Gary Garfield became CEO of Bridgestone Americas in 2009 while recovering from open-heart surgery, with no formal business training. He overhauled the culture using innovation and town halls, growing the division from 10% to 50% of global profits and achieving 500% profit growth.
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Good morning, everyone, and happy Friday. Welcome to Fearless, a production of Fuel, www.myfuel.io. If you're not familiar with that website, check it out. One of the fastest-growing e-learning platforms on the planet, top faculty members, and we bring in very special guests on shows like Fearless. This is our 12th episode of Fearless, which launched in January of this year. And wow, if you haven't checked out some of the clips from that, do so on YouTube. They're available. And I also want you to check out a couple of other things. Not only I've got 3 courses available on Fuel, but check out my AI bot and then some of the AI bots now from some of the other instructors. Essentially, that is an AI application where you can interact with me 24/7 all over the world. on my entire body of work. So, my bot has been downloaded or loaded, I should say, with hundreds of my YouTube clips, podcast interviews, radio and TV interviews, my books, hundreds of articles I've written, and it's all in the bot. So, if you ask me a question about anything like operational excellence, mindful leadership, things like that, things related to fear and fearlessness, The bot's amazing. I've had conversations with my own bot and it's fascinating. So, check that out. Today's guest, wow, Gary Garfield. Gary and I crossed paths originally in 2018. We've helped one another out with books and things like that. In fact, Gary is the author of this book right here, Driving Results. And it's 6 lessons learned from transforming an iconic company. That iconic company, we'll hear more about this, is Bridgestone Americas, a $10 billion company with 55,000 employees. And Gary stepped up and stepped through some intrepidation perhaps relating to that role. And so, Gary, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for agreeing to join me on this show.
Thank you.
You want to say a couple of words about how you got here?
Absolutely. First of all, thank you for having me, John. It really is an honor, and you have a great program here. Privileged to be a part of it. So as you mentioned, I became the CEO of Bridgestone Americas in 2009— 2010, excuse me. In 2009, I was the general counsel. For Bridgestone Americas. And Bridgestone Americas was the successor company to the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which was a 100-year-old company, very iconic, very iconic brand. And we had fallen on tough times. We had a massive recall with Ford. Some of your listeners may remember it, the Ford Explorer Firestone tire recall. Yeah. In 2000, and the company had been struggling ever since then. So in 2009, I was summoned to Japan. The parent company is headquartered in Tokyo, and I was asked to give a presentation to the global board. And after it was over, I was told the CEO, the global CEO, the boss of my boss. who was the CEO of Bridgestone Americas, the boss of my boss wanted to see me. And he said, you are the— my boss, the CEO of Bridgestone Americas, would be retiring at the end of the year and they wanted me to be the CEO. And that was pretty shocking.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Especially— and you talk about you'd never even taken a business course before. You know, you're chief counsel for this huge corporation and now you're Now what?
Right, right. Yeah, I'd never run a business. I don't even know, I don't even remember running a lemonade stand as a kid. Here I was about to be the CEO of a $10 billion company, 55,000 employees operating on 5 continents. So it was pretty intimidating.
Now that's, let's call it fear factor number 1. You know, you're tapped to run this massive company. And as you put it, a mature company. It's a very mature industry.
Yes.
And in many ways, actually kind of locked into its culture, whatever that culture. We're going to talk about culture change here in just a little bit. But on top of that invitation, which could certainly be intimidating, you had a second fear factor right around the same time. In fact, just before I think you went to Tokyo for this meeting, You got some other news.
I did. I've had a heart murmur. I had had a heart murmur for years, and many people have it, and most of the time never causes any problems. Mine was causing a problem, and I had been going to the Cleveland Clinic on a regular basis for the last 8 or 9 years to monitor it. And about 3 weeks before I was told I was going to be the CEO, I was told I needed open-heart surgery to fix the heart murmur. And that's pretty intimidating. And interestingly, my father was a physician, not a heart surgeon, but president of a hospital in Cincinnati where I grew up. And a well-respected physician. I had high regard for him, and he was very concerned about me undergoing heart surgery. He was discouraging me from doing it because of the potential side effects. But the Cleveland Clinic explained this was my best chance to live a long and normal life, and I had made the decision to proceed with the surgery. So I had that. And then I was told I was going to be moving up, say, maybe 2 steps in the organization to run a business. And I'd never run a business before. And the company wasn't doing well. Certainly, the shareholders weren't satisfied with the performance of Bridgestone Americas. So there was, there was a lot there. There was a lot on my plate, if you will. Yeah.
