Today’s Chapter is based on the book “The Enzo Ferrari Memoirs: My Terrible Joys” by Enzo Ferrari
Here’s what I have learned from the book:
Focus on a Simple Idea
“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
— Charlie Munger
As we have seen previously among many entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, focus and dedication into one’s vocation is primordial to succeed big things. As we have learned from Musk, his hardcore focus, an ability that allowed him to weed out the noise and to focus on the task at hand was one of his main quality.
Musk mentions that “Ever since I was a kid, if I start to think about something hard, then all of my sensory systems turn off. I can’t see or hear or anything. I’m using my brain to compute, not for incoming information.”
This attitude of hardcore focus on the task at hand became the working culture at all companies that Musk was leading, from Zip2 to Tesla. As a matter of fact, one of Musks’s favorite management tactic was to set an insane deadline in order to drive his colleagues to work fanatically. Musk believed that this fake sense of urgency was good as it encouraged his engineers to engage in first-principles thinking.
“A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.”
— Elon Musk
A perfect example of Elon Musk’s maniacal sense of urgency came during the time he wanted to ramp up the production line of Model S. He wrote an email to his employees at Tesla titled “Ultra hardcore” and it read, “Please prepare yourself for a level of intensity that is greater than anything most of you have experienced before. Revolutionizing industries is not for the faint of heart.”
Similarly, Enzo Ferrari also had a vocation that would eventually “occupy, overwhelm, and even dramatize, the whole of my life”. And that was his dedication to becoming a motor car builder. While he first started his career as a race driver, he quickly realized that his interests were not strictly to driving. He felt he had an urge to work on the cars that he loved so much. Working on cars became the only task he had in his mind.
As a matter of fact, outside of racing cars, Ferrari mentions that he had no other interests in life. He once said, “I have never gone on a real tour, never taken a holiday—the best holiday for me is spent in my workshops when nearly everybody else is on vacation; that is the moment when I and a few of my staff can really concentrate on new ideas, modifications and so on, subsequently enjoying the surprise of the rest of the staff when they return to work.”
A story to illustrate Ferrari’s dedication to car building happened when he met the President of Italy who once asked him if he was going to spend the night at the factory to work on his cars. Ferrari responded with, "But perhaps it's better like that, because it's only by working without a moment's rest that one can avoid thinking of death."
Ferrari believes that this focus into one main vocation — car building — is the main reason for his success in the car industry:
“Single-mindedness of purpose in pursuing one's ambition is, indeed, a force that can overcome many obstacles, although I do not, of course, consider myself unique in this respect.”
— Enzo Ferrari
In my opinion, Ferrari’s concept of “single-mindness of purpose” can also be seen in the way he would engineer his cars. In fact, Ferrari had the conviction that the engine power was responsible for 80 percent of a car’s success on the race track. As such, he gave much more attention in building an engine to squeeze out as much power as possible and spent much less time on the chassis and other car components.
Furthermore, Ferrari also had this almost maniacal dedication in reducing the weight of his cars. This was mostly achieved by using special materials “which have allowed even substantial modifications to be made in engine architecture; the design techniques which have permitted a more rational use of materials and a better utilization of volumes, are, I feel, worthy of mention.”
Over the years (at the time of the writing of the book), Ferrari managed to double the specific power of his engine while reducing the consumption and weight by a third.
This reminds me of the Pareto Principle that we have learned from Tom Monaghan at Domino’s Pizza. Monaghan, stressed on establishing a thirty-minute delivery guarantee policy. To do so, he had to use the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. This principle explains that 80% of outcomes are the results of 20% of inputs.
In Domino’s case, Monaghan quickly realized that even though he sold three different sizes of pizzas, 80% of his sales came from 12-inches pizzas. Similarly, 90% of beverage sold were either Coke or Pepsi.
As such, he decided to reduce his products’ offering by selling only one size pizzas. This was a major revelation and breakthrough in Domino’s Pizza history. By doing so, the company was able to leverage its profits even further. It may seems counter intuitive that simplifying a business may increase its revenue, but here’s how Monaghan explains it:
“The main argument for having only twelve-inch pizzas was faster service. But quality would be improved, too. A pizza maker has to learn how to make each size pie. The twelve-incher is easier and larger ones are much harder. There would be fewer mistakes too both in taking orders and boxing them. With three sizes of pies and just two inches difference between them, it sometimes happened during a rush that a worker would ruin a large pie by trying to jam it into a medium size box. Then there were the saving we would make in purchasing. Having one size would cut our box inventory requirements by two-thirds.”
— Tom Monaghan
Experimentation
“Learning by trial and error, or experimentation, can be exciting, the lessons learned deeply engrained. Learning by failure is a remarkably good way of gaining knowledge.”
— James Dyson
Enzo Ferrari first started in the car making business as Scuderia Ferrari, the racing team under Alfa Romeo. He believed that Ferrari was a good opportunity for Alfa Romeo to gain full report on the behaviour and performance of their cars. As a matter of fact, Ferrari once said that, “It is a recognized fact that races are useful because they stimulate technological progress.”
