Talent Tectonics

CHAPTER 11The Employee Experience and the External Environment

Manufacturing Cars and Shaping Societies

Henry Ford was one of the most successful business leaders in history. Although some things he said and did would be repugnant to modern social values, his actions reshaped the nature of work and organizations.¹ Ford is often associated with the development of automobile mass-manufacturing technology, but what is less known is that many of his most innovative leadership decisions focused on the employee experience.ⁱ

Ford is widely remembered for using assembly lines to transform the auto industry. The idea of using assembly lines actually came from Ransom Olds, who created the Oldsmobile. Ford's genius was creating an organization that could use assembly lines to mass-manufacture affordable cars at a global scale. Ford devoted much of his attention and resources to develop a workforce able to sustain new high-volume methods of production. This led to paying workers well above market wages, providing health care and education benefits, supporting employee safety and well-being, building housing and schools close to the factories and plants, and taking other steps to support employees and their families. One could argue that Ford's greatest accomplishment was not developing mass-production technology that made cars. It was building a workforce that could use this technology to create a global manufacturing company at a scale never before seen in history. What is impressive ...