The Man, The Legacy

Make no mistake about it, Henry Ford has been one of the greatest, if not the greatest influencers of our society for 100 years or more. His business savvy and creative genius have given the US, and the world many marvelous inventions, paradigms and nuggets of wisdom.

Most notably, Henry Ford perfected the factory and the assembly line inside of it, which together formed the primary means of production in the industrial economy. While the assembly line and factory did much to advance the nation as a whole, and significantly line the pockets of a few, it has also done a great deal of damage to “the masses.”

Means of Production

Henry Ford’s factory/assembly line production model dictates which roles, responsibilities and skills are important, and which are not. Overall, I believe what this model implies about the value of “average” people, ultimately resulted in a much greater negative influence in our society than it has for good; and, perhaps has precipitated some of the deep rooted economic and societal issues we are struggling with today in this nation and around the world.

It was Seth Godin who articulated this phenomenon and enlightened me to the serious ramifications of the  the industrial revolution model, especially as we begin to move into a post-industrial economy. Seth explains that the Henry Ford factory production model, stresses compliance, uniformity, falling in line, and clear-cut, simplistic delineation of roles and responsibility.

There are assembly-line workers, assembly-line supervisors, factor managers and factory owners. Owners, and to a lesser extent managers, hold all of the cards and are responsible for all of the innovation and creative thinking. Innovative and creative thinking at the assembly-line level is not only discouraged, but in most cases forbidden. The assembly-line worker and even the direct supervisor are thought of as little more than trained monkeys.

Give me Monkeys, Please

Henry Ford is quoted as saying, “Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?” In Henry Ford’s system, people are only as valuable as the simple, repetitive task that they can perform. They are interchangeable, nameless and faceless. Henry Ford has no use for uniquely created masterpieces made in the image of God; what he needs are robots without brains, without personalities, feelings, dreams and desires.

I have worked for several large tech companies at various levels of management. One of the primary objectives of the executive management was to eliminate the high-paid coding experts through a combination of rigorous processes that eliminate the need for high competence, and outsourcing / offshoring which allows leverage of under-resourced individuals to lower salaries.

The message from the top at every company I worked was very similar, “I want to be able to put monkeys in the chairs and have them cranking out code that works!” That is a great illustration of the value system of the industrial economy. Creativity, leadership, excellence, high pay and leverage only belongs at the very top of the executive food chain. The goal for every level beneath the executive level is – monkeys. Inexpensive robots – mindless automatons that can and should be replaced with the lowest priced alternatives on an ongoing basis.

Societal Impact

That is the value system that the industrial economy is based on, and the foundation that our modern society is built on. Of the industrial economy, Seth says, “We invented public schools… jobs … suburbs—so many of the things that are part of our lives because we wanted and needed to support the industrial economy…. It was a very seductive bargain: if you gave up certain elements of self-determination and elements of your dreams—in return, the industrial economy would take good care of you.”

That’s right. Everything for the last 120+ years has been designed around the industrial economy – factory/assembly-line production model. Daycares, grade schools, secondary schools, colleges, job training programs, management and HR practices, churches – most everything. The system sees most of us, our kids, friends, relatives and neighbors as tools/cogs the elite use to make more money.

Are we Ready for the Future?

Certainly devaluing most of society and relegating them to a mindless, innovation and creativity free existence is a bad thing, but we have another, more pressing issue with running our organizations and societies on industrial economy principles – we are quickly moving into a post-industrial society, where uniqueness, individuality, entrepreneurship and specialty will rule the day.

The skills, abilities and motivations that prepare someone for a life-long journey in the industrial economy are completely inadequate for preparing someone to be successful in the post-industrial, connection-based economy that we have been moving into for the last several years. The good news is that it is not too late to opt out of the old system and jump into a new system. It will require a complete paradigm shift, and the onboarding of new systems and processes that value the individual over the task.

A Better Way

Seeing every individual as a unique, creative, critical, contributing component to any endeavor from business to education to outreach and ministry is the key to thriving in the new post-industrial, connection-based economy. We need to adopt new systems that formulate the tactics that align with this new overall strategy. What may these new strategies and tactics be? I’m glad you asked!

The research, development and effective onboarding of the most effective systems and processes that implement the strategies and tactics around post-industrial excellence have been the center of many of the efforts my partners and I have investing in over the last several years. We will be unpacking what we have learned through new initiatives over the next several weeks and months. Stay tuned!

