The first chapter, “Brave New World: Changing How the World Works,” provides two valuable change management tools for cultural transformation. It:

• Describes the Ford Motor Company's profound expansion of the United States' wealth and power, and its role in other parts of the world. This should overcome typical barriers to change like, "How do we know it will work?" (It did.) "What's it going to do for the bottom line?" (Ford wrote with a straight face in 1930 that his biggest problem was keeping profits down.)
• Shows that Henry Ford, or at least his books, taught the Japanese how to make those inexpensive, high-quality cars that captured a large share of the American market during the 1970s and 1980s. Earlier scientific management practitioners like Taylor and Gilbreth laid the foundations of what we now call lean manufacturing; Ford systematized it on an unprecedented scale. He also took the lean concept beyond the shop floor and into his supply chain, thus creating the lean enterprise. American workers and managers may be more receptive to lean manufacturing as the reintroduction of U.S. developed methods than as the importation of Japanese methods.

The next three chapters relate primarily to individual success, organizational behavior and culture, and organizational psychology— i.e., the "soft sciences." Engineers and managers who want to transform their organizations must understand and apply these chapters' contents to gain the workforce's enthusiastic participation.

• “Ford's Principles: The Foundation,” shows the close alignment of Ford's personal philosophies and values with Japanese culture. Japan's receptivity to Ford's ideas may have involved more than industrial engineering and technology.
• “Ford and Labor Relations” shows what employers must do to earn and keep the loyalty and commitment of their workers. The basic idea is that managers, professionals, hourly workers, and stockholders are all partners in the enterprise. The only way for each stakeholder to get a bigger piece of the pie is to make the pie bigger.
•  “Principles for Organizational and Personal Success” discusses key characteristics for individuals and enterprises that want to succeed at anything. These include an internal locus of control (self-reliance), vitality, and persistence. The chapter also describes the corporate culture of the early Ford Motor Company and shows how the company later lost that culture.

The next five chapters describe Ford's principles for operational effectiveness in any organization. Chapters 7, "Eliminate Waste," and Chapter 8, "Ford's Factory," are of particular interest to lean practitioners because they focus respectively on waste reduction and lean methods. "Ford's Factory," the book's longest chapter, is full of specific examples of lean manufacturing techniques. Chapter 9, "Marketing and Supplier Relationships," includes supply chain management and supplier development.

•  “Perceiving Genuine Value” discusses what adds value and what doesn't. Manufacturing is the backbone of national prosperity and security, and the United States must stem the loss of its manufacturing capability. Value comes from Ford's three principal arts: agriculture (to which we may add mining, lumbering, and other extractive industries that get raw materials from nature), manufacturing, and transportation. The stock market, retailing, and the government do not create value or add value to anything. Do not allow the cost accounting system to run a business enterprise.
•  “Ford on Economics and Government” discusses the role of monetary systems, business cycles, government, and the stock market on businesses and the creation of wealth. Ford was confident in the ability of a well-managed business to defy cyclical market effects. Both the government and the stock market can encourage dysfunctional behavior that undermines a value-creating enterprise.
• “Eliminate Waste” is about how to make money—a lot of money. The elimination of waste from every aspect of a business enterprise adds the savings directly to the bottom line. This is how Ford increased wages while reducing car prices and expanding his business. People often look straight at waste without recognizing it. The reader will learn from this chapter how to look at any manufacturing or economic activity in a new light and recognize waste when he or she sees it. Registration to the ISO 14000 standard for environmental management systems should be not only free but profitable.
•  “Ford's Factory” covers Ford's introduction of most so-called Japanese management techniques, along with a couple of ideas that we associate with W. Edwards Deming and Tom Peters. The former include just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing, error-proofing, design for manufacture, motion efficiency, and process simplification. The latter include flat, lean, and porous organizations.
•  “Marketing and Supplier Relationships” focuses on identifying and creating markets and working with suppliers. Ford's success began with a clear vision statement about his prospective market. He also described supply chain management and supplier development.

Henry Ford said, "I am going to see that no man comes to know me" (Gourley, 1997, 38), but it useful to trace and study the people and literature that influenced him.

•  “Frederick Winslow Taylor and Scientific Management” discusses the relationship between Ford's industrial methods and Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management. It dispels the myths and stereotypes about Taylor's desire to turn workers into mindless robots or automata. Taylor actually introduced many ideas that modern management science considers very progressive. Scientific management and Frank Gilbreth's motion efficiency studies are, in fact, the direct forerunners of modern lean management.
• “The Influence of Benjamin Franklin” discusses another inventor, and one of Ford's fellow Freemasons. Ford wrote in his discussion of the economic depression that followed the First World War, "Nothing has happened in our history to render out of date the business philosophy of Benjamin Franklin. Poor Richard's Almanac is still the best business compendium. The old American virtues of thrift and industry have no successors or substitutes. Business success is still a matter of making friends by service, and not a case of cornering necessitous people in such a way that they will have to come to you" (Ford, 1922a, 282-283).