Step 4: Give Employees Responsibility For The Success of Your Organization
As a leader, when you let your workforce know they are responsible for the outcome of the success of the company, suddenly something magnificent happens; they put their entire self into the work they do.
Sounds too easy doesn't it? But I've actually done this and it works like magic.
But here is where it gets scary: employees get to control the quality of the product as well.
Quality HAD TO became a priority.
So what did they do?
Here is an excerpt from my award-winning book, Liquid Leadership: Page 116...
Rebirth of the Badass Bike
Early in the seventies, the name Harley-Davidson became synonymous with junk. American Machine and Foundry (AMF), the bicycle and sports equipment manufacturer, had purchased Harley back in 1969, assuming that the Harley name would assure a profit center.
Unfortunately, over time AMF drove the octogenarian company into the ground by streamlining production, cheapening the manufacturing process with inferior parts, and firing employees in an attempt to squeeze every penny out of its acquisition. At the same time, Japanese imports began inundating the United States with cheaper, café-style racing motorcycles. Harley-Davidson became the laughingstock of the motorcycle industry, and even die-hard HOGs (members of Harley Owners Groups) were having trouble supporting a company whose motorcycles could come apart on the highway.
Something had to be done, or else Harley—at the time America’s only motorcycle company—was about to go out of business. In 1981, a conglomerate of investors and thirteen company executives led by Vaughn Beals and Willie G. Davidson, grandson of cofounder William Davidson, bought back an almost-bankrupt Harley-Davidson Motorcycles from AMF for $80 million, and the Milwaukee-based headquarters had to get to work restoring the tarnished Harley name.
The “new” owners had been with the company for years, so they knew the Harley brand and what was needed to turn it around. The first mission was to change how their bikes were made—increasing quality while keeping costs low.
One way they did this was to shift decision making from the top of the organization to the front lines, putting quality control in the hands of assembly workers during any and every stage of the manufacturing process. If a part or a weld didn’t meet the new Harley standard, any worker could stop the line and correct the final product.
"Innovation can thrive only in environments where it is safe to tell the truth." - Brad Szollose
Harley faced the truth quickly and implemented a quality-over-quantity attitude. Pride in workmanship and a sense of purpose returned to the factory floor and the work that employees were involved in. Word began to spread that Harley made great bikes again. Once the internal part of the company was reworked, it was time to change customer perception about the Harley-Davidson brand.
The executive team at Harley is rare for another reason: They don’t just work for the company, they live the motorcycle lifestyle. By participating in racing events and HOG rallies in Daytona and Pennsylvania, they could meet their customers face-to-face. This is not an easy thing for a company to do if its customers feel angry and abused. Yet even though it hurt to listen to painful and honest complaints from customers, it helped give the company still more direction for recovery—and clout.
Meeting Harley owners head-on helped these executives for another reason: It let them show off new products while building brand loyalty. After all, if the guys at the top were riding these cycles, they had to be good. This went a long way to bringing the brand back to life.
As a result of all of this, Harley’s demographic evolved. What had been an affordable motorcycle for a small group on the edge of society became a high-end brand that started to attract doctors, lawyers, and college-educated wannabes who could afford the new bike lines but also wanted to get back in touch with masculinity. The affluent who worked in homogenized offices and courtrooms were suddenly interested in dabbling in the rugged Harley-Davidson lifestyle on weekends. The nine-to-five office worker became a weekend warrior Friday at 5:00 pm.
Since Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Honda had chosen to inundate the United States with their modern café racer look, Harley did the opposite in order to recapture their brand—they deliberately returned to the macho, “retro” look of the past.
But that didn’t stop the development team from looking into the future. Today’s Harley-Davidson brands encompass traditional touring bikes such as the Fat Boy, female biker–focused brands like the Sportster, and cutting-edge bikes like the café racer–style and retro-inspired V-Rod, along with a macho-inspired apparel line of jackets, T-shirts, and helmets. This is part of the strategy that made them strong enough to go public.The lesson here is to give the customer a lifestyle-changing product that is built to last, and support the hell out of that choice.
It’s an amazing turnaround story, but it couldn’t have gotten off the ground if the executive team hadn’t taken a good hard look at their company and faced the truth about the internal and external problems of the Harley-Davidson brand—it was dying a slow and miserable death.
They didn’t live in the glory days, and they neither blamed nor complained. They simply faced the reality of what had destroyed their products and took steps to turn it around and make an even better product that would keep customers coming back.
Truth is the cornerstone of great leadership, and great leadership faces the truth—head-on.
Even if it is uncomfortable.
I am always astounded when companies refuse to face facts. Making money during boom cycles in an economy is easy. Making money during a down cycle requires brilliance.
See you next time for Step 3.
Brad
Brad Szollose
Global Management & Leadership Development Consultant
Author • Workshop Facilitator • Executive Coach • Keynote Speaker
No comments:
Post a Comment