Read this short story excerpt taken from Set Godin’s eBook titled, Stop Stealing Dreams

Ask yourself, “How am I doing as a leader?” I don’t mean how well are you performing the functional factors of your role – related to business results, revenue, sales, market share, impact, influence, throughput, defects, the direction of the organization, handling of deals, etc.

I am asking about your effectiveness at your primary leadership responsibilities around the skills of motivating, inspiring, engaging, handling interpersonal relationships, leading by example, managing other’s strengths and weaknesses, listening, clarifying, being approachable and having empathy. Factors that are related to your emotional intelligence quotient, or EQ.

After you come up with an initial answer to that question, the next question to ask yourself is, “How do I know my perception of my effectiveness as a leader is accurate?” Or at a minimum, “Do I know roughly how accurate my perception is, and how?”

Putting the two questions together you get, “How closely does my opinion of my leadership performance match the opinion of my direct reports, my peers, my organization at-large and my customers/bosses?”

Why is this important to ask? No matter how good you feel your leadership performance is or how great the organization seems to be doing, the question remains: “How much better might the organization be doing if I added the development of my own leadership ability to the business plan?” The other side of the coin is, “What are the opportunity costs of blind spots in my leadership performance?”

Every leader has blind spots. A study by the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence illustrates the extent of these blind spots. According to their research, first, mid and senior level leaders had a significant pattern of rating themselves higher on their leadership performance than those around them rated them. In other words, these leaders thought they were doing better with emotional intelligence related skills than did the people they led, served, worked with, and reported to. What’s more, the higher a person’s rank, the greater this gap became.

The underlying issue beneath these results stems from the fact that self-awareness does NOT come from self, it comes from a relentless, rigorous, ongoing pursuit of open, honest and meaningful feedback from those you lead, serve, work with and report to.

The higher the leadership position you hold, the more likely you are to suffer from what is called CEO disease, or CEO syndrome. Daniel Goleman in his book Primal Leadership defines this disease as “an acute lack of feedback…Leaders have more trouble than anybody else when it comes to receiving candid feedback, particularly about how they’re doing as leaders…the paradox, of course, is that the higher a leader’s position in an organization, the more critically the leader needs that very feedback.”

Geoff Colvin has a very simple, yet powerful illustration of this phenomenon in his book, Talent is Overrated” . Imagine a professional bowler, trying to improve his game by practicing more. During his practices, he decides to put a curtain in front of the foul line from the ceiling to about knee-height. He puts in ear plugs that block out all sounds, including the sound of the ball hitting the pins, and going into the gutter. He then proceeds to practice bowling. Colvin goes on to say that two things are going to happen as a result of eliminating feedback from his practice sessions, the first of which is obvious, the second of which, not so much.  First, the bowler is not going to get better at bowling, he is going to get worse. The second came as a surprise to me. The bowler, will stop caring about getting better.

Is it possible that this systemic, lack of feedback at the leadership level is degrading our skills as leaders? Is this lack of feedback causing us to become numb, and even blind to the importance and desire to obtain open, candid and regular feedback from those we influence? I have found in my own leadership, and in my experience with other leaders, this gap between self-perception of one’s leadership performance and the perception of other’s, is the single largest influencer of the extent of anyone’s success as a leader.

A study of 39,000 leaders by PDI Ninth House confirms this conclusion. They demonstrated a significant correlation between this perception gap, and their performance as leaders. Those who were identified as out of touch with this gap, were 629% more likely to perform below the level of expected achievement. To say it again, that is, six hundred and twenty-nine percent. I would say that is a pretty strong correlation.

It is not difficult to conclude, that closing this perception gap, is one of the most important, if not the most important activity that a leader can engage in. I have spent the better part of the last decade investigating the possibility of rigorous, well-defined systems and frameworks that could be strategically, and tactically engaged to close the gap between self-perception of leadership performance and other’s perception. In my research, I discovered a program that is centered around the development of what is called Personal Leadership Effectiveness on an individual basis, and a Personal Leadership Effectiveness Culture at an organizational level.

Executing this program on an ongoing basis will not only assist you in closing the gap, but will also result in the overall improvement of several other significant factors to achieving high leadership performance. I am excited to share more about this program in upcoming articles and posts around this topic!

Read a short, real-life story about a leadership team who decided to bravely go after the blindspots in their leadership effectiveness.