By John Logan Red (Unabridged) [Audio CD]

by David Magee

The John Deere Way presents timeless business lessons from one of America's top brands. Even as many American manufacturers struggle with low-cost foreign competition, John Deere has not only prevailed, but increased its market share by offering superior quality products built tough and in accordance with time-tested business values. This book shares the company's management principles and corporate values and shows how those values guide the company to increasingly greater success. For business owners and leaders who want to know what real long-term success constitutes--and how to achieve it--The John Deere Way is the only way.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

Audio CD

About the author

David Magee is the bestselling author of the award-winning Dear William: A Father’s Memoir of Addiction, Recovery, Love and Loss, a Publisher’s Weekly bestseller featured on CBS Mornings, and other books including his forthcoming memoir is A Little Crazy (September, 2024), a sequel to Dear William, about mental health and finding purpose and joy written in his inspirational and vulnerable voice.

He's also host of the new podcast (launching Sept. 10, 2024) A Little Crazy. Learn more at www.alittlecrazy.com.

David is a sought-after speaker in communities, business, schools and universities, about mental health and substance misuse challenges and solutions, and he was involved in creating the William Magee Center and the William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing at the University of Mississippi, named after his late son.

Previously, David was a daily newspaper publisher, a media company president, small business owner, a regular guest on CNBC, and once hosted a national cable TV and radio program (The David Magee Show).

He and his wife Kent, a yoga for addiction teacher, live in Oxford, Mississippi.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up because I like John Deere. Reputation matters & that's mostly what this book is about. John Deere has a good one, but this was basically a propaganda piece & if hear the word "values" once more, I may throw up. It was bloated & repetitive, but overall it managed to give a decent history of the company. I would have liked it better if it was a history, but instead it went through that multiple times showing how integrity, values, reputation, & fairness are part of 'The John Deere Way' even though it is a business. If you just want to know the history of the company, the Wikipedia entry is far quicker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Deere

With all the talk about how close the JD company is to its employees, dealers, & customers, I was surprised by that "The Furrow" was not mentioned at all in this book. This JD magazine is sent free to its Ag customers & is amazingly good. While it has some advertising & only shows JD equipment, it also does a great job of highlighting farmers with a variety of issues & their solutions. You can read it online here: https://www.deere.com/en_US/industry/...
(This should not be confused with "Green Magazine", a hobby magazine. http://www.greenmagazine.com/)

If you're looking for a how-to in business, this isn't awful for generalities, but it doesn't give any specifics. Most of this book was in management-speak which washes out or glosses over a lot of the tough times & bad decisions. While JD is a pretty reputable business, they've made tough decisions in tough times which means they've laid off a lot of workers at times, yet still have a huge percentage of lifers & multi-generational workers. They've also managed to expand their business a long ways from their roots as an agricultural equipment maker 170+ years ago into a global business & still keep some manufacturing plants in the US.

If you're not a heavy equipment user you might not get it, but long before the PC - MAC rivalry there was John Deere versus the rest in the Ag equipment business &, as this book mentions far too often, one reason is their reputation. I grew up using a number of different brands, but John Deere generally stood above the rest. This book pushes their jump to a 'stylish' 4 cylinder tractor in the 60s (Prior to that, they only had a 2 cylinder.) but Ford had the N series far earlier. IMO, it was innovative features such as the 2 stage clutch (The first stage operated the transmission & the second the PTO.) that we had on our 1960s 1020 & 2040 that was the big step up. It was a fantastic convenience allowing the motion of the tractor to be halted while the PTO continued to power the attached equipment such as manure spreaders & mowers. That's super important in heavy operating conditions, especially since it divorced the PTO from the rear drive. (We ripped the spider (drive) gear out of our Ford twice, but never on the JDs.) It was certainly far more important that the looks this book seems to think were important. I've never met a farmer who cared much about style.

