The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

FORD’S HIRING PRACTICES
The following material seems to defy common sense because past perfor-
mance is generally a good indicator of future performance. Ford’s practice 
of bringing everybody in on the bottom (regardless of past experience) and 
then promoting from the ranks apparently worked nonetheless. “The man 
in charge of the big River Rouge plant [who] began as a patternmaker” 
was, in fact, Charles Sorensen, the same person who designed the Willow 
Run bomber plant in a single night.
The subsequent material elaborates that advancement should be a 
function entirely of a person’s work as opposed to favoritism, or partici-
pation in meetings whose primary function is for people to show fancy 
PowerPoint
®
 slides to one another. MacPherson (2012) warns emphatically 
against “death by PowerPoint,” and adds that Lean leadership presenta-
tions should use flip charts or handwritten A3 reports. A3 refers to the 11 
× 17-inch sheet of paper on which the entire presentation can be written.
* * *
All of our people come into the factory or the offices through the employment 
departments. As I have said, we do not hire experts—neither do we hire men 
on past experiences or for any position other than the lowest. Since we do not 
take a man on his past history, we do not refuse him because of his past his-
tory. I never met a man who was thoroughly bad. There is always some good 
in him—if he gets a chance. That is the reason we do not care in the least 
about a man’s antecedents—we do not hire a man’s history, we hire the man. 
If he has been in jail, that is no reason to say that he will be in jail again. I 
think, on the contrary, he is, if given a chance, very likely to make a special 
effort to keep out of jail. Our employment office does not bar a man for any-
thing he has previously done—he is equally acceptable whether he has been 
in Sing Sing or at Harvard and we do not even inquire from which place he 
has graduated. All that he needs is the desire to work. If he does not desire to 
work, it is very unlikely that he will apply for a position, for it is pretty well 
understood that a man in the Ford plant works.
We do not, to repeat, care what a man has been. If he has gone to college 
he ought to be able to go ahead faster, but he has to start at the bottom and 
prove his ability. Every man’s future rests solely with himself. There is far too 

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82  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
much loose talk about men being unable to obtain recognition. With us every 
man is fairly certain to get the exact recognition he deserves.
Of course, there are certain factors in the desire for recognition which must 
be reckoned with. The whole modern industrial system has warped the desire 
so out of shape that it is now almost an obsession. There was a time when a 
man’s personal advancement depended entirely and immediately upon his 
work, and not upon any one’s favor; but nowadays it often depends far too 
much upon the individual’s good fortune in catching some influential eye. 
That is what we have successfully fought against. Men will work with the 
idea of catching somebody’s eye; they will work with the idea that if they fail 
to get credit for what they have done, they might as well have done it badly 
or not have done it at all. Thus the work sometimes becomes a secondary 
consideration. The job in hand—the article in hand, the special kind of ser-
vice in hand—turns out to be not the principal job. The main work becomes 
personal advancement—a platform from which to catch somebody’s eye. This 
habit of making the work secondary and the recognition primary is unfair 
to the work. It makes recognition and credit the real job. And this also has 
an unfortunate effect on the worker. It encourages a peculiar kind of ambi-
tion which is neither lovely nor productive. It produces the kind of man who 
imagines that by “standing in with the boss” he will get ahead. Every shop 
knows this kind of man. And the worst of it is there are some things in the 
present industrial system which make it appear that the game really pays. 
Foremen are only human. It is natural that they should be flattered by being 
made to believe that they hold the weal or woe of workmen in their hands. 
It is natural, also, that being open to flattery, their self-seeking subordinates 
should flatter them still more to obtain and profit by their favor. That is why 
I want as little as possible of the personal element.
It is particularly easy for any man who never knows it all to go forward to 
a higher position with us. Some men will work hard but they do not possess 
the capacity to think and especially to think quickly. Such men get as far as 
their ability deserves. A man may, by his industry, deserve advancement, but 
it cannot be possibly given him unless he also has a certain element of leader-
ship. This is not a dream world we are living in. I think that every man in the 
shaking-down process of our factory eventually lands about where he belongs.