15 February 2019
Dear Interested Readers,
A Brief Note From Vacation About Lessons From Edison and Ford
We have been traveling around Florida for the past week and a half, and I am on vacation time. I like traveling with a fluid agenda. A flexible schedule means that you have the freedom to explore what might appear unexpectedly. The disadvantage of no preparation other than booking a flight, a car rental, and having a few places to be, like showing up for Grandparents’ Day at our granddaughter’s school, is the possibility that without a plan or pre work on an agenda you might miss something that you learn about too late to see. Deciding to go to a museum at 4 PM that closes at 5, or not looking ahead to discover it is closed on Tuesdays can mean that your lack of planning costs you an opportunity. My attitude is “let it be.”
One of our first stops was Fort Myers. Too bad that we got there before the Red Sox arrived for Spring Training. Our travel companions have a relative that has a ‘60s cover band that gives concerts to grey heads like us, and we were there to see the show with a packed crowd of other people who no longer go to work. While in Fort Myers we decided to check out the Edison-Ford Museum. Before going to the museum I had no idea that Edison and Ford had ever been friends or that they had adjoining winter homes in Fort Myers.
Edison was 16 years older than Ford and was famous long before Ford took a position as an engineer at the Detroit Edison plant in 1891. Edison was traveling in Florida in 1885 when he fell in love with Fort Myers. Back then it was a little village of about 350 residents. He spontaneously bought land on the river from a local cattleman who gave him a generous “Yankee Discount”, and then he built a home and a lab on the property where he spent every winter until his death in 1931.
The first encounter between Ford and Edison occurred when the younger Ford took advantage of the opportunity presented by a company meeting with Edison in the late 1890s to show him his plans for an automobile. Edison was impressed, and encouraging, and then forgot about the encounter with Ford who shortly thereafter left his Edison employment to start Ford Motor Company. Their relationship was renewed about 15 years later after Ford was famously successful. Ford asked Edison to build a battery for the Model T. In 1915 Edison invited Ford to visit him in Fort Myers. Ford had a great time and bought the adjoining property to Edison’s home where he would spend a few weeks each February around Edison’s birthday most years until Edison died in 1931.
While we were walking around the grounds, looking at the the amazing museum exhibits, gardens, and scenery as well as looking into the homes of the two great engineer/inventors, I was asking myself what the world would be like today without them. Perhaps it would not be much different. Other inventors/entrepreneurs would probably have eventually done what they did. Edison didn’t really “invent” the light bulb, but he perfected it and made it practical. Ford was not the only builder of automobiles, but no one in the market focused on the combination of practical quality, durability, availability and price the way he did.
All was not perfect. Ford was famous for his anti semitism and like Charles Lindbergh, he had an unfortunate early attraction to Hitler, but when he stayed focused on making cars that were priced within the budget of most families, he was remarkable. We all know that Ford was the master of assembly line production. The Model T was available in any color you wanted as long as it was black. Ford produced 15 million Model Ts between 1909 and 1927 when it was replaced by the “new” model A. (The first model A was Ford’s first big production car. Subsequent improvements were sequentially labeled with Model N being the most successful product before the Model T. After the longtime dominance of the Model T, competition forced Ford to come up with a car with new features and colors in 1927. Given the radical changes between the Model T and the new car, he decided to start the letters over again with a new “Model A.”)
The most remarkable impact of the assembly line and Ford’s other production innovations, like control of raw materials, was Ford’s ability to drop the price of the Model T. When the first Model T came out it cost $850 or about $23,000 in today’s dollars. By 1925 the price had dropped to $260, the equivalent of $3,000 dollars today. When things were really humming a new Model T was born every 3 minutes. Between 1909 and 1927 Ford’s 15 million “tin lizzies” put America on the road and changed our lives. We would not see such rapid cultural change introduced by a consumer product again until the emergence of the smartphone.
Ford had a vision:
I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.
If Ford was famous for his production innovations, Edison was famous for his persistence. Over the course of his life he had over 1,000 patents. He gave us practical phonographs, batteries, movies, and is generally credited with effectively combining his creations with a business acumen that transformed the world. His success was due to the combination in one man of inventiveness, organizational skill, team leadership, and a devotion to both research and the distribution of the products and services created by his research. He was the ultimate example of success through failure. Most everyone knows that Edison famously made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing a durable light bulb. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
Not as many people know that he tested 17,000 plants for their natural latex content before discovering that goldenrod was the best alternative plant for making rubber. During the years that he was working on that project he is reported to have said:
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
If Ford invented the assembly line, Edison essentially invented the research lab. Much of his work on light bulbs, phonographs, batteries, movies and more than 1000 patents was done in a lab that he created in Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1876. Industrial historians consider it to be the first “industrial research lab.” He was still working when on vacation in Florida. He built a second research lab next to his home in Fort Myers. His contributions were multiplied by his ability to organize others to do the grunt work of research, and his willingness to invest in research and development. Ford was so impressed by Edison’s methodology that he felt the labs should be preserved as examples, and he convinced Edison to sell him both his lab in Menlo Park, and the lab in Fort Myers. Both were meticulously disassembled and moved to Ford’s museum of historic buildings in Dearborn, Michigan.
Ford and Edison were future oriented. In the mid twenties they became concerned about the rising price of rubber from Asia and what might happen if the world’s supply of rubber was interrupted by another world war. One of Ford’s failures was a disastrous attempt to grow rubber along the Amazon in the mid twenties. Ford, Edison, and their friend Harvey Firestone decided to create a new lab at Edison’s Fort Myers estate to search for alternative natural sources of rubber that could be grown in America so that our production of products that required rubber would not be victimized by war or unreasonable prices. Looking for another natural source of rubber was Edison’s last project. The work went on for a few years after his death until Dupont invented synthetic rubber.
