7 More Leadership Secrets from Henry Ford

Many of the newly-educated have textbook examples of how to lead.  They also seem to have an abundance of confidence in their opinions.  Yet reflection, thinking and creativity are sorely missing. 

Henry Ford took time to think about what was going on around him.  He wove these learnings into his style of leadership.  There were no formulas or processes or courses on how to lead people.  He was a man who honed his natural gifts and abilities and used his intuition to be an agent of historic change 

Last month we looked at seven of his key leadership secrets; here are the seven more I promised you.  I hope you enjoy these:

1.           “Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.”

From 1908 to 1928, Ford began his Model-T assembly line.  During this time the Titanic sank.  He doubled his workers wages as World War I (where in just one battle over a million men were killed).  Soon after that, Einstein wrote his General Theory of Relativity. 

Four years later, when WWI ended, the Influenza Epidemic swept the world taking an estimated 4 million lives.  Soon after that the Ford assembly line rolled off its one-millionth car.  Charles A. Lindbergh took a little rickety plane from New York to Paris in only 37 hours.

During those twenty years, so much happened and yet the assembly line continued to crank out basic cars that changed the lives of a nation, as Ford transformed workers into consumers and helped them build an economy that sometimes teeters, but remains strong in the long run.

I think he did this mostly because he was a true “conservationist” of learnings, wringing out the best in whatever resources he had.  Focusing on what he could do and not on what he was unable to accomplish. 

2.           “There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.”

In 1987, a Harvard scholar, Frederick Herzberg, wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review, (was reedited and republished in 1998), called “One More Time:  How Do You Motivate Employees?”.  It remains the most frequently requested reprint that HBR has printed.  It debunks the perception that money motivates people and proves what actually motivates people is achievement, followed closely by recognition (money is number 11 in the list of what motivates people). 

Inspirational leaders know this.  They do not “use money as a lone reward”.  They, instead, ensure clear achievable and realistic goals stretch those who work with them.  They know the inestimable value of recognition and praise, and use these carefully and appropriately to help those who work with them feel good about their work.

3.           “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”

Inspirational leaders know that, you must take time to think and reflect.  They also know that success is truly 15% inspiration and 85% perspiration! 

The day McGraw Hill asked me to write a book, you would have laughed to watch me jumping around my office (yes I am very enthusiastic!).  It seems funny now, but one of my first thoughts was that this was like one of those wishes come true, an instant success! 

And then just as quickly it hit me:  I wrote my first “book” when I was 14 and have written more articles and stories and novels and courses – filling notebook after notebook and three filing cabinets, than anyone would imagine.  I have written an article a day for at least the last 20 years.  I was not an instant success, I had worked my entire life to write well and be published. 

Henry Ford started his life as a farmer who left school at age 15 to care for his father’s farm full time.  He wasn’t good at farming and became an apprentice in a machine shop. To help him survive on his low wages he spent his evenings repairing clocks and watches.

His father prevailed upon him to come home and gave him his own 40 acres but Henry spent most of his time trying to build a steam road carriage and a farm locomotive.  Eventually he left again and worked as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company.  After reading an article about an internal combustion engine, he spent every spare moment trying to build a petrol-driven motor car.  He succeeded in building the Thin Lizzie in a little brick shed in his garden. This two-cylinder, four-cycle motor, was mounted on bicycle wheels and had no reverse gear or brakes.

Eventually he raised enough money to start his own company but his investors withdrew after Ford spent $86,000 without producing one car that could be sold. When he did produce a “real” car, he sold 6,000 $10 dollar shares to start a company that also ended in failure.

He did not give up.  He worked harder, studied longer, wrote and rewrote plans until he reduced the time to assemble his Model-T Ford from 14 hours to a ridiculously unbelievable 1 hour 33 minutes!  This lowered the overall cost of each car and enabled Ford to undercut the price of other cars on the market, selling his Model T, not at the going price of $1,000 each, but $360!

4.           “Success is 99% failure”

Most of us do not see many benefits in failure.  We try instead to shield ourselves from it.  We find ways to deny it, deflate the reality of it; we run and hide from it.  We push others away who have failed and hide them as if they are plague carriers.  We find ways to “rationalise” failure and redefine it if all else fails.

