Inside Charles F. Kettering’s mind

The prolific inventor, entrepreneur, and civic influence Charles F. Kettering was still alive in the Dayton community when I was an aspiring chemist in my youth.

My career in science never materialized, but his influence as an inspired ideal of leadership remains.

You may recognize the name from the famed Sloan-Kettering cancer research hospital in Manhattan or from the city in southwest Ohio named in his honor. He also led the research teams that invented the electric cash register, the automobile electrical self-starter, and no-knock gasoline. Other work made the diesel engine practicable as well as the refrigerator and, in time, air conditioning. In all, he had 186 patents, second to fellow Ohioan Thomas Edison. He was a founder of Delco (Dayton Electrical Laboratory Company) and from 1920 to 1947 was head of research for General Motors.

As a power in the new General Motors corporation, he aligned with management pioneer Alfred Sloan – as in that Sloan-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan,.

Let me repeat, there’s even a city named in his honor.

Today we have another Double Tendrils.

Get ready to know him better. Let’s start with his perspectives on the creative process and problem-solving, especially as they apply to engineering and invention.  Here’s what he said:

1. If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.
2. I don’t want men of experience working for me. The experienced man is always telling me why something can’t be done. The fellow who has not had any experience is so dumb he doesn’t know a thing can’t be done – and he goes ahead and does it. … The person who doesn’t know something can’t be done will often find a way to go ahead and do it.
3. Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. … 99 percent of success is built on failure.
4. An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
5. Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need. … A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.
6. All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise, we would never have anything new.
7. A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple. Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices. We know too many things that are not true.
8. Research means that you don’t know, but are willing to find out.
9. We work day after day, not to finish things; but to make the future better … because we will spend the rest of our lives there.
10. If I want to stop a research program, I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place.
11. When I was research head of General Motors and wanted a problem solved, I’d place a table outside the meeting room with a sign: “Leave slide rules here.” If I didn’t do that, I’d find someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he’d be on his feet saying, “Boss, you can’t do it.”

And now for his perspective on life itself.

1. There is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.
2. The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
3. If you’re doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong.
4. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.
5. My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.
6. If I have had any success, it’s due to luck, but I notice the harder I work, the luckier I get.
7. The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.
8. No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.
9. You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
10. Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.

He really was one who made America great.