This series of articles seeks to examine the character attributes of highly successful leaders, regardless of their adherence to a strong faith or moral standard. In presenting these thoughts, Leadership Ministries is not agreeing with or advocating these traits or practices, but rather presents these as ideas for discussion and development in your own leadership journey.
Henry Ford (1863-1947) was founder of the Ford Motor Company. He is best known as the chief developer of the assembly line system of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. Ford also became one of the best known and richest people in the world for his time.
Ford loved engineering from an early age. When he was 12 years old he received a watch, which he learned to take apart and reassemble. In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit. After his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his experiments on gasoline engines. With some success building a racing an automobile at the turn of the century, investors helped him form the Henry Ford Company on November 30, 1901, with Ford as chief engineer.
Ford loved to tinker, and designed and built several early engines. Later in his career he supervised the “Flat-8” engine which was used in many Ford cars and gained the company a reputation among “hot rodders.”
Ford was notably a pascifist during World War I, and in his personal life was a conspiracy theorist and anti-Semite. Ford bought an obscure weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, which was distributed at every Ford franchise nationwide and had more than 700,000 readers, where Ford’s writings made him a spokesman for religious prejudice and political extremism. Despite his faults, Ford had an uncanny knack for business and built a tremendously successful company with key leadership principles:
Efficiency is key. In 1913 Ford launched the first moving assembly line. The technique decreased the amount of time it took to build a car from 12 hours down to under three. Ford continued to innovate with the conveyor belt—enabling one worker to produce what used to take four. Ford continued to innovate in techniques connecting pistons and rods. In a 9-hour workday this activity took so long that over four hours were wasted on walking. By dividing the process and setting up lines where workers could install without walking, Ford’s line moved from 175 piston assemblies per shift to more than 2,600.
The result of the assembly line and hundreds of other efficiencies is that Ford was able to reduce the cost of the Model T over time. In 1908 the Model T cost $850 but by 1926 the much improved model could be built for $310. Ford’s focus on efficiency is among his most emulated leadership characteristics. He could not abide wasting time. Ford said, “It is observed that successful people get ahead in the time that other people waste.”[1] Ford was also ruthless in his desire to become more efficient, embracing any chance that could improve his production processes. He said, “Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.”
Know the market. Ford believed in making a high-quality product that people would want to buy. He said, “There is only one rule for the industrialist and that is: make the best quality goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.” Ford’s success with the Model T was not creating an automobile for a specific kind of person, but rather a car that addressed the basic needs of almost every person.
The Model T debuted on October 1, 1908. It was not particularly fast. But the Model T was very simple to drive, and easy and inexpensive to repair. It was also cheap at $825. By 1918, half of all cars in the United States were Model Ts.
All new cars were black; as Ford wrote in his autobiography, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” The color choice was mandated by the assembly line, because of its quicker drying time. It was legendary and Ford sold more than 15 million of them. This record of single model sales stood for the next 45 years.
Ford’s invention of moving assembly-line production, along with other efficiencies, drastically reduced the time to manufacture a car, and also decreased the cost.
In 1922 Ford purchased the Lincoln Motor Company. It was the beginning of diversifying the car models between the widely-used Model T and other more specialized and luxury designs. In 1927 Ford launched the Model A, made at a massive new assembly plant, and the first model that would be refreshed with a new design each year—a practice that stands to this day.
Treat workers well. To reduce the heavy turnover that many industrial companies dealt with, Ford paid his workers $5 a day, an unheard-of amount at the time more than double than that of his competitors. Further, workers who stayed with the company for six months or more were offered profit-sharing plans. Ford was also the first to institute the 5 day, 40-hour work week, in 1926. Ford had decided to boost productivity, as workers were expected to put more effort into their work in exchange for more leisure time. Ford also believed decent leisure time was good for business, giving workers additional time to purchase and consume more goods. However, charitable concerns also played a role. Ford explained, “It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either ‘lost time’ or a class privilege.”[2]
At the same time, Ford loathed labor unions. He thought they were too heavily influenced by leaders who would end up doing more harm than good for workers. He hired managers to employ various intimidation tactics against UAW leaders. The Ford Motor Company was the last Detroit automaker to recognize the UAW, and finally signed a union agreement in 1941—but it also happened to be an agreement with the most favorable UAW contract terms of any auto manufacturer at the time.
[1] https://medium.com/leaders-manual/leadership-lessons-from-henry-ford-f773b92e855c
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford