The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

STANDARDIZATION AS THE SERVANT 
AND NOT THE MASTER
The concept of a quality system standard like ISO 9001 as the organi-
zation’s servant rather than its master helps gain buy-in from the orga-
nization’s workforce and management team. If the standard is merely 
something with which the organization has to conform to get a certifi-
cate with which to impress customers, it is indeed the master rather than 
the servant. It is also a costly and time-consuming annoyance because 
it demands the organization’s resources and returns little of real value. 
If, on the other hand, the organization uses ISO 9001 as a framework 
with which to remove system-related deficiencies that undermine people’s 
daily work, it becomes the servant rather than the master. Ford summa-
rizes this principle as follows: “Factory organization is not a device to pre-
vent the expansion of ability, but a device to reduce the waste and losses 
due to mediocrity.”
Ford also makes it clear that the purpose of standardization is emphati-
cally not to stifle worker initiative and creativity. Every production opera-
tor must, for example, follow the existing work instruction because it 
contains the best known way to do the job. This does not mean, however, 
that the worker cannot or should not look for a better way to do a job. 
Taylor (1911a, p. 67) elaborates on this as follows: “And whenever the new 
method is found to be markedly superior to the old, it should be adopted 
as the standard for the whole establishment.” This is where the discipline 
of standardization propagates worker initiative and creativity rather than 
suppressing them.
A good quality management system will include a procedure (second-
tier document) for best practice deployment. Ford and Crowther (1926, 
85) describe this practice very explicitly: “… the benefit of our experi-
ence cannot be thrown away.” The Automotive Industry Action Group 
(2006, pp. 137, 172) describes the Lessons Learned Database and Read 

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250  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
Across/Replicate Process for the purpose of not only holding the gains 
from a specific improvement activity, but also deploying its benefits to 
all relevant activities in the organization.
* * *
The opportunity to work is now greater than ever it was. The opportunity to 
advance is greater. It is true that the young man who enters industry to-day 
enters a very different system from that in which the young man of twenty-
five years ago began his career. The system has been tightened up; there is 
less play or friction in it; fewer matters are left to the haphazard will of the 
individual; the modern worker finds himself part of an organization which 
apparently leaves him little initiative. Yet, with all this, it is not true that 
“men are mere machines.” It is not true that opportunity has been lost in 
organization. If the young man will liberate himself from these ideas and 
regard the system as it is, he will find that what he thought was a barrier is 
really an aid.
Factory organization is not a device to prevent the expansion of ability, but 
a device to reduce the waste and losses due to mediocrity. It is not a device 
to hinder the ambitious, clear-headed man from doing his best, but a device 
to prevent the don’t-care sort of individual from doing his worst. That is to 
say, when laziness, carelessness, slothfulness, and lack-interest are allowed 
to have their own way, everybody suffers. The factory cannot prosper and 
therefore cannot pay living wages. When an organization makes it necessary 
for the don’t-care class to do better than they naturally would, it is for their 
benefit—they are better physically, mentally, and financially. What wages 
should we be able to pay if we trusted a large don’t-care class to their own 
methods and gait of production?
If the factory system which brought mediocrity up to a higher standard 
operated also to keep ability down to a lower standard—it would be a very 
bad system, a very bad system indeed. But a system, even a perfect one, must 
have able individuals to operate it. No system operates itself. And the modern 
system needs more brains for its operation than did the old. More brains are 
needed to-day than ever before, although perhaps they are not needed in the 
same place as they once were. It is just like power: formerly every machine 
was run by foot power; the power was right at the machine. But nowadays 
we have moved the power back—concentrated it in the power-house. Thus 
also we have made it unnecessary for the highest types of mental ability to be 
engaged in every operation in the factory. The better brains are in the mental 
power-plant.
Every business that is growing is at the same time creating new places for 
capable men. It cannot help but do so. This does not mean that new openings 
come every day and in groups. Not at all. They come only after hard work; 

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What We May Expect  •  251
it is the fellow who can stand the gaff of routine and still keep himself alive 
and alert who finally gets into direction. It is not sensational brilliance that 
one seeks in business, but sound, substantial dependability. Big enterprises 
of necessity move slowly and cautiously. The young man with ambition ought 
to take a long look ahead and leave an ample margin of time for things to 
happen.