The engineer took out an axe and slammed it into the brick wall.

As far as he was concerned, it was the only choice that remained. It was June 1896. The young man had spent months working on a project in a small brick shed behind his rented house, only to realize, at 4am, that the shed door wasn't big enough for him to get what he'd built outside.

So it was that the young man found himself smashing away bricks to make enough room for he and his assistant to wheel the new creation onto the street.

His name was Henry Ford. His creation, the Ford Quadricycle.

The Quadricycle was a lightweight, open-air carriage mounted on four bicycle-like wheels and driven by a small, two-cylinder, gasoline-powered internal combustion engine.

For Ford, who at the time was serving as Chief Engineer at Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, it was a historic first step toward launching what would become a legendary career in the world of automotive design and manufacturing.

Just three years later, after securing critical financial backing, Henry Ford left his job to launch his first company. A few years after that, with a few survivable failures under his belt, he partnered with a new group of investors to launch the Ford Motor Company.

His atomic insight was simple:

He began viewing the factory itself as the product.

While others obsessed over the car, he obsessed over the optimization of the factory. Every single worker's footstep. Every single minute of production time. Every single constraint. These became his sole focus.

And the results were undeniable.

Henry Ford was able to drive down the cost of the Ford Model T from $850 in 1908 to $260 by the 1920s.

The drop in price made automobile ownership accessible to the masses, not just the extremely affluent. The Model T put everyone on the roads. It quite literally transformed the world.

By the early 1920s, Ford Motor Company owned an extraordinary 60% of the United States market share for automobiles.

But around 1921, the ground began to shift.

Henry Ford's son, Edsel, whom he had appointed President of the company, began noticing that consumer preferences were changing. With the abundance of simple, black Model Ts on the road, some consumers seemed to be looking for something different. Something to stand out. To signal status. To provide new luxury.

When he voiced these opinions to his father, he was met with harsh rebukes. The template Henry Ford developed had worked. Almost too well, in fact. So well that it blinded him to the changes that were underway.

In one infamous earlier incident, when Ford returned from a trip to find a new car prototype that his team had developed with a refined body, he flew into a rage. He physically attacked the vehicle, ripping off doors and smashing parts with his bare hands.

It was a visceral reminder: In his company, it was his way that had worked and it was his way that would remain.

The maniacal attention to detail and systematized rigor that had served him had now come to own him.

And while Ford was destroying new prototypes and rejecting changes, another business leader was building a company with adaptation as its core principle.

Alfred Sloan took over as President and CEO of General Motors in 1923.

Sloan had a different atomic insight:

He began viewing the company itself as the product.

He wasn't an inventor or a car guy in the way that Ford was. He was a systems engineer. And he designed General Motors as a company with adaptability at its core.

Rather than a rigid structure with him as the sole decision maker, Sloan designed an organization with clear divisions of labor, decentralized decision making, proper data tracking, and strategic financial control.

This approach meant that as the car market shifted, the company was capable of shifting with it.

Under Sloan's management, while Ford sputtered, GM's market share doubled, from around 10% at the start of the decade to around 20% by 1925.

In 1927, Chevrolet, a General Motors brand led by Ford's former production chief, outsold the Ford Model T.

The lesson in this story isn't as simple as it may seem on the surface. The common interpretation wants to say Ford Bad, Sloan Good, but the reality is decidedly more nuanced.

Ford's approach worked, until it didn't. Ruthless attention to detail. Centralized decision making. Narrow, refined focus. All of these attributes and organizational principles enabled the extraordinary innovation that makes Henry Ford a household name today. But his rigid adherence to them when they no longer suited the reality on the ground led to his own decline.

Sloan's approach wouldn't have worked, until it did. Organizational design. Decentralized decision making. Broad-based accountability and authority. All of these attributes and organizational principles enabled the adaptation that allowed General Motors to steal share and thrive. But if Ford had tried to implement them at the zero to one phase, chances are he never would have gotten off the ground.

In other words, my own interpretation is that it's not Don't be a Ford or Be a Sloan; rather, it's Be a Ford, then a Sloan.

I think this general rule applies to every area of your life:

• Health. The intensity and crazy routines that may have worked in your 20s will struggle to survive the shifting priorities as you enter your 30s and 40s. You may become a parent, or simply have new responsibilities that force an adjustment.
• Relationships. The rituals that promoted deep connection with your partner or friends when you had ample time in your 20s are difficult to maintain when life starts accelerating.
• Money. The financial frugality and discipline that helps you achieve independence may hold you back from enriching experiences that require letting go.

But it most prominently appears in business, specifically on the entrepreneurial journey:

Most of us start out as a natural Ford. We are involved in every decision. We set the direction and execute on it. We win by being on top of everything. We say (and believe) things like, "If I want it done well, I have to do it myself."

But the skillset, systems, and structure that can get you to your first million aren't the same as the ones that can get you from one to ten million, or again from ten to one hundred million.

You need to change. You need to adapt. You need to be a Ford, then a Sloan.

So, how can you navigate that transition?

First, you need to diagnose where you are currently. How are you currently operating? What are your operational blind spots and bottlenecks? Where do you need to adjust or change in your approach? What once served you that has started to own you?

My friend and author Codie Sanchez offers a neat diagnostic tool for this that she calls the Owner Score in her new book ​Own or Be Owned​. It takes about 15 minutes, but it's a great starting point that helps identify your personal gaps.

Note: You can take an online version of the assessment for free ​here​.

Next, you need to check in regularly. Create a monthly or quarterly cadence for course corrections.

Ask yourself these questions:

• If everything were to stay the same, what one change would create the greatest impact? If you could only change a single variable in your business, which one would have the greatest impact? The forced constraint is helpful in identifying the atomic variable. The one change with ripple effects into every other area.
• What decision have I been delaying for fear of letting someone down? I find that one of the most common walls for leaders is the fear of disappointing others. But those hard conversations you delay just make for harder conversations later.
• If I were to hire a world class CEO to run this business, what changes would they make in the next 100 days? Why am I avoiding those changes? What's stopping me from making them now?

Henry Ford took a literal axe to a brick wall to get his creation out into the world. But eventually, he unintentionally built walls that kept it constrained.

Adaptability is the key to life.

Be a Ford, then a Sloan.