Washington legislators remind me a lot of GM; top down management focused on the wrong problems leading to poor results. At great lean companies management exists to serve the needs of their customers. For years GM produced cars that many Americans didn't really want with quality that was average at best. Management not only didn't listen to their customers they arrogantly defied them and eventually the customers revolted. The result was Toyota won. Toyota won by focusing on delivering better value to each and every customer.They deeply understood the problems customers uncovered and they used the Toyota Production System methodology to rapidly improve their products.

Compare and contrast that to Washington legislators. The customer(those of us whom legislators represent) have clearly stated that the health care solution the government's top down managers are imposing is not what the customer wants. Despite this clearly stated concern the customer is going to receive something they don't want at below average quality(sound familiar). The total cost, 900 billion dollars, most feel is outrageous with no plan to attenuate the 6-8%/yr rise it will grow much higher. The quality of the solution at best is unclear. Not all Americans will be covered but the good news is 31 million new people will be. Access may suffer due to under funding and lack of adequate primary care.

If legislators would have actually spent the time to clearly identify the problem they were solving for a completely different solution would have evolved one that would address most of the issues in our present broken system. What is the problem? The cost of our health care is out of control.Any comparison made to other countries confirms this. The backround related to this cost crisis is that at least 30% of the present system is wasteful in the eyes of the customer. Waste occurs when we deliver a medication error, give a patient an infection or duplicate a test. By removing this waste we could save at least 30% of the cost or nearly a trillion dollars. This easily pays for insurance coverage whether public or private and also addresses the year over year cost increases presently ready to bankrupt Medicare.Sadly, our legislators haven't taken the time to understand the information required to identify the right problem. If they had been using a standard approach to problem solving they might have gotten there.

A3 thinking is just that,a standard process to solve problems,identify new problems,study the action put in place and act on the information gathered to improve the solution. This isn't a 30 second sound bite method of gathering information which unfortunately is what legislators are used to but a thoughtful way to understand what problems the customer is facing and eliminate them. So...GM or Toyota I guess we know the answer what we don't know is how long it will take for the customers to revolt.

Read the following synopsis and send it to your legislators asking for a do-over.