Every inspirational leader has learned and embraced their failures as positives.  The motivational literature is overrun with stories about trying and failing over and over again until success rises from those proverbial ashes like a brilliant phoenix. 

It’s healthy and important to fail and to let those we lead have the “space” to fail.  We don’t learn lifetime lessons from success, only from failures.  Success is a never-ending destination; the journey is made up of “educational” failures along the way.  Only by risking failure can we learn that we can survive defeat. 

Leaders study leaders who succeed and those who were unsuccessful.  Failures leave us options we haven’t seen yet.  In science, failures are seen as stepping stones not brick enclosures.  Unlike the worlds of business, sports, politics and academics, science understands failure for what it is:  the outcome to an event, the result of an experiment, a chance to correct mistakes and move on.

We can be defeated and quit when we fail or we can look for creative alternatives.  In searching for creative alternatives, as Henry Ford’s life illustrates -- we can find solutions that have yet to be appreciated.

5.           “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.”

Continuous improvement is not a new concept, but perhaps it has become pushed back in the quest to cut costs and cut heads.  The book, Fad Surfing in the Boardroom, by Eileen C. Shapiro, defines continuous improvement as “a label that provides dignity to the repeated efforts of an organisation to get it right.” 

Continuous improvement has morphed into becoming a “learning organisation”  Organisations that improve continuously can outrace those who are complacently confident that today’s ways are the best (sometimes the only) ways.

Yet learning to see new relationships -- what we do and the results we desire -- can be the key to achievement.  Zig Ziglar had a more homespun way of saying this:  “If you keep on a doing what you’ve always been a doing, they you’ll always get what you always got.”

Inspirational leaders who establish a clear vision for their organisations know they must balance this vision with the courage to shift the vision when and as needed.  In this way they are far more agile than those who are stuck in old paradigms that are no longer appropriate to their current environments.

All organisations have hidden reserves of corporate intelligence, but in less open environments, people withhold more of their knowledge and ideas both about what is going on within and inside of the company as well as about how to make improvements or parry threats.  Inspirational leaders foster open communications of ideas that reveal and reward open communication.

However, a danger exists to adopt the latest and greatest fads (the reason the book was written) without ensuring they are appropriate.  The Aussie wisdom to “suck it and see” encourages setting up pilots rather than pushing aside what is working.  A true leader will encourage ideas and yet ensure that new ideas do not override common sense.

6.           “Where people work longest and with least leisure, they buy the fewest goods. No towns were so poor as those of England where the people, from children up, worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. They were poor because these overworked people soon wore out -- they became less and less valuable as workers. Therefore, they earned less and less and could buy less and less.”

In a white paper from Guidestar Research, entitled “Employee Satisfaction & Customer Satisfaction:  Is there a Relationship?” by Catherina C. Bulgarella, Ph.D., she states that “between 40-80 percent of customer satisfaction and loyalty was accounted for by the relationship between employee attitude and customer-related variables.”

Of the three most powerful influencer on staff satisfaction (support from the organisation, from leadership and involvement with customers), the single most powerful predictor of job satisfaction and employee service effort, is leadership.  Not surprising, job satisfaction is a more important predictor of employee service quality than employee service effort.

This starts with the leader walking the talk because they know that, though customers ARE important, the staff that deal with and support customers is the one never changing key to their success.

7.           “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”

Henry Ford had quite a sense of humour, if you consider the world he was leading his thousands of employees through.  He was not always right.  He was not the smartest man.  He did not have the most impressive education. 

He saw a vision worth pursuing.  He took time to search out and identify constraints to his vision and had determination and the habit of reflection and consideration.  I’m sure some who worked for him did not like him much, yet he changed the lives of many.  He changed an industry and influenced an entire country. 

Just recently there was an article I posted on my Linked In pages about China, setting an historic precedent of establishing the first minimum wage for workers throughout their lands.  Seems this is an idea from an old auto maker.  If it is sustained in practice, it could change the face of another nation and also change the way many countries do business today.

Henry Ford was an inspirational leader who offers a wealth of examples for those who aspire to be better leaders today. 

I hope you are enjoying this series.  Next month I hope to address loyalty in a new way.  I encourage you to write with ideas on your mind about leadership.  Until next time, stay inspirational and hopeful!