Henry Ford seemed to be the type of person who, when he imagined a machine to make a job easier, would find a way to create it. I was surprised by a few things in this book: one, the price of vehicles when he started creating them, and two, the timeless wisdom and thought leadership that Ford had for his time. I didn't think I'd get into this autobiography as much as I did, and regardless of the type of person he was said to be, my impression is that he was a good businessman.

Fascinating and readable, this is primarily a passionate and persuasive argument for Ford's vision of humane long-term capitalism, supported with a wealth of historical and accounting details.

This is not exactly an autobiography, but it's interesting.
I do not recommend it to anyone, but I have benefited from it.

Ця автобіографія стала 16-тою книжкою, прочитанною мною за 45 діб, що вже минули у 2017 році. У середньому це становить 0,36 книжки за день. Якщо тенденція збережеться, то за весь рік я маю прочитати 131 книжку. При середній ціні книжок на сучасному українському ринку десь у 100 грн це становитиме 13100 грн, або 4,09 мінімальні зарплатні.

Ось приблизно у такому стилі написана левова частка мемуарів батька конвеєра Форда, який, почавши із думок про те, яким механізмом можна спростити щоденну працю фермерів, дійшов до будівництв автоконцернів та реорганізацій цілих залізничних вузлів, які вони "купували, бо їхня повільна робота заважала машинному бізнесу".

Величезна кількість розрахунків, зусиль по скороченню тупцюваннь на місці, заощадження долей секунд, які у кінцевому випадку призводили до міліонних прибутків. Величезна кількість суворих тверджень, кожен з яких починається зі слова "ми", а не "я". Ми вирішили, ми прорахували, ми дотримуємось. Величезна кількість влучних та дотепних висловів, що наповнюють цю енциклопедію щоденних знань бізнесового гіганту, який по суті й сформував багато у чому сучасний американський, та й европейський також, світ.

Генрі Форд розповідає не тільки про завод чи ціноутворення, розмірковує про важливість відповідальності за власні дії чи жорстко висміює принципи роботи фінансистів. У останніх розділах він роздумує над війною, майбутнім, людською природою та навіть торкається "еврейського питання". Читати його думки у світі, що віддалений від часів створення книги майже на сто років, надзвичайно цікаво та захоплююче.

Як бачите з кольорових стікерів, я собі напланувала виписати з книги десяток цитат, бо їхня актуальність та у дечому мудрість й досі не втрачені, а вислів Форда про експертів просто має стати гаслом для сучасних опініон-мейкерів у цифровому просторі українськості.

Книгу щиро раджу прочитати кожній здравомислячій людині, а особливо тим, хто по життю пов'язаний із відповідальністю перед іншими людьми, себто керівникам навіть дрібної групки працівників, та будь-кому, хто займається чи навіть цікавиться бізнесом. А всім решта також буде цікаво її почитати, особливо у розділі про жіночу працю та суворі принципи Америки 20-х років 20 століття.

an interesting perspective that's relevant to many of the social and economic issues facing society today. There's a lot of interesting theories on optimal organizational management; many of which are not widely adopted and link to the "99%" movement. A must read for any entrepreneur looking to grow his or her business into a sustainable and large presence.

One of my favorites

Ford's philosophy of business is really quite simple:
1. The goal of business is to create consumables that customers derive real value from.
2. The pathway from raw materials to consumables should be as short and efficient as possible. This was perhaps the point Ford emphasised the strongest: constantly strive to remove all waste, whether that be waste in the form of effort, energy, raw materials, or whatever.
3. Efficiency is best achieved by specialisation. The company should find a niche, create the best possible product for that niche, and then constant work on improving either the quality of the product, or the efficiency of the means of production. Ford used to have many models, which seemed to be lettered in a semi-random way (A, B, C, F, K, N, R, S, T, Y), and all but the model T ceased production.
4. The secondary purpose of business is to employ workers. There are thus three objectives which the business must optimise for: affordability of product, quality of product, and pay delivered to workers. The business should always try to take steps which Pareto dominate along all these objectives. Good ways to achieve this are: increasing efficiency, lowering costs, and increasing wages.
5. There is always more work to be done. At least into the foreseeable future, the world will not be perfect, and suffering will still be endemic to the human condition. As long as these conditions last, it is always worth the effort to chip away at possible means for lightening the burden of existence. There is always something which can be done to improve society. And there is always something that you can do to improve the world around you.

