan-do-check-act' on the assumption that managers who started at 'plan' were already systems thinkers. He saw 'plan' as 'have an idea based on what you "know"'; 'do' was followed by 'check' to see if the idea was right; finally 'act' meant 'put it in the line'. His model was built on manufacturing, where changes were tested off-line.

Without doubt the most important system condition affecting performance is measurement. It goes hand in hand with command-and-control hierarchical structure.

The first-level manager works with people on the work, not on the people.

Consultants who see culture change as something distinct from the work and, as a corollary, something that can be the subject of an intervention, miss the point. When you change the way work is designed and managed, and make those who do the work the central part of the intervention, the culture changes dramatically as a consequence.