Now, just to fast forward even to that. So now you take over the reins and I know you've said change started immediately. You had a meeting with your C-suite and you've discovered, wow, there's somebody here that's just not a good fit. We're going to have to do something about that. So you were very decisive, but you're also very honest and you talk a lot about trust and just being very honest with people. Do you want to comment? And you also use the word governance. We need some governance change around here. We need some— I like to think of governance as discipline. You know, we got to have some— in the Lean world, I teach Lean, as you know, it's rigor. We've got to have rigor. You don't see high-performing teams without rigor and discipline and some form of governance. And you had somebody telling you, well, we don't really want to use the word governance. It's, you know, it's too scary or whatnot. You want to make a few comments about that?
Yeah, absolutely. So on the governance front, I was a big proponent of a robust, I guess is the way I would put it, a robust corporate governance structure. Something that means— it's supposed to mean something. It's to help the organization stay within certain boundaries and help it make better decisions. I believe very strongly in that. And in My experience, the most successful, best-run companies in the world have a good, strong governance structure. We did not. We were very top-down oriented, and there just there was sort of a pseudo board. But whatever the CEO wanted to do, they did. There wasn't a compensation committee. and the various other committees that are involved in good governance. And I was convinced we needed to install that. And when I announced to the senior executive team the governance structure that we needed to install, one of the persons said, boy, that people just aren't going to like that. And they really aren't going to like the term governance. It will slow things down. And frankly, we weren't very fast to begin with, but it would slow things down and people would feel inhibited. We need to come up with a different term if you're going to do this at all. And my response, which kind of goes back to trust, was, no, it is what it is. We're going to call a horse a horse. We aren't going to call it something else. And we're going to be honest with people. This is there for a reason. It's there to help us make better decisions. It's there to help the company operate better and provide some level of oversight, which we really had not had in a meaningful way. And I think on the trust issue, I think that's just so important for any leader. People buy into the leader before they buy into the leader's vision. I just think that's huge. And your trust, a leader's trust, is their most significant asset. And if you destroy it, you lie, you cheat, or you misrepresent things, you know, with all good intentions, your trust can be destroyed. And then it's hard for people to follow you.
That's right. And once it's broken, you know, it's tough to patch it back up. You know, that's— it's, you know, you lose integrity and you're just— you're wishy-washy. And you see it a lot, unfortunately, with politicians and people that just— you don't know what to believe. And I, you know, I think trust is a bedrock to high-performing team— high-performance teamwork. It's absolutely essential. So the bottom line is you came in, you started making changes right away. And to speak bottom line, over a 6-year period, as I understand it, you know, Bridgestone Americas had 500% growth. Is that right?
Profit growth? Yes. Yeah, we, we were pretty good. We outperformed the S&P 500 during that period. And it was, it was a remarkable result. Before I explain the results, it's a team effort. There is no one, no one does it alone. It especially, you know, if you're a sole proprietorship, yeah. But for any size organization, it is a team effort. But we were, when I took over, we were about 35% of Bridgestone Corporation's global profits, including Europe and Asia. But I'm sorry, revenue, but 10% of the profits, 35% of the revenue, 10% of the profits. We weren't carrying our weight and the shareholders didn't like that, understandably. I don't blame them. When I left, we were 50% of the global revenue and 50% of the profits.
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's just victory with a capital V, Gary. And that's leadership. One of your 6 lessons, it starts with leadership and vision.
Right? Yep.
And you clearly did that. But you have an interesting take on this, too. You tell a story about, I think it was Paul O'Neill, who was the Secretary of Treasury under George Bush Sr. But before that, he was at Alcoa, and I think CEO of Alcoa. And he challenged Wall Street with his one thing we're going to be the best in America at. And it isn't what most Wall Streeters and shareholders would think is that one thing, right?
Yes.
And then, you took the idea into Bridgestone Americas or brought it in as the CEO. It wasn't the same one thing. And in your case, it was the whole idea around innovation and innovation labs. But we need something to help us really change our culture, which is another one of your 6 lessons. So, quickly talk about the Paul O'Neill story, if you will, around safety. And then let's talk a little about innovation.
