Going back twenty years I was a college instructor, part-time, by both distance education and in-class, face-to-face instruction. The programs that I taught centered on the issue that faces Harley Davidson directly today. The three subjects I taught annually were Change Management, Conflict Resolution, and Cross-Cultural Communications. At the same time, I was the Director/Chief of Operations and Strategic Planning for a larger municipal fire department.
At University I specialized in the field of change management, with a focus on organizations that were immersed in conflict due to the impacts of change. In the space of twelve years, I was tasked with changing the culture within three organizations. I was successful in accomplishing that change in only two of the three organizations.
The failure of being able to create the changes I deemed were necessary for the third organization was in not having a thorough understanding of the intent of the most senior management, which was misrepresented. They were heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, while outwardly suggesting that they would be an honorable partner to the process of accommodating change.
It was an eye-opener for me, as I had not believed that the organization would misrepresent the facts, however, that is exactly what the CEO and Senior Directors were focused on achieving. The perception of change was much more important than its accommodation. Which brings us to Harley-Davidson.
Is Harley Davidson Actually Committed to Change?
Without being immersed in the culture at Harley Davidson, it’s not possible to provide definitive statements about what is or what is not the problem. However, viewing Harley Davidson’s issues as they relate to marketing and acceptance by the public to the products they produce, it’s evident that culture to some degree affects the strategic plan at Harley Davidson, and thereby its success or failure.
Cultural change is rife with issues. Not just for the management and employees of a company, but also for their loyal customers who have bought into that corporate culture. Concerning Harley Davidson, this seems to be a key issue. As suggested at the Wharton School of Business, “Employee emotions have a strong influence on how they approach change, and leaders need to be as analytical and strategize as much about their emotional messages as their cognitive ones. Pay attention to and read others’ emotions, and empathize and engage in perspective-taking to better predict how employees will respond to the change.“
One thing was evident in my experience. Anxiety, anger, and the need for emotional regulation were necessary as each of these elements can and will be exhibited during cultural change.
Without knowing how Harley Davidson has communicated and dealt with these issues, it’s hard to know what impact this is having on employees’ willingness to accommodate change or remain focused on innovation and improvement. If not successfully dealt with, these issues can derail change, and with it, the future fortunes of a corporation.
There are five steps required in creating cultural change, and what might be called intentional leadership. Regardless of the corporation, these five steps need to be utilized if one is to manage the process.
- Qualitative measurement of the organizations cultural values.
- Intentionallly aligning culture, strategy and structure.
- Ensuring stakeholder participation.
- Communicating and demonstrating the changes you want, again and again and again…
- Managing the emotional response – yours and the other party or parties.
The changes required at Harley Davidson will have deep impacts on the stakeholder groups, be they management, employees, or purchasers. In very strong cultures, like Harley-Davidson, people aren’t just buying a product, they are buying into a lifestyle. Whether real or imaginary, this emotional response to a product can lead to a real attachment that creates substantive issues when change is required.
In this blog, for example, just raising the issue of change and how it might impact Harley Davidson’s designs, research, and product development leads some to display anger or a willingness to ignore the impacts of not changing. In Harley’s world, a lack of change, irrespective of all the writing on the wall, has created a situation where its market share has diminished appreciably. Change is not easy.
In 2022, Jonathan Heller Wrote the following in “The Street”, Real Money Pro on July 20th.
“There is one iconic name that has lived through a “lost decade”, and that may be putting it mildly. Harley Davidson Inc. (HOG) shares are down 23% over the past 10 years, 29% over the last five years, and 15% over the last year…During Harley-Davison’s lost decade the only way to have made money on the stock was by opportunistically trading it. It has not been a good buy and hold.”
Having changed management two years ago, and venturing into the field of electric motorcycles, Harley has not seen its loyal clientele follow suit. (McD) or Motorcycles Data’s headline for October 6th, 2023 was, “Harley-Davidson 2023. Never Ending Fall Pushes Global Sales (-7.2%) at Half of Ten Years Ago.” It’s a fact that Harley’s sales performance has been disappointing. In 2014, Harley’s sales were 329,776 units. Today, they are at 137,000 units.
Something has to change at Harley Davidson. While the CEO has changed, the corporate mentality seems to be stuck in the past. Cultural change is hard to accomplish, and not always does it succeed. Many iconic brands have come and gone, which shouldn’t be overtly comforting to Harley Davidson.
In any event, the grand experiment continues and only time will prove whether Harley’s fortunes will improve.
Ciao…
Leave a Reply