Better questions, wiser answers

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Why is no national leader or candidate discussing or studying solutions for three of the country's most pressing problems: unsafe and wasteful hospitals, the failing auto industry and an inadequate K-12 school system? This is especially puzzling when there is an answer—unexpected — nearby.

A significant number of hospitals and schools are applying Toyota management principles — originally developed by an American — and cutting costs, reducing errors and deaths and turning out pleased patients or educated students. But there is little notice or discussion of these successes.

American auto companies are exporting jobs and losing money. Toyota is building more factories in the United States and making big profits.

The hospital crisis discussion is about funding health insurance for more people. More effective, efficient and safer hospitals would save enough money to extend care to all. No national leader or political candidate questions the wisdom of extending insurance coverage for an American hospital system that daily allows hundreds of patients to die from preventable errors and infections.

Hand-wringing over the failing auto industry focuses on worker and retiree benefits and foreign manufacturers. The school policy to combat lack of quality is to administer more tests. It hasn't helped teachers or students to achieve the real objective of better-prepared minds.

The long-term solution to all of them is not more money or better technology. The problem is managerial. Surprisingly, although the auto assembly line, the surgical unit and the classroom seem vastly different, productive questions and solutions are similar and can be found in the same management thinking.

The solution requires looking with "new eyes" at the 2007 school, hospital or organization as a system and using problems as opportunities for continual learning and improvement. This is the "Toyota method" and it allows us to manage what we can't control. The idea of lack of control is a difficult hurdle for Americans and their politicians.

Meanwhile, each day hundreds of people die from avoidable errors and infections and millions of dollars are wasted in hospitals. Auto companies and jobs are declining more rapidly than auto profits. And more and more students are dropping out or not learning.

Americans like quick fixes and are suspicious of solutions "not invented here," so it is important to note that the man who developed the theory to better manage modern organizations began to devise his ideas as a young man on the Wyoming frontier in the early 20th century. W. Edwards Deming understood that Western towns prospered from barn raisings, quilting bees and other cooperative efforts, not lone rugged individualists.

From 1950, he led Toyota and other Japanese export companies to work "smarter not harder" with his revolutionary ideas of continual improvement of products, processes and workers. His methods led to lower costs and better products and more profits. Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda, chairman and former president of Toyota, said, "Dr. Deming is the heart of our management."