The Greatest Operators in History #2

Continuing on from Charles Schwartz and his piece of chalk, I think the next great operator in our series is undeniable.

#2: Henry Ford

Clearly everyone has heard of Ford, or at least Ford the brand. Therefore, his achievement of founding Ford Motor Company and building it to become one of the largest companies in the world is fairly well known. What you probably don’t know about him is that he also was a revolutionary thinker, helping to create modern processes that are still relevant today including what we call the 9 to 5, 40 hour working week and the moving assembly line. However, we like this little story taken from Rory Sutherland’s book Alchemy, which describes the moment that Henry Ford took a business consultant through his offices, only to find one of the office workers, stationed just next to Henry’s office, with his feet on the desk. Apparently doing nothing. The consultant was surprised and questioned why he was doing nothing.

“Henry Ford’s reaction to a consultant who questioned why he paid $50,000 a year to someone who spent most of his time with his feet on his desk. “Because a few years ago that man came up with something that saved me $2,000,000,” he replied. “And when he had that idea his feet were exactly where they are now.”

Ford knew that approaching problems rationally, is the most normal way to look at things but that we should also consider the irrational or pscho-logical and understand how people actually behave rather than how we think they should. He knew that by taking time to disengage, to think, to wander, to play, he would be able to provide context to problems and create at least more optionality and therefore greater problem solving solutions.

KEY LESSON: Make time for deep thinking. Get away from screens, day-to-day operations and other distractions to really ponder things from a different angle.