This philosophy is surprisingly inspiring (particularly point 5.). If you wanted to steel-man capitalist industry, you couldn't do much better than to describe Ford's way of doing business. Ford also reminded me of Elon Musk. Both had civilisation-optimisation goals, and they both overcame any obstacles that stood in the way of achieving their plans. Ford's clearest example of this was buying a mediocre rail line and turning it into one of the best of its kind purely because its right of way interfered with plans for improving a plant.

All in all, Ford seemed like a thoroughly admirable human being. Except for that one anti-semitic rant. That was weird. Speaking of weird, apparently Ford didn't hire women who whose husbands have jobs?

Charmingly, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were friends. I've heard Edison described perviously as a shrewd businessman whose original innovations were mild but very well capitalised on. Ford firmly contradicted this view, saying that Edison knows almost nothing of business, but has deep and wide scientific knowledge.

Ford paraphrased Benthem

I only want to know whether the greatest good is being rendered to the greatest number.

And Marx

I am for the kind of democracy that gives to each an equal chance according to his ability.

There was even some practical advice in there:

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 too many things that could not be done.

I'll finish off this review with a couple of Ford's most inspiring quotes:

It takes only a moment's thought to see that as far as individual personal advantage is concerned, vast accumulations of money mean nothing. A human being is a human being and is nourished by the same amount and quality of food, is warmed by the same weight of clothing, whether he be rich or poor. And no one can inhabit more than one room at a time.

But if one has visions of service, if one has vast plans which no ordinary resources could possibly realize, if one has a life ambition to make the industrial desert bloom like the rose, and the work-a-day life suddenly blossom into fresh and enthusiastic human motives of higher character and efficiency, then one sees in large sums of money what the farmer sees in his seed corn—the beginning of new and richer harvests whose benefits can no more be selfishly confined than can the sun's rays.

and:

Money is useful only as it serves to forward by practical example the principle that business is justified only as it serves, that it must always give more to the community than it takes away, and that unless everybody benefits by the existence of a business then that business should not exist. I have proved this with automobiles and tractors. I intend to prove it with railways and public-service corporations—not for my personal satisfaction and not for the money that may be earned. (It is perfectly impossible, applying these principles, to avoid making a much larger profit than if profit were the main object.) I want to prove it so that all of us may have more, and that all of us may live better by increasing the service rendered by all businesses. Poverty cannot be abolished by formula; it can be abolished only by hard and intelligent work.

He has some interesting ideas, but it's mostly self righteous blather. He defends his anti-semitism by claiming it's just "science" because they studied the origins of the "decay" of society and, surprise surprise, it always led back to the Jews. This was written after WWI, and his anti-war ideals and grand statements about how industry shouldn't profit off of war apparently went out the window by the time WWII came around.

There's no doubt that he was a pioneer, but there's also no doubt that he was an awful human being.

У цій книзі Генрі Форд розповідає про свої ідеї та їхні реалізації на практиці, доводячи, що бізнес — це не про гроші, а про надання якісних послуг. Його ставлення до цінової політики, якості продукту, забезпечення робітників найкращими умовами праці та спрощення виробництва заслуговують на величезну повагу, а головне — ці міркування працюють. Звісно, деякі його слова щодо "людського фактору" можуть і мають бути розкритиковані, але, чесно кажучи, мені стало надзвичайно цікаво, наскільки б змінився текст цієї книги, якби він був написаний після Другої світової.