As such, Ferrari was always in constant innovation and experimentation in order to create a superior car after every season. He explained that “we must inevitably replace it [last year’s racing car] if we are to continue keeping just that little bit ahead.” From 1946 to the day the book was written, Ferrari made over 131 prototypes of engines.
This concept of innovating through failure and experimentation reminds me of James Dyson who was a follower of the Edisonian approach and who created over 5000 hand-made prototypes over four years before finally achieving success with the cyclonic vacuum cleaner. According to Dyson himself, his success comes from improving everyday objects that were always assumed to be unimprovable.
Similarly, Ferrari believed that car manufacturers should make great use of racing as an opportunity for experimentation of new cars, as customers are the ones who benefit directly from it:
“That is why I think that racing, which does so much in quality improvement, brings speedier advantages to a firm that is not a very big one. The customers benefit directly from this dual activity of the smaller concern, for all the innovations learnt from racing experience can find practical application in the normal production models in a relatively short period of time, the smaller output enabling them, in fact, to be introduced much more readily.”
— Enzo Ferrari
In the same line of thought, Rudolf Uhlenhaut of Mercedes once declared that "The manufacturers who build sport cars are able to make more rapid technical progress, since the designer may risk applying new and very advanced ideas, which he could not do were he designing an ordinary family car for mass production."
In fact, Enzo Ferrari reiterate that the race track allows car manufacturers to try out new inventions and to avoid discarding new improvements “before its real possibilities were fully ascertained.” He explains that most evolutions and development of cars can only achieved under “the most abnormal and extreme conditions of use”, hence the necessity of a racing. One of Ferrari’s pleasure was to deconstruct a car after finishing a race to see how the components have held up.
“When, at the end of a Grand Prix race, a constructor dismantles a car that has won a place and finds its component parts at the limit of their endurance through wear and tear, then may he truly claim that he has followed the new formula, and followed it indeed to the limits of human foresight and endeavour.”
— Enzo Ferrari
This concept of constant innovation and experimentation is the key reason why Ferrari never tried to mass produce his cars or to expand his market. In fact, he explains that “The future Ferrari factory must remain more or less the same size as it is at present and must maintain the same standards which we have followed up to now; and to my successor I bequeath a very simple inheritance: to keep alive that constant striving after progress that was pursued in the past, even at the cost of valuable human lives.”
As a matter of fact, he mentions that the reason why he prefers Ferrari to remain the same size is due to the fact that he wanted to focus on his main vocation which was to be a mere builder of motor car in constant seek of improvement rather than to become a large scale manufacturer. Ferrari once said,“The demands of mass-production are contrary to my temperament, for I am mainly interested in promoting new developments.”
This importance put on the concept of using results of experimentation to improve our daily cars reminds me of this quote from Richard Feynman:
“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”
— Richard Feynman
Learn from Others
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
— Isaac Newton
As we have learned previously from Paul Orfalea from Kinko’s, “doing life alone is not second best, it’s impossible.” In fact, when he founded Kinko’s, not only did he had to rely on his copy machines to operate his venture, he also had to rely on other people to manage the stores, to run the company’s real estate ventures and investment opportunities. Orfalea’s motto in life is "Anybody else can do it better."
Orfalea elaborates that many people, often those that succeed in school, make the mistake of thinking they need to do everything by themselves. This is especially false in business. He once said, “Every major success I've had in my life has come about because I knew that somebody, often anybody, whether it was my wife, friend, or business partner, could do something better than I could.”
Similarly, I believe that it is important to rely on others when it comes to learning. As Charlie Munger once said, “We recognized early on that very smart people do very dumb things, and we wanted to know why and who, so that we could avoid them.”
In a similar fashion, Enzo Ferrari often learned through accidents of others. He was always interested in knowing why an accident occurred and would consider it his duty to find out what was at fault in the car. Also, even when he was no longer attending races personally, Ferrari would always kept himself updated by informing himself from the teams and the men around the pits. Alternatively, Ferrari never hesitated whenever a competitor wanted to take a look at his own cars.
Furthermore, Ferrari also mentions that one must not be ashamed from learning from others. He think that “this ability to compromise can be confessed without any feeling of shame, for when a man is prepared to sacrifice some of his pride to achieve his purpose—a purpose aiming at technical superiority that will ensure supremacy in sport—he can be deemed to be morally justified.”
Ferrari is a perfect illustration that seeking the truth is much more important than to fulfill one’s ego of being right. Relying on others for innovation is necessary. As Shane Parrish once said, “Standing on the shoulders of giants is a necessary part of creativity, innovation, and development. It doesn’t make what you do less valuable. Embrace it.” There’s nothing shameful in learning what the best has already figured out, in fact, it should be a quality we should strive to have.
Beyond the Book
Read "Leverage: Gaining Disproportionate Strength" by Farnam Street
Read "Richard Feynman Teaches you the Scientific Method" by Farnam Street
Read "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" by Farnam Street