Introduction

SEARS IS AN extraordinary study in corporate change. It grew its fortunes as a mail-order retailer. Its first mail order catalog was in 1883, selling watches and jewelry. By 1896, the iconic Sears catalog included bicycles, clothes, groceries, pianos, medical supplies, cars, and even kits to build houses. The mail-order retailer filled a great need as our country spread out to small, rural towns and family farms with few nearby retail outlets.

Then, as Americans increasingly moved to cities and suburbs and had greater access to shopping centers and malls in the latter half of the twentieth century, Sears adapted. It reduced its reliance on mail order and was instead an anchor store for malls all over the country. It became the largest retailer in the world, and it had the extraordinary deftness to alter its business model from mail order to brick and mortar. In 1993, it ceased producing its famed catalog altogether.

But then the company became stale. Its name and brands lost their luster. Business drastically declined as Walmart superstores and other big box stores grew, along with other specialty retailers such as Best Buy and Home Depot. Its management team had lost the agility or foresight that had been demonstrated in the not-too-distant past.

Then, ironically, came Amazon, in effect today's dominant mail order retailer. Sears attempted to recreate its former extraordinary mail-order (that is, online) business, but the effort failed. The Amazon juggernaut further hurt shopping malls, and Sears filed for bankruptcy protection in 2018.

The point, however, is much bigger than Sears alone. The bottom line is everything changes, all the time, and absolutely nothing can be done to prevent it. "Change or die." "Change is not mandatory; survival is optional." "When you're finished changing, you're finished."

Those businesses that have the vision and drive to change will thrive as Sears did when it initially transformed from mail-order to brick and mortar. Those that can't keep changing will, ultimately, join the corporate obituary pages like Sears.

Of course, Sears is not unique in failing to successfully change. But in the merciless, survival of the fittest world of a free-market economy, at some point or another most companies will fail if they don't adapt, if they don't change. All companies large or small need to continuously adjust to the changing environment in which they exist. Those that do survive and perhaps excel, those that do not, perish.

Blockbuster succumbed to Netflix; showing a fatal lack of vision, Blockbuster declined an offer to purchase Netflix for $50 million early on in Netflix's growth. Today, Netflix's market cap exceeds $200 billion and Blockbuster is nowhere to be found.

Polaroid gave way to the iPhone camera and digital film. Toys "R" Us also fell to Amazon. Perhaps nothing could have been done to prevent their ultimate demise given the extraordinary innovations of the iPhone and online shopping. But perhaps they would still be around today if they had the vision, the leadership, and executed the other essential elements of successfully driving change.

Camera stores and bookstores used to be commonplace, as did full-service gas stations. Those companies and businesses fell to changing technology.

Consumer preferences also necessitate change. Zenith TVs, Pontiac cars - gone; yet both televisions and cars are still very much in vogue. Budweiser is under pressure from craft beers, Diet Pepsi from healthier alternatives. Compaq didn't fail because computers became obsolete, nor did Yahoo falter because search engines became a thing of the past.

What will happen to automobile service stations as the car industry moves away from combustion engines to electric vehicles? There certainly will not be any oil to change, tune-ups to perform, or engines to rebuild. The coal industry is almost certainly going to become a relic of the past. Longer term, the same is likely true of other fossil fuel industries.

Yet, as constant as change is, and as imperative as it is, making change happen seems to be extraordinarily difficult. We are, as the saying goes, creatures of habit. We know this to be true. Trying to change an old habit, like nail-biting or cracking joints, is enormously hard. Similarly, trying to start a new habit is equally challenging. Most New Year's resolutions to exercise regularly or read a certain number of books a year, or whatever it may be, so often fall by the wayside. Thus, one of my friends proudly said they never failed to execute upon any of their resolutions because they didn't bother to make any.

As hard as change is for an individual, it is at least as hard for an organization, or even just a team of people such as a department or division of an organization. The momentum, the habits, the actions, the attitudes, and the beliefs of many people all must change and become aligned, not just one person. Accordingly, some have estimated that about 70 percent of all corporate change efforts fail.1 Others take issue with that statistic, saying the data isn't clear and the failure rate isn't that abysmal. None dispute, however, that change is hard and fails to achieve its desired results a very significant percent of the time.

This book was written against these two premises - one, the necessity for businesses to change and, two, the difficulty in making change happen. Specifically, this book is intended to address the glaring need to help leaders drive the changes they think are required for their team, department, division, company, or organization to not only survive, but thrive.

Of course, it is ultimately the responsibility of the leader to decide upon the correct path, and I cannot do that for them. Such a decision requires a deep analysis of the business issues and the likely state of the market down the road. Having made that critical decision, a leader is then faced with the challenging task of making the decision become a reality. That is where this book can be of value.

This book is written from real-world experiences and lessons learned in advising and working with a number of different executives and organizations, including the hands-on experience and success at driving change at Bridgestone Americas.

Bridgestone Americas is an excellent example of how companies can adapt, change, and withstand the test of time. In the United States, the story begins with Firestone. Firestone is an iconic brand, going back to its founding by Harvey Firestone. In 1900, Firestone started producing pneumatic tires, and those tires could be found on most Ford automobiles, as well as many other cars. The company grew to a great conglomerate, a massive Firestone empire. Over time, however, like many mature organizations, the once great company struggled for several reasons in the 1960s and 1970s, but certainly not because tires became less relevant. Rather, with the rise of automobile ownership and shipping by truck, tires were more relevant to the US economy than ever.

In 1988, Firestone corporation was acquired by a Japanese company, Bridgestone Corporation. Firestone was, ultimately, renamed Bridgestone Americas, and was the largest subsidiary of what is today one of the largest tire and rubber companies in the world, Bridgestone Corporation. Bridgestone Americas (that is, the former Firestone Tire and Rubber company along with most Bridgestone operations in the Western Hemisphere) consisted of some 55,000 employees operating on five continents. Tire manufacturing, marketing, and sales was the core of its business, but it also had several other businesses.

Like all companies, shareholders continually demanded stronger results, but they were hard to come by in the ultra-competitive tire industry.

In 2010, I was appointed the CEO and a colleague was appointed to the new position of chief operating officer of Bridgestone Americas. These appointments were certainly a surprise to the organization. Prior to becoming the CEO, I was vice president, general counsel, and chief compliance officer of Bridgestone Americas. I was a lawyer. The COO had been head of the company's Latin American operations.

From day one, we embarked on driving a series of changes throughout the organization. Everything was in play: culture, people, organizational structure, business models, strategy, and so on.

The changes worked. It wasn't always perfect or even pretty, but they worked. The organization had record-breaking success. We achieved record profits every year of my tenure. Indeed, operating profits grew fivefold from 2010 to 2016, something that no one had thought possible. At the same time cash flow dramatically improved as well, allowing the organization to both reduce unwanted debt and invest in its future. This was all achieved organically. Because of these extraordinary results, several of the changes we made were emulated throughout the global Bridgestone organization.

Through the massive change journey of Bridgestone Americas as well as my work with other organizations and executives, it became clear that there are six essential requirements to successfully driving change. These six requisites are the lessons learned from my various experiences, and each must be applied with equal force to drive change in a team of people, departments, divisions, or entire organizations. With these six lessons, a change effort is highly likely to succeed. That is, the changes that the leader envisions will come...