Men and Rubber by Harvey S. Firestone

"There is always a better way of doing everything than the way which is standard at the moment".

Ford, Edison, Firestone “Vagabonding”

What I’m stealing

1. Quality sells itself

2. Control circumstances by accumulating a surplus

3. Read oddly and broadly

4. Sell to “The Big Man”

5. There is no going back to the simple life except as a broken man

6. All products must be seasoned in the market

7. There are more wrong times to sell to a man than right times

8. A company must have one head and only one

9. Business is made of details. Success is the sum of detail.

10. Is it necessary? Can it be simplified?

11. Embody the kind of energy which does not know when it is licked — spirited and resilient

12. The commercial instinct has been over-rated. The service instinct is more important.

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Commentary

This is the second book in chronological order from the Poor Charlie’s Almanack recommended reading list. I flew through this one and absolutely loved the chapters recounting his yearly camping excursion with Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. What a bunch of beauties.

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Dog ears, highlights, marginalia

Take Mr. Ford. He knows every necessary detail of the far-flung Ford Industries; he always knows what is going on, but he never attends to the execution of details. He does not waste time in dictating and signing notes and letters, or in seeing people whom it is not necessary for him to see; he delegates all this to others. He has assigned no executive duties whatsoever to himself—in fact, he does not even have a desk. He has only a few friends and no social obligations at all, and so he keeps himself free to think and to plan and to watch. (Location 86)

Mr. Edison’s whole life has been devoted to training his mind to concentrated thinking. He will work for hours and days without food or sleep, and he can do this because he has so trained his mind that it shuts out everything excepting the specific problem before him. (Location 110)

A business is not a business until it has been hardened by fire and water. (Location 164)

Thinking is not required all the way down the line in business. The difficulty is to pick out the men who can and will think and get them into the positions where thought is needed. (Location 192)

Having a surplus is the greatest aid to business judgment that I know—and I bitterly know what I am talking about, for I went through years of upbuilding without being able to accumulate a surplus. Then, when I gained one, I saw it completely wiped out and turned into a deficit overnight. A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them and often he has no opportunity to exercise judgement. (Location 228)

Most of the farmers round about worked hard—they were the kind that got up before dawn and sat around to start with the first clear light. My father was not this kind of a worker; he was not a hard worker as was commonly known on a farm. My two brothers—Elmer and Robert J.—and I had to work, but we were not driven, and I have no unpleasant memories of grinding away on a farm. Ours was not that sort of a farm. My father seemed to know how to manage and plan so that there were no real rush seasons, excepting, of course, at harvest. And, in consequence, there was probably more work actually done about our farm than on any other thereabouts, for my father farmed thoroughly. He always fertilized a little more than his fellows; he harrowed just a little better; in every farm operation, he used just a little more care than did the others, and, consequently, his crops were always just a little bit better. The farm was always neat and clean—on rainy days I well remember that we had the steady job of cleaning out around the fences, where on the ordinary farm weeds and rubbish are allowed to collect. (Location 239)

As I grew older, I usually went with him on his trips to buy or sell cattle or sheep, and it was a whole course in trading to watch him at work. First he saw the whole market and heard what everyone had to offer or say—saying almost nothing himself. He often told me: “Never rush in on a deal. Let it come to you.” That is the course he followed, and by the time he was ready to trade, he knew the whole market. If his survey convinced him that the market was not a good one either to buy or to sell in, he simply went home again. (Location 255)

This insight is why I believe anyone who is working a salaried job should learn how to trade in the stock market. It's a huge source of alpha to be in a position where you aren't forced to make a trade to keep the lights on. Bide your time and bet big when the trade lines up like the bars on slot machine.

in a day when few farmers read anything, he was a wide reader and accumulated a large fund of knowledge, which is one of the reasons why he was a good farmer. (Location 269)

I notice that when all a man’s information is confined to the field in which he is working, the work is never as good as it ought to be. A man has to get a perspective, and he can get it from books or from people—preferably from both. (Location 270)

