With election day tomorrow (find your voting location here), I’m reminded of a radio ad I heard a while back and never blogged about. The ad promoted some website where you could record a 30 second message to be sent to the next President.

It got me thinking — what message would a Lean thinker want to send to the next President? Try it out in the comments section here. Is your message different to a President Obama than it would be to a President McCain?

If this turns into partisan name calling instead of “what would you tell the President about Lean?” then I’ll shut the comments down… but let’s see how this goes.

I’d send a short message about Lean in healthcare (to either winner):

“Dear Mr President: Almost all of the discussion about health care in this country is about how to pay for it. I hope that you will direct the government to research and promote the use of Lean methods to improve the quality and delivery of health care.

We can make great strides in reducing cost, improving quality, and saving lives if we help spread the method used by Johns Hopkins, ThedaCare, Virginia Mason, the University of Michigan, and so many others.

We have to do more than just talking about how to pay for it or how to arbitrarily cut prices, without cutting the real underlying costs…. we need to reduce “waste” in healthcare. That’s my plea to you, Mr. President.”

Now you give it a try — what would you say about Lean for the sake of American manufacturing? The economy as a whole? Healthcare?

About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.