Absolutely. The Paul O'Neill story is a great story. So, he was brought in to be the CEO of Alcoa. And Alcoa had not been performing well. And at his first investor meeting in New York, he got up and said, There are X number of people, and I don't remember what the figure was, X number of people, employees, who get injured in the company every day. And making aluminum is a heavy industry, dangerous, a lot of hard work. There are X number of people that get injured every day and miss at least one day of work, and that's not okay. We need to become the safest company in the country, maybe the world. The share— the investor said, okay, great, good, glad to hear that. But what are you going to do to turn around the company? And he said, I just told you, we are going to become the safest company there is. Okay, great. But what are you going to do to turn around the company? And he kept repeating it. And as the story goes, one investor left the meeting, called his office, and said, The board hired a hippie to run Alcoa, tell everyone to sell their stock. Well, what Paul O'Neill put in place were all these mechanisms to improve safety, but most importantly, to get people talking to each other about safety. The factory floor workers talking with managers, and whenever there was a major safety incident, it was required to be reported in within 24 hours, and they were required to report to him what they were going to do to fix it, to avoid it in the future. That started people talking to each other. And once people started talking to each other, they started talking about other things. You know, we can improve efficiency if we did this, we could improve production if we did this, or whatever it was. And through that change in culture, using safety as the cultural change mechanism, he turned around Alcoa. Absolutely brilliant.
Totally brilliant.
So what I did, we had a cultural issue. And, and I believe this very, very strongly, very top-down, very siloed. And, and people were afraid to make decisions, afraid to move on their own. And that had to change. There was no way we could excel as a company, in my opinion, with that culture. And we decided to use innovation as the cultural change lever. I held an offsite meeting with the top 150 people in the company from around the world and explained the economic pressures we were under. From very inexpensive tires coming in from Asia, China, other places. And we weren't considered the most— the price leader, if you will, in the tire business. And so our profits were being squeezed. And the only— we had 2 options to change it. One was to try and compete at a low-cost level. And if we did that, No one would like it. And we're gonna have to slash and burn like you can't imagine. Or we need to become the most innovative company in our industry. And that will allow us to charge higher prices. Answered everyone's questions about that. Then we had an outside expert come up on innovation. And for 6 hours, he explained how innovation occurs. And when he got done, answered everybody's questions, when he got done, I got back up and said, will our culture allow us to do this? I just have one question. What do you think? And everybody said, no, no way. I said, I agree. Totally agree. So I said, tomorrow you will come back. And I would like for you to write our cultural blueprint so that we can become the most innovative company in the country. In the industry, and they did. And it was seven points, seven wonderful, wonderful points. And I adopted it as is as our cultural blueprint, and said at the end of the meeting, after thanking everyone for their great work, and it really was great work. You, anyone, has the right to call me out at any point in time. If I violate any of these 7 rules. But conversely, this is— these are your rules, and I have the right to call you out as well. So we took that. We did a lot to implement innovation, to really change the culture. And it worked. It really worked. The people started speaking up. They started challenging me, which is very important. But I think even more important, when I was in meetings with a bunch of people, they would start challenging each other. And that's when I knew we had the kind of culture we needed to really excel as an organization.
Yeah, and build trust and be just direct and honest with one another. And I love when you said at one point, you know, there's only one rule here when you're talking about pushing me back, and that is, there are no rules. Isn't that— did I get that right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
And I would have— I did town hall meetings all over the organization twice a year. And I would update the organization on what's going on, what our— how our strategic plan is coming along, so on and so forth. And when I got done with that, I always left a considerable amount of time for questions. And I started that off by saying, now it's your turn. And there's one rule: there are no rules. This is as much your company as it is mine. If there is anything you want to know, I will do my best within the bounds of the law to tell you. Why within the bounds of the law? If we were involved in, say, a merger or an acquisition and there are security law issues, you can't disclose it. You can't disclose it.
Right.
Yeah, it's the way it is. And, and I meant it. And several times when I first started this, some of the HR people said, do you want us to plant questions in the audience? No, this is their opportunity. It's their company too. Their livelihoods are dependent on this just as much as mine is, maybe more. And yeah.
Yeah. Well, I was going to say one of the things I teach, Gary, around leadership is the difference between pushing and pulling. You know, a lot of leaders are pushing rules, pushing ideas, pushing on— you talked about top-down, the old culture. What you're doing is pulling. You're getting people to— I use the Socratic method when I teach and I do workshops where you don't tell people the answers, you lead them to the answers. And it's discovery, right? And so, by pulling as opposed to planting questions and again, that can break down trust right there, right? But just by inviting and pulling and psychologically safety, if you're familiar with that term, where people feel safe to speak up and challenge the CEO and all of that. And that just opens up creativity and innovation. But innovation also requires that, you know what, we got to push through fear here a little bit to get back to the whole fear topic, right?
