Meetings Blog Jan 23, 2020
The quotations that become famous do so for a reason, often providing us with deeper insight, inspiration or another emotional link. In our series we reflect on various famous quotes and how they can be used to feed the demands of meeting and event planners. Today: Henry Ford.
Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.
Henry Ford’s name is synonymous with motor cars and the entrepreneur is also well-known for the development of the assembly line for vehicles. By doing so, he was the person who put owning a car within the reach of millions of families in America and also developed various over his career. Born in 1863, the founder of the Ford Motor Company had a huge influence on the 20th century, introducing us to the famous Model T automobile and building a fortune based on his vision of mass production, high wages and a constant desire to find more efficient, therefore cheaper, methods of working.
During an interview in 1929, Ford was asked what the secret to his vast success was. His reply came quickly: “Getting ready. Getting prepared. (…) Before everything else, get ready.” A paraphrased version of his more detailed answer became one of his best-known quotes but there was so much more to the meaning behind it.
He referenced two people in that interview that he said he knew had “found the secret”: Thomas Edison and Charles Lindbergh, famous for, among other things, the light bulb and non-stop flight respectively. Ford’s point was that they both got themselves into a position of readiness before starting, something he learned to do, resulting in him not selling his first car till 1903, ten years after it was originally made.
“It is these simple things that young men ought to know,” he said at that time, “and they are the hardest to grasp.”
This is surely a message that every planner in the MICE industry will be able to relate to perfectly. It’s not often that an event you are responsible for is successful if you’ve not put in the days, weeks and months of preparation ahead of it. The triumph that is reflected upon after everything has ended is seen through that prism that all the required elements to the plan had come together as one. You were ready, you were prepared, and you were in a position to start the event.
It’s interesting to note that Ford clarified the first part of the quote that has been remembered and used long after his death. “When I say ‘before everything else,’ I know it includes almost everything else.”
