Henry Ford: An Interpretation

VI. Mental Traits and Characteristics

CHAPTER VI MENTAL TRAITS AND CHARACTERISTICS A CROSS section of the mind of Henry Ford would reveal some striking contrasts. There are in him mental altitudes which mark him as a genius, and there are others that are little above mental sea level. A complex mind of strength and weakness, of wisdom and foolishness , in which the shallows are the more pronounced because of the profound depths which lie between. Mr. Ford has limitations which stand out the more conspicuously because of the far reaches of his mind in other directions. He has altogether a most unusual mind, — in some respects the most remarkable mind I have ever known. Call it insight, intuition, vision or what you please, he has a supernormal perceptive faculty along certain lines in business affairs. 49 HENRY FORD His mind does not move in logical grooves. It does not walk, it leaps. It is not a trained mind. It does not know how to think consecutively, and I doubt if it would do so if it could. It cannot endure the pace and bear the burden of logic, and it cannot listen long to the man who is reaching conclusions through rational processes. I have known him frequently to cut in and give a man a decision before he has had time to state his case, and sometimes the decision has had nothing whatever to do with the case. Under such circumstancesthere was no use trying to get the real problem before him. A later opportunity must be waited for. He does not reason to conclusions. He jumps at them. A bad thing, unless the jump, as in his case, is as a rule more unerring than the slow reasoned crawl of other minds. He has told me that he learned early in life "to grab the first hunch." His first impulses, so he insists, are as a rule to be relied upon and acted upon. He maintains that if he stops to reason about them, to discuss them, to seek advice regarding them, he finds them trimmed, 50 TRAITS AND CHARACTERISTICS pared and filed down until they fit into the conventional ruts, and there is nothing left that is really worth doing. Concerning matters in general he seems to enjoy a discussion, but concerning matters pertaining to his own business on which his mind is made up — and it generally is — he seems annoyed by opposing opinion. "Get out, and send me an optimist," he once said to an executive who was venturing to question the wisdom of some policy decided upon. "I want to talk to an optimist." And that gives you another definition of an optimist; he is the man who agrees with you. He has the courage of his convictions, and I have never known him to change his mind on an important matter, once it was made up. Minds that work intuitively, I have observed, have a feeling of finality in regard to their decisions, — the feminine mind on occasions, for example. It is so because — it is so. And there is an end to the matter. This, in my opinion, is the chief reason for the high rate of .mortality among Ford executives. As you know, the rate is high. 51 HENRY FORD The Ford executive has added to those two certainties in life — taxes and death — a third, that is discharge. Of the man climbing up in the Ford organization it may be said that he hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower. He never continueth for long on the job. A judge of national repute once said to me, " I have a great admiration for Henry Ford, but there is one thing about him that I regret and can't understand, and that is his inability to keep his executives and old-time friends about him." The answer is that it is not a matter of inability, but disability. He can't help it. He is built that way. It is my impression that in business organizations men are hired as executives and paid among other things for their judgment and advice. The greatest possible liberty of thought and action is given an executive in the Ford Motor Company that can be given in a company that is a one-man affair and is controlled by a one-way mind...