More Than a Motorcycle: The Leadership Journey at Harley-Davidson

Rich Teerlink, retired CEO of Harley Davidson, and Lee Ozley, organizational consultant, have teamed up and written about Harley Davidson's transformation from a hierarchical command and control organization to what they call a "Circle Organization". The book primarily focuses on Harley's organizational change from 1987 to present. Many aspects of the organization are covered in good to great detail. In order to survive and meet growing demand and increasing global competition, Harley Davidson had to transform itself and undergo a radical process of organizational change. Attributing the traditional command and control structure to the American railroad empires of the nineteenth century, Harley sought to make change and break from this traditional form of an organization. As the authors' state, "This is a book about planting seeds and encouraging other people to nurture the seedlings". This book reads like it was written about a start up company that was an unexpected overnight success. Harley really had to toss out all of their old ideas on organizational operations and start from scratch. What is amazing is how this was done without creating animosity from within the organization. The authors take you through the proposed and enacted plans that helped transform Harley. The Joint Vision Process was formed so that employees on all levels could share the same goals for where they and Harley wanted to be. Both Rich and Lee believe that the people within an organization have the biggest impact on an organization. They shaped their plans with this as the number one factor and this book gives excellent insight on how they implemented their ideas.

The allure of the Harley Davidson Motorcycle is powerful as demonstrated by the 150,000 Harley enthusiasts who converged on Milwaukee, Wisconsin to commemorate the 95th anniversary of the legendary company in June of 1998. The Harley Davidson motorcycle has a special place in the American psyche. The most recent decade's successes with solid performing stock and market share hide from the uninformed the struggles Harley Davidson has faced as recently as fifteen years ago. Rich Teerlink, the former CFO of Harley Davidson and his consulting partner Lee Ozley, share some of their insights of Harley Davidson in their new book, More Than a Motorcycle. The duo share how the company transformed it's "command and control" hierarchy that was effective to overcome some of the market share pressures of the Japanese to a more employee-empowering structure. The book provides an interesting notion that could have appeal in many organizations and corporations across the globe. The book is structured to provide the background on Harley Davidson and the call to action as foreign expansion created market share pressure. In the chapter entitled, The Whole Package, Harley's compensation system is discussed. The authors realized that without looking at the compensation system in place and seeing how it did or didn't support the new models and/or behavioral change, the organizational change model would be incomplete. There were two primary goals 1) make a larger portion of the employee's compensation at-risk or variable and 2) to compensate all employees essentially the same way, i.e., create the same pay components that apply across the company. Harley's journey through motivational theory and best practices is shared. Harley realized that money doesn't equate to total compensation. The chapter describes the compensation models created for Harley. Of special interest to folks in the training and development industry is the chapter on Lifelong Learning. Harley created a mantra for the organization: "Encourage intellectual curiosity," that was a stated value for the corporation. Harley's leadership group was looking to reinvent the traditional corporate training model and make it fit the corporation's focus on lifelong learning. To do this, it moved from a traditional bottom-down instructional designer created learning model to one that empowered all employees to become lifelong learners. This journey into lifelong learning is described including In-House Learning Centers and the use of Learning Maps. There is also a discussion of Motorcycle U, Harley's dealer learning organization. The book also includes chapters on communications (a thorny issue in any large organization) and wraps up with some of the major signposts along the change that happened at Harley. The latter portion of the book provides a nice synopsis of the major change initiatives that occurred at Harley. In summary, I think the title says it all about this book: More Than a Motorcycl

More than a Motorcycle is more than an organizational memoir. This is a very personal account of two men struggling for over a decade to rebuild an American icon, Harley-Davidson. As crisis after crisis had been met with top-driven management, company leader Rich Teerlink began the process to take the employees out of the sidecar and onto the driver's seat. In a unique relationship with an organizational consultant Lee Ozley who shared Teerlink's vision of cultivating a participative environment, this story leads us through the starts and stops of a long journey whose destination is to put America's hog into American workers' hands and hearts. We are allowed to sit behind them as they straddle the conflicts of keeping the organization financially productive while processing the changes necessary to sustain it.

The story (the ups and downs) behind the decade-long change process to move HD from a command-and-control organization to one where employees not only have their say but also their accountability in the overall success of the company. If you are a consultant, you might learn a trick or two in what to do and not to do in a large change management engagement. In addition, Lee's (consultant and co-author) move from consultant to Rich's (CEO and co-author) coach/partner in this journey is particularly interesting. Another interesting topic throughout the book is how to deal with unionized workers.A GREAT BUY FOR ANY CONSULTANT (strategy, change management, operations, etc.). YOU'LL NEVER LOOK AT A HARLEY THE SAME WAY...The reviewer, is currently a Senior Director of eBusiness Strategy at Xpedior and has worked at Gemini Consulting, IBM, and General Mills. He earned his MBA from York University and completed the Wharton School Multi-National Marketing and Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering from the University of Toronto.

I don't know how many people have written about, or talked about,or taken some credit for Harley-Davidson's success, or in some way jumped on the bandwagon to somehow be tied to the great successses that have happened at Harley Davidson. I can tell you that Ozley and Teerlink have the BEST view of them all! They were there through the ups and downs and they are closer to this organization than anyone can understand, unless of course you read their book. Their book gives you (what this reader beleives) is the "real" story with no punches or marketing hype.A must read for anyone in business and an honest straight forward dialogue of what it takes to build a collaborative and powerful organization such as Harley-Davidson.What took you guys so long to get this story out?