The proprietor of the big store was busy—but he had plenty of time to listen to my story and to find out if he could make money out of what I had to sell. From that time onward, I have never found it worthwhile to bother with thoroughly little fellows for, realizing their weakness, they are always on the defensive, while a larger man will listen to what you have to say and be quick to grasp any money-making opportunities you may have to offer. By a “big man” I do not mean the man who has a big business—he may be just on his way to having a big business. But unless a man on the first approach shows signs of wanting to make money, it is a waste of time to try to convince him that he ought to buy. You may, if you persist, eventually sell to the suspicious man, but I have not found that it pays to make the effort—the returns are not commensurate with the work involved. Thereafter, when I entered a town, I always tried the largest and not the smallest store first. (Location 383)

It is the duty of management to provide so good a product and then to let people know so thoroughly about it that any man of reasonable intelligence can go out and sell it. (Location 425)

Quality sells itself.

Sometimes it seems that it might be better to go back to those simpler days, that one might get more out of a less complex life. But it cannot be done. One changes with prosperity. We all think we should like to lead the simple life, and then we find that we have picked up a thousand little habits which we are quite unconscious of because they are a part of our very being—and these habits are not in the simple life. There is no going back—except as a broken man. (Location 494)

The first product, no matter how thoroughly it has been thought out, has to be seasoned in the market. (Location 571)

By this agreement we were to organize a company with a capital of $50,000. I put in $10,000 in cash and my option on the tire business of the company for which I received an additional $15,000 worth of stock. The other group put in $10,000 in cash and the Sweinhart patent, and received an additional $15,000 in stock, which gave us a working capital of $20,000. I was to be manager of the company at a salary of $3,000 a year with a bonus of $600 if the company earned 20 percent or more on its issued capital stock during the first year. (Location 664)

Roughly 100k salary with a 20k bonus in todays dollars

There are more wrong times to sell to a man that there are right times, and if I ever should write a book on salesmanship I should give about one third of the book to the topic “Common Sense.” I have been buttonholed thousands of times by salesmen who, if they had just exercised a grain of common sense, would have known that, while the moment might be a very good one in which to make my acquaintance, it was no time at all to persuade me buy anything. (Location 713)

I find that a working foreman usually has a better control over his men than a non-worker, because he has to be continually on his mettle to demonstrate that he is a better workman than any of them, and also he does not ask them to do the unreasonable things which some foremen will insist on. (Location 766)

It was not the pay that attracted these men to us or made them work. They got only from ten to fifteen cents an hour, which was the prevailing rate. I have never found that pay alone would either bring together or hold good men. I think it was the game itself that drew these men; we were a little company fighting among big companies, and we were all together in the fight. (Location 768)

This is especially true in these days when luxuries so rapidly become necessities. An executive is the better off for having a comfortable desk and chair and a convenient place to work, and there is no reason why surroundings should not be good looking rather than ugly, but an office is essentially a place in which to work. It is not a club and it ought not to be fitted up as a club—else it may turn into a club. (Location 780)

The public is always willing to pay for quality. (Location 834)

Quality sells itself.

We had an employee by the name of George Ludington, who felt that he could succeed where the others had failed. I went to work with him, and we developed an absolutely practical tire which we sold in rolls to be cut off and made into tires by the dealer. The technical details of just how we did this are not interesting. (Location 852)

A big change was coming over the tire industry. It was one that I had to be in on, and yet, for the moment, I saw no way of getting in. (Location 880)

Note: Inventing your own destruction

There is always a better way of doing everything than the way which is standard at the moment. It is a good thing for a man to be pushed into finding that better way. (Location 940)

Settling disputes through the law has never appealed to me as a pastime. Lawsuits are not only extremely expensive, but they do not and cannot settle anything which could not be better and more quickly settled through putting all the cards on the table and having a frank talk. (Location 992)