Quality & the ability to get parts fast (Notice I didn't write 'service'. More on that later.) are both critical in farming. When we invested in a tractor, we kept it for decades & fixed it as needed. Extra equipment is often bought sized to the tractor & isn't always easily used by (attached to) another size or type, so there's a lot of investment in this one multipurpose machine. Also, tractors are built tough, so the major parts don't usually break. A hydraulic pump or alternator might fail, cylinders get worn, or even rims rust out, but the rest of it was generally in good shape. Our old 1020 (mid 60's vintage) ran into the 90s with thousands of hours on it before we had to rebuild the engine. When we did, the parts were still quickly available at a reasonable price.

OTOH, in the mid 90s we had a lot of trouble getting parts for our Ford 1910 purchased new less than a decade before & they didn't seem to care. (We had less trouble getting parts for our old Ford Golden Jubilee circa 1956.) We had a fantastic tractor that would spend a month sitting or getting an expensive workaround done because we couldn't find some critical parts. After a few years of that, we got rid of it since it was more trouble than it was worth. Not the product, just the lack of support. That hurt their reputation in my eyes so badly that when I bought a tractor in 2007, I didn't really consider a Ford (New Holland). I know that the Ford Tractor division was sold to Fiat in the mid 80s & was a mess until it finally got sorted out in the 90s when they became New Holland. I still don't trust them enough, so I bought a JD 5103.

The ag machinery business is a tough one. It's very cyclical. This book would have you think a JD service tech is available 24/7. They're not for any but the biggest customers, like any other business. If you want a lawn tractor worked on in a reasonable amount of time, bring it in during the winter or else it will take months to get it fixed in a rural area where the techs are working on $250,000 combines. (That's for the base of a top model, complete with GPS & automatic guidance. Various heads run $25,000 each & more, though.) When there are bad years, like our drought of 2007, JD Finance has been known to waive interest & work with their customers. A smart move for the long run & they are in it for that.

I listened to the bit about their purchase of Homelite with some amusement. Homelite was once a pretty good brand, but that was decades ago. (My son is still using my grandfather's Homelite chainsaw from the 60s. It doesn't have a lot of hours on it & is a bitch to start sometimes, but it still runs.) They, along with Craftsman power tools, became a bad joke in the 70s & 80s. JD might have made it with them if they'd rebranded them, but they didn't & the shoddy name recognition was too much. I don't know that the product got any better, either. Never gave it a try or knew anyone that did, so they lost millions & sold them a few years later. Today I buy Stihl chainsaws & such at my JD dealership. A far better fit in reputation & quality.

A lot of great companies & products have gone by the way side over the years because the times have changed. Back when JD made his first plow, 70% of the population were farmers & today less than 2% are. (https://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timel...) There are a lot of suburbanites & farming all around the globe, so they've tried their hand at a lot of different things.

Not all have worked out. Their finance division took a bath when they took on RV & boat loans. Who knew those were so different from tractors financially? Apparently they are. Their forays into snow mobiles & bicycles never went well & some of their early construction equipment sucked. For instance, the JD 110 loader was one of the early ones with a hydrostatic transmission that sucked so much juice out of the engine & hydraulics that it couldn't push into & grab a load. You had to push in, pull up, push in a bit more & repeat. A real let down from a Case, Cat, & especially the Bradco. Eventually they get it right or give up & the dealers were usually able to give decent trade-ins, sometimes at the company's expense. We didn't get a great price for the 110 loader, but it washed well enough that we weren't completely turned off. It cost them money, but not reputation.

They did manage to fit their expertise & machinery into a lot of niches by looking ahead, though. For instance, their decision to allow Home Depot to sell their lawn tractors. That was really interesting to hear. I'd heard bits, especially from my local JD dealer who is just 1/2 mile from one. That dealer got all the service contracts while missing out on the sales. It took a couple of years for them to realize how good the deal was, although they've had to make some tough changes to deal with the suburbanite consumer, a very different type of person from the farmers they were used to. They might be a pain, but there are a lot of them & they're now a big portion of the business.

