UK National Health System Management

So the lessons of Toyota come out rather differently from what you might expect. Large size is no barrier to efficiency – although smaller than the NHS, Toyota’s 264,000 employees make it large by any other standard. You don’t need a market to lower transaction costs, but the opposite: trust and cooperation, which also lifts morale by restoring control to the front line. (Toyota swaps largely anonymous leaders with as little fuss as changing a light bulb.) And far from being dependent on the profit motive, its method – flow – is as applicable to the public as the private sector. What’s not to like?