Acceptance speech by Derrick Kuzak

These are the remarks delivered by Derrick Kuzak '73, '74, '76, Ford Motor Company group vice president for Global Product Development, upon being named the 2009 Engineering Alumnus of the Year by UDM's College of Engineering & Science, at the 77th annual Slide Rule Dinner Dance, March 28 at the Detroit Cobo Conference Center.  For more on the occasion, see the Alumni of the Year article.

Good evening everyone.

I would like to thank Fr. Stockhausen, Dean Hanifin, and the entire UDM faculty and administration for my recognition this evening.

I am truly humbled to simply be included in the same group as the past honorees.

And given that I have spent the vast majority of my professional career at Ford Motor Company, I share this honor with all of the exceptional Ford people I have had the chance to work with, and learn from.

And most importantly, I would like to thank my wife Kate for her unwavering partnership over 30 years of marriage and for our proudest accomplishment, our daughter Allison.

This evening I thought I would spend a few minutes addressing the students with us tonight. And provide them some of my thoughts on what it takes to achieve success in today's business environment.

An environment more complex, more global, and more difficult than any of us imagined as recently as even a year ago. Consider this, in polite terms, a voice of experience or more accurately, some words from someone whose just been around a long time.

All of the students are devoting themselves to learning engineering or science disciplines. They are all honing their analytical capabilities. While such learning and thinking skills are the foundation of your future success, they are not sufficient.

In his biography, General Colin Powell tells of the time he was sent from Washington to evaluate the most advanced tank technologies. In a military exercise, they equipped each tank command with different technologies, and placed a technical expert on board each tank. In this way, they'd find out which technology would win.

Powell's conclusion was that it wasn't the technology or experts, but the leaders of the individual tank units, who made the decisive difference. Powell wrote, "People, particularly gifted commanders, are what make units succeed." Powell went on to say, "The way I like to put it, success is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible."

So today, I'd like to explore those qualities of success that go beyond the knowledge and tools. Being an engineer, I of course had to define "success" by an equation. What else? My equation is: Knowledge and skills plus fundamental traits equal success.

Let's look at each component of the equation:

First, knowledge. When people think of knowledge they think mental capacity, analytical skills, and a depth of expertise in a given specialty. That's necessary, of course. All of the students are smart people. They are after all at UDM.

But no one is smart enough, or knows enough, to make the right decisions on their own, in businesses as technically and globally complex as for example the automotive business. Our products are too complicated, our technologies too sophisticated, our global markets too differentiated for any individual to make decisions alone.

That's why we need teams. To bring together a vast array of expertise … with genuine diversity, a wealth of different perspectives on every problem. Too much knowledge on a single subject, in fact, can sometimes be a trap. For we learn what can't be done.

The value of team diversity is based on what I like to call "intelligent ignorance" — insights by people who haven't been professionally brainwashed into knowing what isn't possible. In fact, a significant number of breakthroughs come, not from the specialist in his or her area, but from outsiders looking at it with unjaundiced eyes.

While we don't know who first discovered water, we can be sure it wasn't a fish.

At Ford, as you may know, we have made working together our fundamental business strategy. We have realized that the greatest power of Ford is for all regions of our global company, the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and for all disciplines, engineering, purchasing, marketing, manufacturing, and finance, to work together under ONE plan focused on our greatest asset, the Ford Brand. We call it "One Ford."

So that brings me to the second element of my equation — skill, and the most important skill of all — skill in understanding and working with people, taking the knowledge of what makes people tick, and adding understanding of what makes them click. What makes them, as a team, do more than the science of management says is possible.

We used to say in the automotive industry that we wanted people with gasoline in their veins. Today, we want people with blood in their veins — people with broad backgrounds, broad interests, people who understand customers and co-workers.

So to be successful you need skill in understanding people, and communicating with them. Communication skills are essential to success, yet here is where the engineers in the audience often fall short.

The problem is engineers love complexity. We engineers can sometimes think that "if it isn't broke, it doesn't have enough features." So as communicators, we tend to get intrigued, and bogged down, with all the implications and nuances of an idea. Yet it's an absolute truism that a problem simply stated is half solved.

There is a reason why at Ford the senior management asks our teams to present their proposal on one page. It's not for senior management to know it, but to see if the team really knows it.

So the first half of my equation for success is knowledge and skills, and the second half — and just as important — is your fundamental traits, essentially, who you are. Who you are isn't something that's fixed for life. I believe who you are is who you decide to be. We create an image for ourselves, then spend the rest of our lives living up, or down, to that image.

Successful people do have some common fundamental traits. First, and foremost, is integrity. You may think that politics and under-the-table maneuvers help someone become successful, but you are wrong. The successful person is one who others trust on their teams. He or she lives by the simple motto — Say what you are going to do, then do what you say.

Second, successful people have a willingness — no, an eagerness — to learn and to continue learning for life. Learning does not end with graduation. Successful people have an intense curiosity and a humility that comes from the realization that there is always more to know.

I find particularly inspiring a quote from Thomas Edison when he was 80 years old. Here was a man who had given the world hundreds of new ideas. Yet Edison said, "The excitement in life comes from the fact that we don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."

Third, successful people not only have a desire to learn, but understand they have a responsibility to teach. Successful people believe ideas are like electricity, of no use whatsoever unless they are flowing freely. Henry Ford echoed the same thought when he said, "No one will ever get anywhere in this world unless he becomes a teacher, one who can show others how to do things."

Finally, successful people are doers. They accept responsibility and accountability and they get on with getting things done. There is a question I once saw on a Leadership I.Q. test. It asked, do you believe that all decisions are made with insufficient information?

If you answered "yes," you had the potential for success. As engineers and scientists, we'd like to have all of the facts before we act, but the reality is that's just not possible.

Decisions must be made, and we'll never have enough facts to make them with absolute confidence. Successful people know when it is time to get on with a decision.

So that's my equation for success: Knowledge and skills plus fundamental traits equals success.

Notice in all of this I didn't once use the word "charisma" or "magnetism" or "transformational leadership." You see those terms a lot in today's business literature. And, yes, I guess if you're trying to gain followers among the masses, if you want to create a cult, then you need charisma.

But that's a long way from the type of success where you lead thinking, creative teams. Success isn't about drawing attention to yourself, but drawing out the best from the people you work with.

Real success comes not in making all the decisions, but in making sure all the best decisions are made.

And when I look at it all, it's clear that success today will not come easily. You cannot just take life as it comes and go along with the crowd, but rather you have to make the kind of determined and consistent effort that it takes to lead, to make things happen.

You have to develop and hold up a vision: to see more than meets the eye, and to see potential in people who may not even see it in themselves. You have to believe that your team can do more than the science of management says is possible.

Without striving for such success, you can be left with a reality that is gray — a career that can be mundane and uneventful.

All of the students at UDM are receiving a world-class education that provides them the foundation for success. And by being at a Catholic university in an urban environment, a set of values are being reinforced that will serve your personal and spiritual life well for a lifetime.

All I can further do this evening is to encourage each of you to strive for success, to do more than you ever thought you could.

Thank you for your kind attention.