At about the same time, they wound up having to merge their dealership with several others to get big enough to survive, too. This is something else the book glosses over with management-speak, but JD forced their dealers to do this through price breaks & prioritizing shipping from what I heard. In the long run, I think it's worked out better for them.

I can't recommend this book to anyone. I'll continue to buy their established products with a wary eye on reviews of new ones. They don't always get it right, but they've obviously been doing something right for 170+ years.

[Brandon Stickler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author’s purpose for writing this book is to give the reader an inside look at John Deere. Author David Magee takes the reader step by step through how John Deere has survived and prospered for over 170 years.
There are multiple themes or lesson points in the book. The ten key lesson points of this book are: "Embrace the Culture", "Quality Comes First", "Create Change through Innovation", "Always Maintain Integrity", "Commitment Never Quits", "Build a Business as Great as Your Products", "Protecting Your Brand", "All Relationships must be Win-Win, and "Enduring Performance". Each point is an individual chapter that sums up the importance of that point.
“The John Deere Way” is written in an expositional style. The book sheds light upon how John Deere has been successful through the analysis of the company’s history. It describes to the reader not only how John Deere has been successful, but how others can learn from the ways of this company.
I am currently a high school student; however, I find that this book is very inspiring and a useful tool when it comes to building a company or business. While it may not be a how to, the information given in this book is still very helpful to any small or large business owner. This is a flawless, one of a kind book regarding business!

[John Gurney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short, yet somewhat repetitive, concise but historically jumpy, this look at John Deere is very positive. It reads like an authorized biography, though the topic is fascinating. John Deere founded a steel plow manufacturer that revolutionized agriculture. Flowing from its conservative Midwestern roots, the company expanded gradually, emphasizing technology and the customer experience. Later, it was the first to introduce style, using a New York design firm, to farm equipment. A commitment to quality built Deere into one of the world's premiere brands. I learned how the company has been a benefactor not only if charity but of its employees, dating to the Great Depression went it bailed out a local bank holding significant Deere worker deposits.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was this a prospectus for John Deere stock? There was no or little information about how to apply any of the principles to your own life or business. Sorry, I like John Deere, but not what I was looking for in a business improvement book.

[Carson Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like that the book was about john deere. it had a lot of information about the history of john deere. i would recommend this book to anyone who is a john deere lover, farmer, or going into john deere ag mechanics. yes, I would recommend this book to someone.
i didn't not like this book it was a good book all the way around. some of the things I found difficult was the actual reading. the theme of the book was the history of john deere. it taught me a lot about john deere and where it came from. it gives me a better understanding of how john deere started from a one-blade plow company to a multi-billion dollar company.

[Budd Margolis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This feels like a JD sponsored publication.
Thin. But the key basics are repeatedly repeated.

[Steelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Date: November 2011

I listened to this book and found it a very insightful story about the history of Deere and Co. The book follows Deere from the founding of the company in 1837 - when pioneer John Deere built the first self-scouring plow - to the middle part of the first decade of the 2000s. To date, only 8 men have led this iconic company, 5 of them members of the Deere family.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

An inspirational story of a good functioning American business.
I was hoping to learn more about how to run a manufacturing business, but the book was not specific enough to be helpful. Business tips include integrity and values but the author does not provide much detail beyond that.

[Alberto Lopez · Rating 2 out of 5]

An OK book that I found contradicting in its assertions of what
has made Deere a great company. Nonetheless, the end of the book left the platitudes behind and focused on what Deere is now doing as a company attempting to come into this century

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good book for what it was, an account of the John Deere company and how it's progressed through the years and its current standing in society. Not much of a 'How To' business book though.

[Major Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to this book: good story about a great company.

[Logan]

I love case international. Thats why i loved this book.

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

A puff piece for the corporation. But it was fun to read the excerpts involving my father. Those are the only parts I read closely.