Book Summary — My Life at Work (Henry Ford)

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Incredible insight into how business was done in the early 1900’s and Ford’s philosophy on good products and work. Includes some of the classic quotes from Henry Ford.

Intro

Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us free to live. They are but means to an end.

Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost anyone can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.

Being greedy for money is the surest way not to get it, but when one serves for the sake of service — for the satisfaction of doing that which one believes to be right — then money abundantly takes care of itself.

Ford’s principles of service:

1. An absence of fear of the future and of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress.
2. A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the one to do it.
3. The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit.
4. Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and giving it to the consumer.

The Beginning

On Experts

That is the way with wise people — they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work.

That is the way I have always worked. I draw a plan and work out every detail on the plan before starting to build. For otherwise one will waste a great deal of time in makeshifts.

What I learned about business

My “gasoline buggy” was the first and for a long time the only automobile in Detroit. It was considered to be something of a nuisance, for it made a racket and it scared horses. Also it blocked traffic. For if I stopped my machine anywhere in town a crowd was around it before I could start up again. If I left it alone even for a minute some inquisitive person always tried to run it. Finally, I had to carry a chain and chain it to a lamp post whenever I left it anywhere. And then there was trouble with the police. I do not know quite why, for my impression is that there were no speed-limit laws in those days.

My idea was then and still is that if a man did his work well, the price he would get for that work, the profits and all financial matters, would care for themselves and that a business ought to start small and build itself up and out of its earnings. If there are no earnings then that is a signal to the owner that he is wasting his time and does not belong in that business.

My Learnings

1. That finance is given a place ahead of work and therefore tends to kill the work and destroy the fundamental of service.
2. That thinking first of money instead of work brings on fear of failure and this fear blocks every avenue of business — it makes a man afraid of competition, of changing his methods, or of doing anything which might change his condition.
3. That the way is clear for any one who thinks first of service — of doing the work in the best possible way.

In sum — create an exceptional service and money will come.

Starting the Real Business

The capitalization of the company was one hundred thousand dollars, and of this I owned 25 ½ per cent. The total amount subscribed in cash was about twenty-eight thousand dollars — which is the only money that the company has ever received for the capital fund from other than operations.

I very shortly found I had to have control and therefore in 1906, with funds that I had earned in the company, I bought enough stock to bring my holdings up to 51 per cent, and a little later bought enough more to give me 58–½ per cent.

In 1919 my son Edsel purchased the remaining 41–½ per cent of the stock because certain of the minority stockholders disagreed with my policies. For these shares he paid at the rate of $12,500 for each $100 par and in all paid about seventy-five millions.

In our first year we built “Model A,” selling the runabout for eight hundred and fifty dollars and the tonneau for one hundred dollars more.

We made and sold 1,708 cars in the first year. That is how well the public responded.

And these are the points we emphasized: Good material. Simplicity — most of the cars at that time required considerable skill in their management. The engine. The ignition — which was furnished by two sets of six dry cell batteries. The automatic oiling. The simplicity and the ease of control of the transmission, which was of the planetary type. The workmanship.

The Secret of Manufacturing and Serving

Our automobile was less complex than any other. We had no outside money in the concern. But aside from these two points we did not differ materially from the other automobile companies.

The temptation to stop and hang on to what one has is quite natural. I can entirely sympathize with the desire to quit a life of activity and retire to a life of ease.

“Find out all about this,” I told him. “That is the kind of material we ought to have in our cars.” He found eventually that it was a French steel and that there was vanadium in it. We tried every steel maker in America — not one could make vanadium steel. I sent to England for a man who understood how to make the steel commercially.

We put out “Model T” for the season 1908–1909. The company was then five years old. The original factory space had been .28 acre. We had employed an average of 311 people in the first year, built 1,708 cars, and had one branch house. In 1908, the factory space had increased to 2.65 acres and we owned the building. The average number of employees had increased to 1,908. We built 6,181 cars and had fourteen branch houses. It was a prosperous business.

But “Model T” swept them right out. We sold 10,607 cars — a larger number than any manufacturer had ever sold.