On the personal side the two men cared greatly for each other. Ford showed up to support Edison at his birthday. He knew that Edison had difficult hearing so he would have his secretary type up the jokes that he was going to tell at dinner when he went to Edison’s home so that Edison could follow along. What a thoughtful gesture!
Neither man’s home was “Newport ostentatious.” I have been in homes of their contemporaries like the Hearst Castle in California, the Biltmore House in Asheville, and Vizcaya (partially pictured in today’s header), the 1920s winter home in Coconut Grove of the wealthy Chicago businessman, James Deering of International Harvester. You could put ten homes or more like the ones Edison and Ford had in Fort Myer into any of these mansions that were built by people of similar wealth in roughly the same time period. These were hard working men who grew up in the midwest with no great appetite for luxury. They knew who they were without the support of a Mar a Lago.
The search for a new source of rubber seemed to me to be like a new form of an alchemist’s fantasy, but it was launched after a very reasonable analysis of future challenges. I thought about the way both men shared a spirit of discovery, a willingness to take risks, and a willingness to work on projects that seemed far beyond what any one person could do, but what many people could accomplish together. They were interested in work that would improve the quality of life for tens of millions of people in their own time, and for billions around the world over the next century and beyond.
As these thoughts rolled through my head it also occurred to me that both men had returned enormous amounts of the money they had earned to society. Despite his midwestern humor, Ford may not have been someone you would feel comfortable having dinner with because of his anti semitism and affinity for fascist ideology, but he created museums and foundations to go along with his life’s work of putting everyone on the road. There is no doubt that the sum total of all that Edison and Ford accomplished has enriched us all.
As I got past thinking about their obvious accomplishments, it occurred to me that there was a lot that was transferable from the experiences of Ford and Edison to this moment in healthcare. Perhaps I was thinking this way because I have been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Leadership: In Turbulent Times. Goodwin effectively argues that we would be well advised to apply the wisdom from the past to the challenges of the moment. So what advice might Ford and Edison give to those of us who dream of a day when the Triple Aim is like a Super Bowl that has already been won? Your list would probably be as good as mine, and I am sure that my list is shorter than it should be, but here is a first offering.
- Care deeply about the plight of everyone, and think always about what we do not recognize that would be better. Ford got most of us on the road despite the affinity many had for the horse and buggy. Edison enabled us to read in the evening by the light of something better than a candle, and allowed us to save our voices and our images in motion even though no one asked him for those opportunities.
- Think boldly about what could be, and do not let others tell you that your dreams are impossible. In healthcare this means we should focus on innovations as well as improvements. Innovations often face resistance. In his early years Edison was always swimming against the opinion that he was uneducable. His teachers sent him home and told him not to come back to school! Did he have ADHD?
- Embrace teamwork. Ford used it to create the assembly line, but he also used it in the design and development of the ideas behind his cars. Edison’s research labs were both basic and applied science on an assembly line.
- Be persistent. Failures point us to possibilities. Before we tried the ACA or ACOs we did not know where the flaws were or what might be a better approach to providing universal access. Now we know more and need to apply what we have learned.
- Use continuous improvement science as the core of your methodology for improvement and innovation. You can draw a line from Henry Ford and Walter Shewhart through to Deming and Juran, and on to Six Sigma and Lean. The line goes back from Ford and Edison to the birth of scientific method and the enlightenment to the Renaissance. We get stuck at times and need new people to repackage old concepts for new times. Despite the efforts of many to bring continuous improvement to the science of care delivery there is still resistance to using these methodologies that work to bring forth lasting change. Ford and Edison would probably understand because they needed to overcome resistance to new ideas themselves.
- Care about your customer/patients, especially how the price they must pay distorts their access to other necessities of life and things that will add value to their lives. Creating great discoveries and products is only the first step. Developing ways to make them available at an affordable price to everyone is the real challenge. Henry Ford was committed to lowering the price of his car to make it affordable to everyone.
I had a good time visiting where Thomas and Henry once retreated to think big thoughts. I would have loved to tag along behind them just to hear what they were saying to one another. The best we can do is to study what they did do and extract from their demonstrations what we might do to tackle our challenges. Trying to be like or work like Edison or Ford when they were in their creative space may ultimately enable us to extend more lives and improve the quality of life for many more people. If we can achieve the Triple Aim, we will have done even more for humankind than just to give it the ability to move about at will, or to read late into the night listening to music after watching a movie.
I Feel Guilty
After the adventure with Edison and Ford we traveled across “alligator alley” to Miami. We have had one “bad day” on our Florida interlude, but on that day of rain and a drop in temp to the low sixties it was snowing and the temp was in the teens back home in New London. When I am away I am always checking on what is happening weather wise at home. I hate to miss exciting weather events back home. I love a good snow storm, but I also enjoy walking through the back streets of Coconut Grove over to the shaded oval that flanks Vizcaya along Biscayne Bay.
I can take the unseasonably nice weather only by thinking about the fact that it’s nice now, but there is a reason their basketball team is called the “Miami Heat.” It will be unbearably hot here soon. I tell my son that I do not really see the benefit of living year round in South Florida. He uses air conditioning for just as much time each year as I sit by a fire. I can always put on another log or another layer. But, after he has taken off his shirt and is standing in his shorts and is still sweating because it is so hot and humid, what else can he do?
There is much to worry about here in the South Florida opulence. The ocean is rising whether the weekend resident of Mar a Lago believes in climate change and global warming, or not. On one side of town you see nothing but BMWs, Porches, Audis, Mercedes Benzes, and Teslas. On the other side of town you wonder if they are adequately teaching little children to read in these strange times,
Be well, take good care of yourself, let me hear from you often, and don’t let anything keep you from doing the good that you can do every day,
Gene
