Book Overview. 7 Key Takeaways for Success.
Henry Ford built his success on principles. He had a definite purpose and firm beliefs that shaped the automobile and tractor innovations and inventions he pioneered. Ford describes his journey of steadfast commitment and intense focus on solving the weight to power ratio to automate farming and transport. His deeply held convictions that every man derives satisfaction from work and that every person should be given a chance to be productive shaped his company and life policies to employ blind and invalids and create social support institutions like technical schools and hospitals which he structured to independently financially viable. He expresses strong, very strong opinions about middlemen who add nothing to the production process, and calls out bankers, lawyers, legislators, and the government for being barriers rather than promoters of production and progress. Ford names agriculture, production/manufacture, and transport the three legs of the stool necessary for progress.
What’s the core message
It is important to have a clear mission that should match your talents. Henry Ford’s toys were his tools. Growing up on his family’s Michigan farm, he wanted to automate farming to make it more productive. He eventually made tractors to do so, but after he caught the inspiration to introduce the automobile as a universal use article first. Ford left formal school at 17 and apprenticed as a watchmaker and machinist in an electrical plant. Then he was the engineer who built his car as build-to-order company with collaborators who were more focused on maximizing profit on every sale than improving the product. Realizing that service and universal appeal was more important to him than the chase of money, he launched his automobile innovations full time. By this time he had built and sold 20 cars and was ready to scale the business and service. His focus right from start was on detailed planning before starting to build the car for the masses.
How does Henry Ford’s experience compare to other champions of innovation?
Among innovators in the time of glorious advance in America, like Thomas Edison for electricity and Andrew Carnegie for steel, or the innovative leaders of modern times like Jeff Bezos for automating consumer commerce and Steve Jobs for simplifying communications, Ford stands tall in his field of automated transport. Like each of these giants, he changed the way in which mankind lives. He had an intense desire to make movement easier for the masses, stood against common wisdom in pricing, automating, and compensating his employees, and managed his money with great discipline to remain unshackled and out of reach of the bankers and lawyers’ traps. While each of the innovators had his unique challenges, Ford advanced his business with superior service and accountability in mind.
What the book does well.
Henry Ford shares the challenges he faced in making a car for the masses and a tractor for the farmers. He repeats again and again, that the focus of production, agriculture, and transport should be on excellence and service. Money and profit should be the result not the basis for success. If selling a product with excellent service is not profitable, it should not be made. He illustrates the application of this principle in his work.
What could have made this book better?
This is an autobiography. Henry Ford authored it. Indeed, it should be about his grand success in making a massive shift from horse-driven carriages to internal-combustion-powered automobiles and labor-intensive farms to tractor-plowed industrial farming. A couple of things that would have educated, inspired, and informed the reader more:
- Who were the people and which events inspired him to remain connected to his purpose? He mentions “Mrs. Ford” in a passing reference twice, but does not go into detail about her support to him. Similarly, he mentions his father and a manager at Westinghouse, but does not elaborate his personal connection.
- How did he navigate the crises he faced? He mentioned some of those times like when his company needed to raise funds to meet its obligations and bankers who wanted a place on his board. Who played what role in rising above the barriers and how did he decide that placing his son in charge of finances was the right solution? Who helped him in making that choice?
Who would benefit from reading this book?
Everyone in high school and above should read this book to stretch their mind and see possibilities for their own life. This, the story of automated transport and industrialized farming is only a single dot on the map of radical innovation that changed humanity’s existence, but is an important one. Henry Ford was a pioneer in facilitating this transition. This book contains many insights about automating the factory floor, worker productivity, pay criteria, and product excellence.
Key Takeaways from this book
1. Build the highest quality and sell at the lowest price.
When you offer the highest quality product and sell it for the lowest price, you will have high customer demand. Take time to perfect the product before producing anything. Build to last forever, not to obsolete it so the consumer is compelled to buy a replacement. Give value to the customer to earn loyalty. Don’t fall into the money trap and chase profit before perfecting and providing top-quality service. If you chase money, product and quality will suffer.
2. Provide long-term ease of use and serviceability.
Make the product or service easy to maintain and keep working. Use as many interchangeable parts that are commonly available so that the consumer can service it with ease and minimal training. Go the extra mile. Cover the service after purchase as a part of the selling proposition. Stand behind the sale whenever and wherever the customer needs help.
3. Use strict criteria to bring on only the best collaborators
Inspect the values of people you add to your team in relation to detailed criteria before adding them to your team. Eliminate those who have the tendency of overcharging customers for short-term gains, sacrificing their loyalty.
4. Go courageously against prevailing wisdom.
Market crises and unforeseen circumstances will challenge you to give up your superior product value, quality of service, or continued support. The banking and finance functions will challenge your pricing strategies to sell at a higher price. Stick with the plan that supports the highest quality and customer satisfaction.
5. Employ technology and innovate.
Use the newest tools to reduce costs, human burden, and change the course of humanity. Automate wherever possible to improve product/service quality and reduce variability from human interaction. No. This will not reduce or eliminate meaningful work for people. Telephones did not kill intimate relationships; they kept families connected over long distances. Airplanes did not disrupt communities; they enriched human experiences by increasing cultural exchanges. Each new technological transformation brings with it many more new opportunities.
6. Be compassionate and intelligent in benevolence.
Invest in the lifting of employees, community, and humanity. Do it in such a way that the recipient retains a sense of dignity. Educate or employ so that your help makes the recipient self-sufficient and reliant. Create opportunities for earnings rather than giving them a handout.
7. Keep a growth mindset.
Seek out new knowledge, tools, and developments in your areas of work, innovation, and interest. Locking into a fixed mindset is akin to being dead before death.