It is strange how, just as soon as an article becomes successful, somebody starts to think that it would be more successful if only it were different. There is a tendency to keep monkeying with styles and to spoil a good thing by changing it.

They listened to the 5 per cent., the special customers who could say what they wanted, and forgot all about the 95 per cent. who just bought without making any fuss. No business can improve unless it pays the closest possible attention to complaints and suggestions. If there is any defect in service then that must be instantly and rigorously investigated, but when the suggestion is only as to style, one has to make sure whether it is not merely a personal whim that is being voiced. Salesmen always want to cater to whims instead of acquiring sufficient knowledge of their product to be able to explain to the customer with the whim that what they have will satisfy his every requirement — that is, of course, provided what they have does satisfy these requirements.

“Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.”

But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.

Contrast the year 1908 with the year 1911. The factory space increased from 2.65 to 32 acres. The average number of employees from 1,908 to 4,110, and the cars built from a little over six thousand to nearly thirty-five thousand.

Getting into Production

We have put a higher skill into planning, management, and tool building, and the results of that skill are enjoyed by the man who is not skilled. This I shall later enlarge on.

We now have two general principles in all operations — that a man shall never have to take more than one step, if possibly it can be avoided.

The factory keeps no record of experiments. The foremen and superintendents remember what has been done. If a certain method has formerly been tried and failed, somebody will remember it — but I am not particularly anxious for the men to remember what someone else has tried to do in the past, for then we might quickly accumulate far too many things that could not be done. That is one of the troubles with extensive records. If you keep on recording all of your failures you will shortly have a list showing that there is nothing left for you to try — whereas it by no means follows because one man has failed in a certain method that another man will not succeed.

We get some of our best results from letting fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

None of our men are “experts.” We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert — because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job.

A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the “expert” state of mind a great number of things become impossible.

Machines and Men

Now a business, in my way of thinking, is not a machine. It is a collection of people who are brought together to do work and not to write letters to one another. It is not necessary for any one department to know what any other department is doing. If a man is doing his work he will not have time to take up any other work. It is the business of those who plan the entire work to see that all of the departments are working properly toward the same end. It is not necessary to have meetings to establish good feeling between individuals or departments. It is not necessary for people to love each other in order to work together. Too much good fellowship may indeed be a very bad thing, for it may lead to one man trying to cover up the faults of another. That is bad for both men.

But we have so few titles that a man who ought to be doing something better than he is doing, very soon gets to doing it — he is not restrained by the fact that there is no position ahead of him “open” — for there are no “positions.” We have no cut-and-dried places — our best men make their places. This is easy enough to do, for there is always work, and when you think of getting the work done instead of finding a title to fit a man who wants to be promoted, then there is no difficulty about promotion. The promotion itself is not formal; the man simply finds himself doing something other than what he was doing and getting more money.

There is not a single man anywhere in the factory who did not simply come in off the street.

If we have a tradition it is this: Everything can always be done better than it is being done.

The vast majority of men want to stay put. They want to be led. They want to have everything done for them and to have no responsibility.

Why Charity?

It is easy to give; it is harder to make giving unnecessary. To make the giving unnecessary we must look beyond the individual to the cause of his misery — not hesitating, of course, to relieve him in the meantime, but not stopping with mere temporary relief. The difficulty seems to be in getting to look beyond to the causes. More people can be moved to help a poor family than can be moved to give their minds toward the removal of poverty altogether.

More men are beaten than fail. It is not wisdom they need or money, or brilliance, or “pull,” but just plain gristle and bone. This rude, simple, primitive power which we call “stick-to-it-iveness” is the uncrowned king of the world of endeavour. People are utterly wrong in their slant upon things. They see the successes that men have made and somehow they appear to be easy. But that is a world away from the facts. It is failure that is easy. Success is always hard. A man can fail in ease; he can succeed only by paying out all that he has and is. It is this which makes success so pitiable a thing if it be in lines that are not useful and uplifting.

Things in General

He regards “impossible” as a description for that which we have not at the moment the knowledge to achieve. He knows that as we amass knowledge we build the power to overcome the impossible. That is the rational way of doing the “impossible.”

Everything is possible … “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

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