The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

Pay Attention to the Work, and Money Will Take Care of Itself
Ford states explicitly that nobody should join (or by implication invest 
in) a company in which finance takes priority over the work. He adds 
that bankers and financiers are unfit to manage any business (other than 
banking) because their eye is always on the dollar and rarely on the work 
that produces it. Countless businesses have been undermined or even 
destroyed by finance-related metrics that have little relevance to the deliv-
ery of actual value.
Sorensen (1956, pp. 167–169) provides valuable detail on how Ford devel-
oped his dislike of bankers and financiers. A banker named Joseph Bowers 
visited Ford on the assumption that Ford wanted to borrow money, and 
“talked to him like a teacher talks to a boy kept after school.” Bowers 
added that, as a condition of making the loan, his bank would want a 
director on the company’s board and also control of the treasurer. Ford 
later blamed his treasurer, Frank Klingensmith, for bringing in Bowers in 
the first place. Sorensen added that, as a person whose expertise was pri-
marily in finance, Klingensmith could not grasp the simple idea of liqui-
dating inventory instead of taking a loan to produce capital. This required, 
however, a one-third reduction in cycle time. Chapter 12 elaborates on this 
in detail.
* * *
I determined absolutely that never would I join a company in which finance 
came before the work or in which bankers or financiers had a part. And 
further that, if there were no way to get started in the kind of business that I 
thought could be managed in the interest of the public, then I simply would 
not get started at all. For my own short experience, together with what I saw 
going on around me, was quite enough proof that business as a mere money-
making game was not worth giving much thought to and was distinctly no 
place for a man who wanted to accomplish anything. Also it did not seem to 
me to be the way to make money. I have yet to have it demonstrated that it is 
the way. For the only foundation of real business is service.