Independent director cohort
Succession Planning and a New Strategic Plan
It ' s been a busy few weeks in the V-twin industry. The annual Drag Specialties NVP Dealer Expo at Louisville in January is always a highlight( see pages 30-36), and it was good show despite ' Snowmageddon '. There was the hugely popular and entertaining Motor Bike Expo( MBE) at Verona, Italy on the same weekend- which is a tad unfortunate for vendors with reasons to want to attend both. As it happens, its entertainment value isn ' t always for the right reasons- see Horst Roessler ' s show review on pages 58-60. Indian Motorcycle ' s separation from Polaris Industries finally achieved escape velocity in January( see page 12 and my interview with CEO Mike Kennedy on pages 24-26) and despite its surprise value when it was announced in October, it ' s surprising now just how natural a development it has already become. Then there was Artie Starrs having to front-up to investor analysts and deal with some shockingly bad Q4 and FY 2025 financial results. In the past 40 years it has been rare to see major motorcycle industry OEM CEOs having to come face-to-face with such a bad situation. Sometimes they are hapless victims of events outside their control, but sometimes, one way or another( looking at you KTM), they are guilty of absurd levels of incompetence. I bet Artie Starrs wished he was still in Europe.
Independent director cohort
So where does Harley sit on the scale of any senior management competency calibrations in recent years? Some of Harley ' s problems have been and still are being shared in common with all motorcycle manufacturers( indeed all consumer discretionary sectors) but, sad to say, most of their problems have been largely self-inflicted. If a publicly traded business has put itself in a position where CEO selection can bring about a near death experience then, by-and-large, the judgement must be that the damage had already been done before the recruitment committee had its first meeting. Where Jochen Zeitz is concerned, a large slab of the blame must reside not just with the composition of that committee, but with whoever composed it. His selection did not happen in a vacuum. That the opportunity for the company to get it so badly wrong existed in the first place goes to the composition of the socalled C-Suite and the selection of the Independent Directors whose first job, in common with that of any new CEO, has to be succession planning. This appears to be something that Artie Starrs has understood from the get-go and his first tranche of senior management shake ups had effective succession planning stamped all over it. The incompetence and inappropriate appointments that eventually resulted in what will likely forever be known as ' The Great Unravel ' go back well before Zeitz took Levatich ' s job in 2020. That it could all go so badly wrong in the hands of someone who theoretically should have, but did not have, well-tuned antennae and a fundamental sensitivity to the company ' s core values from his prior time as an Independent Director points squarely to the board. Especially to the Independent Director cohort that Keith Wandell left behind him in 2015( btw, it is widely acknowledged that as a Financial Crisis Company Doctor appointment he overstayed his usefulness by at least three years). Whether there is any truth to the theory that Matt Levatich was over-promoted is irrelevant because the plain fact is that he was not well supported as CEO and largely took the can for wider, systemic post-financial crisis issues that were never addressed. In retrospect, I think that Levatich was more a victim of the circumstances he found himself in than their author. In the context in which he found himself, many of his initiatives were not as illconsidered as many Monday Morning Quarterbacks would have us believe. Okay, 100 new bikes by 2027 was a pretty wild promise to make, I ' ll give you that one. But some his ' More Roads ' five-year plan ideas could have been robust if he had the team to implement them. The bad end to the Zeitz era was a seed sown before his appointment as successor to Matt Levatich. In fact, even before Keith Wandell arrived on the property. Zeitz was appointed to the Harley-Davidson board as an Independent Director in 2007. So, by the time he was elevated onto the payroll, his fingerprints and ' New-Gen ' DEI warm and fuzzy brand of capitalism were all over the composition of the committee charged with recruiting him. Not all the perspectives that H Partners Management brought to the Board Room Table with their 9 % share ownership horsepower last year were entirely wrong. Especially where composition of the Independent Director lineup was concerned. They campaigned vociferously for change and two Independent Directors whose appointments stemmed form 1996 and 2008 respectively have been replaced. Artie Starrs needs to exert as much influence as he can on who gets the nod in future ' Indy-Dir ' recruitments and his first opportunity to do so is upcoming with the Harley AGM in May. I must confess to having a ' rolling eyeballs ' oh-God-not-another-one moment when I heard that the 2026 Q1 fiscals release in May will also see yet another Strategic Plan being unveiled. But then I thought- why not? The last two have gone so horribly wrong that another new one can ' t be any worse- can it? Artie Starrs ' first few months as CEO have shown that he is a quick study. He clearly understands priorities, especially where the dealer network is concerned. So, by all means let ' s see his ' bigger picture ' thinking. Of particular interest will be whether ' Budget Bikes ' are still on the radar, whether the spending cutbacks go deep enough to have benefit quickly, whether the new marketing broom will be sufficiently financially to sweep clean, and how deep dealer empowerment will go. Rewind and Hardwire need to be followed by Unwind and Stabilize. Get the fundamentals of dealer policy and engineering right and Harley ' s loyal fan base will see to it that everything else falls into place. As Artie will have found out on his recent ' European Grand Tour ' it is after all their and their dealer ' s brand. It existed for over 120 years before the present CEO arrived, so his succession planning priority is him to ensure that it will still be here decades from now.
Robin Bradley
Co-owner / Editor-in-Chief robin @ dealer-world. com
4 AMERICAN MOTORCYCLE DEALER- MARCH 2026 www. AMDmag. com