Yeah.
Because innovation can be scary. Especially if you think, well, this could eliminate my job.
Right.
And I remember when I was working my first job out of college in Chicago in corporate finance for a huge company, and I discovered, first of all, I was way overqualified for this job. At least, I was bored and it was ridiculous. And I worked so far ahead that when I left 2 years later, I said, you don't need to replace me for like 9 months. I'm that far ahead.
That's great.
And then think about people who won't hire somebody who's really bright because they're afraid that they're smarter than I am. And that just ruins innovation and creativity and what I like to call flow, which translates ultimately into cash flow, right? But flow, creativity flow, ideas flowing, people flowing, talking to one another like you said. Wow. So, back to the idea now that you're You're taking over a huge corporation, publicly held, 55,000 employees. You're going through heart surgery. What did you tell the global CEO and the board over in Tokyo when you knew you had to have surgery and they're not— I don't know if they're inviting you to take the job or really kind of pushing it on you, but what do you tell them?
Yeah, so they were inviting me to take the job, and I decided when they said, we want you to be the CEO, I didn't hold back. Again, goes to the trust issue. They had a right to know what was going on with my health, significant issues with my health. And in that meeting, I said, you need to know— and these were the words I used— you need to know I am scheduled to undergo open-heart surgery in December. And that kind of took them aback, understandably.
Right.
I tried to explain what the surgery was about. It was repairing my mitral valve, a little different than coronary artery disease, which is kind of an ongoing disease and more of an ongoing disease. But they were taken aback. So I told him that, and I said, let me think about whether I want to accept your invitation to be the CEO. I was pretty scared. I was pretty into— it was a big jump. And I had never, as I said, as we said earlier, I'd never taken a business course. I'd never run a business. Ran the law department, but that's different. And it took me every bit of a day to realize this is an opportunity you can't pass. But nonetheless, I had to think about it. And in between that time and when I became— and when my surgery was scheduled in December and thereafter, I had biweekly meetings outside the office with the person who was going to be the new COO. And we really discussed what changes needed to be made, what we wanted the new organization to look like, how we were gonna bring it along. And that helped me with my fear of the surgery. Because heart surgeries can, understandably, is a scary thing, kind of like someone coming at you with a knife, literally.
Yeah.
And that preoccupation really helped me. So I was focused on where the company would go, how we would make changes. Things like that. Then I went to the surgery, had the surgery done, and my former boss, the former general counsel who lived in the area, was there at the hospital holding my wife's hand. We were friends. Wonderful, wonderful man. But I later learned he had been asked by Japan to be there to make sure the surgery went okay and to report back to them. Which he did, and it went fine. But then while I was recovering from heart surgery, which is no easy thing, I had to really prepare myself to take over the position of being the CEO and overcoming my fear. And really, it kind of goes to what you said earlier, my fear of failure.
Yeah.
That was the big issue I had to confront. Yeah.
And that's, you know, I frequently talk about this, Gary, that when we're afraid and what scares one person doesn't scare another necessarily. But when we're afraid, it's because we are not present. We are projecting a problem in the future. We're projecting something negative is going to happen. So, if it's getting up on stage to give a keynote and you're nervous, why are you nervous? Because you think you don't know what you're doing or you think you're going to say something stupid, right? But if you've been doing it for a long time, you're practiced, you get You're enthusiastic. You can't be enthusiastic and afraid at the same time, so to speak.
You're not.
Right? They're just different frequencies of energy. So, now going in, and you've had 3 surgeries now, heart surgeries. Going into these surgeries, and we've got a comment here from Chris on the chat, a knife and a mask, but at least it's a surgeon.
Right.
Right? But, okay, so, you know, and I've had multiple surgeries. I had a disc removed from my neck and a piece of my hip fusing my spine. And I ran my foot through a lawnmower when I was 17 and had, you know, was told I could never play football again. And then I'm playing at Notre Dame, you know, kind of mind over matter stuff. And so, we talk about going under the knife and I've been under the knife at least a dozen times. How do you feel when you're, you know, you're going under the knife and tie it into trust, if you will, because you got to trust the surgeon, right?
