075 Humanizing Your Organization with Ken Schmidt

The Culture Coach

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I had such a great conversation with my guest Ken Schmidt this week. One of Ken’s great career successes came from his formerly held leadership role in Harley-Davidson Motor Company’s against-all-odds turnaround from the brink of financial ruin to global dominance during the 1990s. That transformation was based on his highly unconventional re-positioning of the motorcycle icon’s marketplace presence. Ken shifted the company’s culture from a “product-first” mindset to one that prioritized being memorable for how they connect with people. The company swiftly grew to become the most successful player in the fiercely competitive worldwide motorcycle industry with the highest levels of customer loyalty of any consumer hardware brand in existence.

Ken is also the author of Make Some Noise: The Unconventional Road to Dominance, ghost-author of “100 Years of Harley-Davidson” (the best-selling motorsports book of all time), host of the Tailgating with Geniuses podcast and co-founder of Torque Sessions Leadership Training. Ken has seen the world on two wheels, partied with rock stars and movie legends, met presidents and royalty, and can’t stand still. He lives by a personal and professional philosophy that states, “Never do what’s expected, always make yourself as noticeably different as possible and have a lot more fun than you’re supposed to.”

Here are some of my takeaways:
1. You put a face on a business before it becomes humanized and competitive.
2. People support what they helped to create.
3. Leading with humanity trumps leading with product and service.
4. If the behavior doesn’t match the language, there is an immediate disconnect.
5. You’re not passionate about what you do until other people tell me that you are.
6. We are a joy-seeking species. We return to a source of delight until it fails to delight us.
7. We are not loyal to a company; we are loyal to the people. All that we can do is relate to things on human terms.
8. If the first thing you do is launch into your business speak, you’ve created a counter-human experience for me. You made the conversation about you instead of about me.
9. Think about the people that are going to call you for help, remember it is not your job to tell them what to do, you need to say and do things that are going to cause them to Remember and Repeat.