Before hiring a man, I like to talk to him in a general way—to talk a little about everything and nothing, and to find out what sort of a human being he is. (Location 1102)

The biggest thing in business is to be working and planning ahead—planning ahead for production, for sales, for new developments in the art, for money, for sources of supply. The business of the day is, of course, highly important, for unless today’s business be looked after, there will be no tomorrow’s business to bother about. But unless one can see and plan for a year or two ahead, one’s business will not grow evenly and naturally. (Location 1180)

Most of the work was on my shoulders. I entirely managed the finances, supervised the production, and had the direction of even much of the detail of sales. I had not learned much about managing myself. The management of one’s self, which gets down to controlling one’s own time and distinguishing the important from the unimportant, comes only from experience. (Location 1277)

But the really big problem was management. The business was already too large for me to look after alone, and yet I did not believe and never have believed in what is called “delegation.” I hold that, if anything in the business is wrong, the fault is squarely with management. If the tires are not made right, if the workmen are unhappy, if the sales are not what they ought to be, the fault is not with the man who is actually doing the job, but with the men above him and the men above them, so that, finally, the fault is mine. That is my conception of business. (Location 1301)

Extreme ownership

A company must have one head and only one, and he must be the real executive head. The board of directors can advise on policies, but it cannot run the business, and, anyway, policies never make a business successful. (Location 1305)

I have great respect for the written word, but no amount of writing will take the place of action. (Location 1308)

I know of only one first-class policy. It runs: “Use what common sense you can under the circumstances.” (Location 1311)

I began gradually to work out some method by which I could know the details—for any business is made of details—and still not be swamped by them. Success is the sum of detail. (Location 1316)

I know of no better way of fooling one’s self than writing interoffice communications and asking for reports. A man can keep himself busy that way all day long and completely satisfy his conscience that he is doing something worthwhile. (Location 1327)

I was responsible, for I let the business get away from me in the easiest of all fashions—by thinking of an organization as something of itself instead of as a means of getting work done quickly and well. (Location 1338)

The financial affairs are as easily disposed of, for I find that if I continually know these items, I know pretty well what the whole business is doing: Sales. Profit and loss. Plant investment. Relation of quick assets to current liabilities. (Location 1403)

That is the trouble with a plan, especially a carefully considered plan. We are so likely by tacking the name ‘‘plan’’ on what is only a guess to give more dignity and weight to the plan than it deserves. On the other hand, without any plan at all, the necessary constructions and improvements cannot be made in the most economical fashion and, above all, the money requirements cannot be arranged for in advance. (Location 1411)

The first question I always ask myself when looking at any operation—whether in the shops or in the office—is this: Is it necessary? (Location 1458)

If I do find a process or operation necessary, then I ask: Can it be simplified? (Location 1465)

Note: Simple is above genius, see also Musk’s secret sauce.

I want to keep to the fundamentals of manufacturing, which get down to: Is it necessary? Can it be simplified? (Location 1591)

The Firestone Park Land Company furnishes homes to employees on easy payment plans. This activity was begun in 1916. At that time, the population of Akron had so far exceeded the existing housing facilities that employees found it difficult to get satisfactory places to live. To meet this situation, we bought 1,000 acres southeast from the factories to be used for building homes, and named the tract “Firestone Park.” (Location 1741)

I am informed that we are the only large company in the world in which every employee has a stock interest. (Location 1764)

Every change we made in sales methods brought results—and proved the new method. We did not know that we would have shown as startling an increase had we abolished our whole sales force, closed all our branches and dealers, and just sent out our tires in freight cars to be thrown off on sidings and taken away by clamouring buyers. Many of us imagined what was happening, but our pride would not let us admit the true condition, and hence the sales department had the leisure to devise fancy trappings for itself. In ordinary times, one has to get along with things far short of the ideal, but in those days we had to have absolute perfection. (Location 2025)

