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Edsel Ford was Henry Ford's only child. He had a sad, tumultuous professional life working for his father and died of stomach cancer in 1943 at the age of 49. I wrote him this letter last week...
Dear Edsel,
We've never met, but I'm writing you because I just read Steven Watts' biography of your father (The People's Tycoon) and your story moved me.
I can't quite explain my emotions except to say that I feel for you...a young man with an iconic father, who started his professional career, I'm sure, with hope and promise.
You grew up watching an innovative father transform the landscape of American manufacturing and commerce.
You watched him as he birthed the assembly line and, by that, boosted productivity to levels the world had never seen. You stood close as your dad fought for the little guy, created an affordable car, paid higher wages than anyone and voluntarily limited the workday.
You were there when your dad became the toast of America, the first businessman celebrity, advising presidents, and being pilloried by Will Rogers, the Saturday Night Live of your day.
And you were also there when it all changed.
In 1919, at the age of 26, you became the president of Ford Motor Company. You brought a different kind of leadership than your father. His was autocratic, domineering, paranoid. Yours was collaborative, communicative, emphasizing the team.
Your father viewed you as weak...and humiliated you for it. I can't imagine what went through your mind when he embarrassed you publicly again and again and again.
He would let you make decisions, for example, then at the last second overturn them. He would pit other higher-ups in the organization against you to make life miserable for you, sabotaging you at every opportunity. He was the nation's hero surrounded by a shield of yes-men and no one would challenge him.
Even you didn't stand up to him. Don't take that as overly critical, Edsel. It's tough to stand down an icon, especially when the icon is a dad that you love and venerate.
Your father would let you carry out some decisions you made only to make a very public demonstration of how stupid he thought the decision was.
Do you remember the time you had your employees build a manufacturing apparatus that you felt was important to modernize the Ford product? Remember, he let you draw it up. He even let you build it. And then once it was up he sent his henchmen into the plant to tear it down piece by piece in front of all of the employees.
Edsel, it pained me to read how he undercut you at every turn. How he sadistically played with you. How he cynically toyed with you, like you were a marionette on a string. His abuse was unrelenting; the public floggings unending.
All the while you remained loyal.
The funny thing is that you had the right idea. Those who worked with and for you, even allies of your father, considered you smart and extremely professional. You saw the need to move Ford Motor Company into the future with a variety of car offerings, while your father was buried by his Model T past.
But more than that, your leadership skills were needed. As your dad grew older he grew more divisive, spotlight hogging and egotistical. He lost touch with his workforce and unleashed abusive leadership upon them.
Oh, he didn't abuse them himself. He hired others who did his dirty work for him and then he turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.
He continued to tell himself the lie that his employees still loved him. But they did not; they had come to fear him to the point of kinetic paranoia.
By the 1930s, leadership's abuses led to labor unrest, riots and deaths at the plant. Even then you tried to get him to talk to the employees and their representatives, but he would not. Ultimately it led to unionization. Your father's legacy was forever stained.
Do you see, Edsel? Had your father let you be the leader you were; had he let you communicate with and listen to employees; had he let you collaborate and bring all the best ideas to the table; had he let you facilitate healthy disagreement, then it's possible that Ford Motor Company would not have lost its standing as the leader in the industry, labor strife might have been avoided and an amicable relationship between labor and management might have been preserved-even without a union.
I guess we'll never know.
The years of stress finally caught up with you, my friend. (I hope you don't consider it too presumptuous for me to call you my friend-I feel a strange affinity to you now.)
In your forties, ulcers began to ravage your insides. Finally, you'd had enough and you resigned your position as president of Ford Motor Company. Good for you! But then soon after, you found you had stomach cancer, and you were dead just a few months later.
Well, if nothing else you finally stood up to the old man.
Somewhere down deep your father must have loved you. He treated you fine when you were young and they say he was never the same after you died. A few years later he was dead himself.
You see Edsel, you may or may not know that I teach leadership for a living. And what I'll say about you is that, as innovative as your dad was, and though he was a creative genius who changed the playing field for all American consumers, he was really a poor leader.
You were the leader in the family, Edsel. But, unfortunately your father would not let you be it. He didn't recognize true leadership even when it was embodied in his own son.
It's too bad. Who knows what would have been.
How ironic that fifteen or so years after your death the company decided to honor you by naming a new fleet of cars after you-the Edsel. Isn't it just your luck that the Edsel ended up becoming the poster child for bad business decisions? Abused in life...your namesake ridiculed in memoriam. Sigh.
But I want you to know that I see you Edsel. I see every frustrating, despairing moment. And I'm shining a light on you because you understood big picture, long-view leadership. I'm shining a light on you because you deserve to be known and understood. Your gifts simply never had a chance to be unleashed upon the world.
Thank you for the example you tried to be, Edsel.
Your new friend,
Doug
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