By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, November 8, 2006; C01

The polls are now closed everywhere, and we are able to project some of the winners:

JetBlue. American Express. Adrian Fenty. Whole Foods. Miramax Films (now Weinstein Co.). Deval Patrick. Toyota. Barack Obama.

In fact, whether you're talking business or politics, you don't need extensive polling or market research to predict the winners. It's actually pretty simple: Just identify the quality players who are focused on their customers.

Which makes it all the more curious why so many people inside politics, and inside business, spend so much time and money making things more complicated than they need to be, even as they ignore the simple things most important to voters and customers.

Businesses, egged on by management consultants and pressured by Wall Street, get caught up in complicated strategies to manipulate customers or markets in ways that have little to do with improving quality, effectively putting their interests at odds with those of their customers.

And in the same way, politicians, egged on by campaign consultants, political reporters and bloggers, get so caught up in the mechanics and tactics of a campaign that they wind up ignoring the voters and their real concerns, and passing up the opportunity to connect with them in powerful ways.

Consider JetBlue, which in just six short years has become the hands-down favorite U.S. airline among readers of Cond? Nast Traveler and Travel & Leisure. How did they do it?

Its most important decision was not getting caught up in those clever tactics employed by the traditional airlines to use their far-flung route networks and predatory pricing to drive competition out of their hubs, and then to use their sophisticated reservation systems to squeeze the maximum revenue out of each flight.

Instead, JetBlue's strategy, as its executives explain it, was to "simplify the process" and "bring humanity back" to an industry that had lost focus on the customer experience. Spacious, well-lighted waiting areas. Wider, leather seats with more legroom, particularly if you are willing to sit in the back half of the plane. On-board entertainment from XM Satellite Radio and DirecTV. Simplified, no-nag boarding procedures. Predictable one-way fares, with few rules or restrictions, capped even during the busiest season.

There was nothing particularly brilliant about any of these insights. But if you had suggested them to any of the traditional airlines, they would have reflexively dismissed them, spouting all the reasons they were terrible ideas, most of them having nothing to do with customers and everything to do with competing internal objectives.

But you don't have to be a new company starting from a clean slate to provide great service. Just ask American Express, which for years has set the gold standard when it comes to dealing with customers' problems over the telephone.

I don't need to tell you how many hours people waste trying to deal with customer call centers, service departments or help desks. But did you know that if you wait on hold for 20 minutes or have only a 50 percent chance of getting your problem resolved on the first call, that hassle was a conscious choice the company made? All it requires is studying the historical patterns and adjusting the number and training and compensation of the employees involved.

Of course, the better the service, the more it costs. But what's amazing is, companies that are willing to spend tens and even hundreds of dollars to acquire new customers refuse to spend a couple of extra bucks to satisfy existing customers when they call with a question or problem.

So it goes in industry after industry.

Whole Foods has been able to grab as much as 10 percent of the grocery profits in many metropolitan areas because of a relentless focus on delivering fresher, more healthful and more interesting food, in more pleasant surroundings. Here in the Washington area, the once-dominant chains, Giant and Safeway, could have seized that opportunity. Instead, they kept their quality mediocre and tried to maintain their hold on the market with endless price promotions and loyalty cards.

In the movie business, the major studios are in a funk. Somehow they convinced themselves that the only way to make money was to produce blockbusters, and the only way to produce blockbusters was to use the same handful of top stars and directors and a limited number of story lines, each formulaic. They spend lavishly on marketing and use their clout to get the best deals at the best theaters. And lately, all they have succeeded in doing is wildly driving up the cost of making and distributing movies while producing a record number of box-office duds.

Contrast that with the phenomenal success of the Weinstein brothers, the industry's leading independents. Year after year, they walk off with armfuls of awards and profits because of their knack for spotting and nurturing a wider range of talent, attracting unconventional scripts and producing movies that aren't necessarily meant to be blockbusters but have a funny way of becoming them anyway.

In the auto industry, Toyota doesn't have particularly memorable advertising, its dealer network is nothing special, and it never figured out how to lure customers with discounts and rebates. But in terms of reliability, comfort, efficiency and overall value, Toyota is a world-beater, which is why it is on track to be the world's largest car company.

Don't get me wrong. In business, being good isn't easy -- it's tough. But it's not complicated. It's about focusing on the few things that are important to customers and doing those things well.

And so it is in politics. You've no doubt already heard about the amount of money that was spent in the past month and the varying success of get-out-the-vote efforts. All of these flow from the widely accepted analyses of earlier campaigns -- that John Kerry was done in by Swift boat ads or that Republicans win elections because they are better at energizing their special-interest base.

It's not that these things don't matter. But in the end, they matter less than the quality of the candidates -- the way they think and talk and conduct themselves. The best proof has been the success this year of Adrian Fenty in the Washington mayor's race or Deval Patrick in the Massachusetts governor's race, or the sudden surge of interest in Barack Obama for president. They're talking about things people care about, in ways that are thoughtful, respectful and fundamentally truthful, without nastiness and partisan rancor.

And because of that, they are connecting with voters who may not agree with them on every issue, or may have qualms about their age or lack of experience.

So simple. So powerful. Why don't more of them try it?

Steven Pearlstein can be reached atpearlsteins@washpost.com.