That's exactly right. Um, so I had the surgeries done at the Cleveland Clinic, and I had it done there, um, because it is considered the best heart surgery hospital in the world. They are really, really good at what they do. Each of the heart surgeons there perform 300 surgeries a year. That's staggering. And that matters a lot when you're going into surgery. You don't want someone who does Does it 12 times a year. You want someone who does it almost every day. They've seen everything, they know what to do, so on and so forth. Um, so that really was huge for me. And, uh, just, I just had to have trust, as you put it, in the surgeon, which I did, um, and in his team and in the hospital, uh, and That was everything. You just got to move forward.
Yeah. Well, Gary, you are truly an example of what leadership and courage and inspiration and pulling people together. Your 6 lessons covered in the book are fantastic, you know, starting with leadership and vision and culture and people. Execution at the end of the day, getting right down to that alignment and execution. Not rocket scientists, but think about how often— to our audience, think about how many— how often you see a company or an organization that the wheels are falling off. And why not? Because they're not aligned, because there's no clear vision that everyone shares, because there's poor execution, right? Because there's poor leadership. It's a reflection of the leadership. So, you're truly a role model in that regard. How can people reach you, Gary?
So they can reach me online. I've got a LinkedIn site and a Facebook page, and I would like for them to feel free to reach me. I do some keynote speeches, speak at universities. Actually, I'm speaking at Belmont University on Monday, and I've had the great privilege of speaking at Ohio State, West Point, Yale, other places. But that would probably be the best way. And I look— I get those notifications and I respond as quickly as I can. And I'd be delighted to work with people, help people if they have questions, answer those questions. But let me just say this, John, thank you very much for having me. It really is an honor. You have a great program here. Privileged to be a part of it.
Yeah. Well, thank you, Gary. And I thank you for your humility. And you're just such a humble but strong leader, and the world can learn a lot from you. So, I encourage everybody to check out Gary's LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, go to his website, and read his book, Driving Results. It's a fantastic book. In fact, you'll see my name on the back cover of that because I loved it so much. And Gary, you endorsed my last book, Miracle-Minded Manager. I truly appreciate that. It was one of the most sincere, beautiful endorsements, and I really appreciate that.
Cool book.
Yeah. Yeah. So, and we'll get you back on the show, on this show sometime. And for our audience, if you've gotten some real nuggets out of this like I have, please, you know, like it and share it with family, friends, teammates, your leadership team, because these 6 lessons are essential. And one other thing that came to mind is that I just did a show on Mindset Matters for Fuel this past Monday. And the show is, when your what and your why are really clear and meaningful, the how shows up because we can't know how everything's going to happen. You know, like when I started my company 38 years ago, I didn't know how. There was no YouTube, there was no Google, there was no internet availability, there were no cell phones. I mean, and now you think about your— you have an AI bot. I never planned that. You know, I never— so, and you've done that remarkably well where you've adapted and you've adjusted, you've pivoted. And I like to use the metaphor of a GPS system. You know, if you take a wrong turn in your car, as long as you know where you're going, it's going to reroute you. It's good. You know, you're doing this all through life. You just— but you got to know where you're going. And that's why that vision lesson is so important. in what you teach. Next Friday, I've got Deborah Poneman. Deborah is a global phenomenon, founder of Yes to Success. She teaches in 100+ countries, New York Times bestselling author. And Deborah is just fantastic. So, she's going to be on next Friday. I want to thank everybody for being here. Gary, one last little nugget of advice you want to leave people with?
Yeah, I would say on the fear issue, I was afraid of becoming the CEO, and I reframed it. I reframed it to, if I didn't give this everything I could, then I would really be disappointed in myself. And if I failed, I failed, but I had to give it everything. I had to give it— I owed it to me and to the organization and to employees whose jobs and livelihood Depended upon the company's success to give it everything I could. And that helped me overcome the fear.
I think that's beautiful because we're not really living if we're living with regret. And I love what something Tom Peters said years ago. He goes, what we need to do is learn to make our mistakes faster because if we aren't making mistakes, we aren't learning anything. We're not growing any wiser. And if you're going to try to go through life without making any mistakes, you're not going to go anywhere. like going through life with your foot on the brake. The brake is useful and we want to do a little risk mitigation here and there before we do something big and bold. But, yeah, go for it. And I love that. Just the window of opportunity opens up, walk through it, and let go of the idea that you're going to live with regret the rest of your life.
Yeah.
Wayne Dyer used to say, don't die. with the song still in you.
I love it.
And I love that because we've all got something to sing. But if fear gets in the way, we just don't do it. And then, I don't know how you call that life. Well, Gary, thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, for listening to Fearless. Check out www.myfuel.io, fantastic learning platform. Say hello to my bot, if you will. And we'll see you next week.