These Akron organizations compared and competed with one another, and I shudder to think of the clerical wages and good white paper that was wasted by them in showing in their several ways how good they were. (Location 2037)

If a mistake be made, it is our mistake and it does not help anyone to put in time hiding it. A fair part of the time of the big, complex organization is spent in steering the effects of mistakes into other departments, and instead of an error being corrected, it is kept in the air. Our present system is not a system at all. It is direct, personal, day-by-day contact. (Location 2056)

It is more important for a salesman to be able to sell exactly the right tire and to explain why he is selling it than to be able to make a tire. (Location 2188)

then, successful business is never conducted on rules; it is conducted on principles put into effect by human energy—by the kind of energy which does not know when it is licked. (Location 2223)

Spirited and resilient

“That was a fine trip you gave us. John Muir would have called it a glorious trip. You arranged the weather just right and you begot in all of us the true holiday spirit. We were out on a lark and our spirits soared and sang like larks most of the time. My health had been so precarious during the summer that I feared I could not stand more than two or three days of the journey, but, as it turned out, the farther I went the farther I wanted to go. I drank in health and strength every hour. The doctors think that, as we grow old, there is great remedial power in mechanical vibrations. I think the vibrations of a motor car over the good state roads on a trip to the Adirondacks with such a company in it as we had beats all other appliances. But the vibrations or convulsions set up in the diaphragm by the stories around the camp fire at night beat even that, or at least supplement it in a most effective way. (Location 2330)

“Such a trip is a very sane and hygienic way of spending a brief vacation, especially if you keep clear of houses and hotels as we did, and have so well-organized an expedition as we had. The thought of it and the joy of it and the good of it stay with one for many a day. (Location 2359)

A keen and competent government official, we all agreed; whether Republican or Democrat, who cared? In such times as these party lines do not count. We are only loyal and patriotic American citizens. (Location 2422)

A timely and timeless sentiment

He looks like a poet, and conducts his life like a philosopher. No poet ever expressed himself through his work more completely than Mr. Ford has expressed himself through his car and his tractor engine they typify him—not imposing, nor complex, less expressive of power and mass than of simplicity and adaptability and universal service. (Location 2511)

“He is a good camper-out and turns vagabond very easily. He can go with his hair uncombed and his clothes unbrushed as long as the best of us. He eats so little that I do not think he was tempted by the chicken roosts or turkey flocks along the way, nor by the corn fields and apple orchards, as some of us were. But there can be no doubt about his love for the open air and for wild nature. He can rough it week in and week out and be happy. (Location 2525)

High dividends may be a sign of strength, but more often they are a sign of heedless management. (Location 2618)

At the Burroughs place we had a big, brigand steak that we cooked and ate outdoors in a driving snow. We cooked it in the best of all ways to cook steak, and if you do not know the way, here is the recipe. Select a straight, green limb and sharpen the end, then cut the steak into slices and slip them over the wooden skewer with bits of bacon between the slices, and broil it over an open fire. (Location 2677)

The commercial instinct has been over-rated. The service instinct is more important. (Location 2683)

None of us cares about money excepting as it helps us to carry out plans for larger and better service. And so, perhaps, Mr. Burroughs was not so different from us after all. (Location 2686)

Ford’s interest in antiques is not just a form of amusement. Of course he does enjoy collecting, and at Dearborn he has an immense collection of antiques, but he has two purposes. First, he wants to see the designs of the old articles, for he has an eye to beauty; and, second, he wants people to know just what life was a hundred years or more ago. And in addition to this, it is his thought that a good idea lives forever, and he wants to examine the things of the past to see what they contained in the way of good ideas. (Location 2762)

Go it alone. Do not fail to try because someone has already tried and failed. (Location 2790)

No business, no matter what its size, can be called safe until it has been forced to learn economy and rigidly to measure values of men and materials. (Location 2798)

Situations are only as impossible as one makes them. (Location 2932)