#423 Soichiro Honda

**David Senra** (0:00)
I wanted to read a biography of Soichiro Honda after James Dyson wrote about the impact that Honda had on his career. The key lesson that James Dyson took from studying Honda was this framework that Dyson actually used throughout his career, and it was pretty straightforward. It was take an existing product, notice what's bad, clumsy, overcomplicated, or even ignored about that existing product, improve it obsessively and continuously, and you do this by making the product simpler and more pleasurable to use. Then, you retain enough control of your company to keep improving the existing product, and then you repeat this loop and never stop. And so, the book that I want to talk to you about today was written in 1975, and it was called Honda, The Man and His Machines, and it was written by Sol Sanders. And I think the dedication to this book actually describes the kind of entrepreneur that Honda was. It says, to the free spirits in all cultures, the Soichiro Honda typifies. And I want to jump into the introduction, and I want to pull out a few key ideas. I think it gives a wonderful overview of who Honda was. And really, this is a story of a Japanese maverick. And one of the most remarkable things about his life story, and then the work that came out of his life story, is what he had to endure, the changes that were happening at the country level. So it says, across his 60 year career, Japan has come a long way. It has been a torturous trail that led through enormous and seemingly unlimited expansion. The Great Depression, military coup d'etats, the China War of the 1930s, World War II, the nuclear bombing that destroyed two cities, foreign occupation, and the remarkable economic miracle and post-war prosperity. Honda has lived and worked through this all. And this next part goes into his personality and his obsession. There is a man named Honda who very much dominates the history of the company and its products. He has almost constant nervous activity. It takes a while for a stranger to get him into conversation that will reveal the fire in his belly.
What can draw that out is talk of machines. He has a passion for motors.
Motors and machines grab hold of him from a very young age and they never let him go. In fact, he repeats this phrase over and over again that fumbling with machines is what he loves to do and it's what he would do for free. He would fumble with machines before he got paid to do it. He built his career fumbling with machines. And in retirement, what he does is fumble with machines. And one of the things that made this book so much fun to read and Honda is a person so fun to study is that he's just a maverick and a rebel and he's a wild boy. And his personality goes against the grain of the society that he was born and raised in. Honda's thoughts are often controversial in terms of Japanese attitudes, which requires so much conformity from members of society. His straightforwardness sometimes embarrasses the Japanese. Honda was a blunt and direct communicator. His simple and direct approach to many problems is refreshing. It is very appropriate that Honda's efforts have gone to motorcycles, for there is something to the motorcycle rider's feeling of freedom and special sort of being fully charged with one's destiny when you're on a bike. Honda is very much that rare thing in the Japanese environment. He is a free spirit. One of the most remarkable things, in addition to being an engineering genius, is he manufactured the best selling motor vehicle of all time. The Honda Super Cub has been in constant and uninterrupted production for over 60 years. They have sold over 100 million Super Cubs, and once he designed, engineered, and manufactured the Super Cub, he never stopped improving it. One of his main ideas on how to improve your product is to make sure that your company stays useful. He repeats this throughout the entire book. He is obsessed with his company maintaining youthfulness. And by that, he means hiring young people and giving them a chance. So much so that, again, we're still in the introduction, that says, among the factors which dictated his decision to retire from direct leadership of the company was his belief that the technological demands of the new products were beyond him. While he was running the company, he considered himself just an employee of his own company. He would work elbow to elbow with the young engineers. This is one way they described. This is a young engineer at Honda describing what it was like working with Honda. He is a company president who is not like a company president at all. When we say that he works with his employees as one of them, we don't just mean he wears the same uniform as others. We aren't referring to superficial matters. Instead, what we mean is that we find in Honda the same kind of person with whom we can have an on the same level dialogue. And for me, one of the most interesting parts of the story is how much it mirrors James Dyson's own story. This description of what Honda did to the motorcycle market is exactly the same as what Dyson did to the vacuum cleaner market when he started. They took hold of an old and narrow market, made it respectable and expanded it to a size that no one ever thought possible. Another thing that Honda had in common with Dyson is that he believed in the Edisonian principle of design. So Honda wanted to learn by doing. He believed that success first comes with fail, fail, fail, fail, then succeed. And he's got a lot of great quotes in the book on the difference between failure and success and how most of it is just persevering through failure. In fact, this is what he says. Success can only be achieved through repeated failure. In fact, success represents one percent of your work, which results only from the 99 percent that is called failure. I believe your final success can only be achieved if you face challenges with this kind of pioneer spirit. And another idea that Honda repeats is that technology should only be invented to serve mankind, that humanity should not be slaves to technology. And so this is one way he describes it. Technology is a tool to serve mankind. Technology is nothing more than the means for achieving a better life for men. Some people mistake the means for the end and have the wrong idea that scientific technology itself is their goal.