organizational structure used at harley davidson

But what happens when the invading armies are turned back and that immediate pressure is relieved? The crisis had receded at Harleywe had regained market share and the company was financially stable again. The defending army looks to its generals for decisive leadership, and the nation prays that those generals are skilled and lucky. We can make an analogy with a country surrounded on all sides by invading forces. What prompted the leadership journeyaway from command and control managementthat you write about in your book?

When Harley was in trouble in the early 1980s, it benefited significantly from just this kind of decisive leadership style. Because they're top-down and more or less unilateral in their decision making, command-and-control organizations can move quickly in a crisis. If an organization is under extreme pressureso much so that one wrong move can mean the death of that organizationthen an authoritarian system of controls may be absolutely necessary. But command and control works in certain situationsand in fact may be the only thing that works when circumstances are desperate enough. We believe that traditional command and control hierarchies are of limited effectiveness and have a host of fatal flaws in the long run. Do you still believe in its effectiveness given the 'softer' management style Harley has adopted?

You've said that the command-and-control leadership at Harley during the 1980s was critical to its well-known financial turnaround. In More Than A Motorcyle, Teerlink and Ozley chronicle Harley's journey toward a new kind of organization that recognizes people as a company's only sustainable competitive advantage. Retired Harley-Davidson CEO Rich Teerlink and organizational consultant and coach Lee Ozley were the two individuals most deeply involved in the transformation of the company in the 1980s and 1990s. A conversation with Rich Teerlink and Lee Ozley, authors of More Than a Motorcycle: The Leadership Journey at Harley-Davidson, HBS Press, 2000.

Organizational structure used at harley davidson