1. July2014
36 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com
In 2007, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. put in place an ambitious plan: Cut
costs company-wide by $1 billion.
Weighed down by lagging global auto sales and an economy on the brink
of the worst recession in a generation, the Akron, Ohio-based company
sought to trim operations by focusing on its core tire manufacturing
business while jettisoning underperforming and lower-margin products
and plants.
In essence, the company aimed to become a premium tire supplier to
target market segments, instead of its previous strategy as an across-
the-board volume supplier.
Under the volume model, the company’s North American division alone
sold roughly 90 million tires a year — many of which didn’t even carry
the Goodyear brand because they were sold under what the company
terms “replacement and private label.”
“It was a good strategy on paper, but we were only making money in one
of those areas, our replacement business,” said Gary VanderLind, vice
president of human resources for Goodyear’s North American division.
From a talent management perspective, the restructuring brought
massive needs. Namely, the shift required a crop of leaders who could
spearhead the change and sustain the new strategies, which would take
years to see through.
The problem: Goodyear’s North American division, at the time led by
Rich Kramer, who is now the company’s CEO, didn’t have a high poten-
tial leadership development program.
Where the Rubber
Meets the Road:
Goodyear’s Quest
to Build Leaders
Needing to stock a dry leadership pipeline amid a major business
restructuring, Goodyear’s North American business unit created
a high potential leadership program from the ground up.
case study by Ladan Nikravan

2. July2014
talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com 37

3. July2014
38 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com
Instead, the division relied largely on expensive exter-
nal executives hires. And although Goodyear’s human
resources team felt satisfied in its ability to identify
future leaders internally, there was little in place to de-
velop them. Most of the identified future leaders were
still a ways away from being ready for critical senior
positions and left to mature on their own.
This left Goodyear with a noticeable leadership gap at
an inopportune time.
“We knew we were light on successors, not getting
great success from external hires we placed in top
positions and didn’t have a learning strategy around
developing high potentials,” VanderLind said. “Rich
Kramer essentially approached us and said, ‘How are
you going to fix that?’”
Identifying Leadership Profile
Aside from the fact that Goodyear needed to revamp
its development efforts to produce a large number of
ready-now successors, VanderLind said there was a
unique leadership profile the company aimed to create.
Goodyear wanted to develop leaders who could man-
age in the emerging business environment, one in
which markets are constantly in flux, in turn requiring
quick shifts in strategy.
When previously faced with similar challenges, Goodyear
would bring in external executives, VanderLind said.
The success rate for external hires, however, was often
lower than expected, and the executive team instead
shifted toward the idea of adopting a “buy early and
build up” strategy. In other words, Goodyear aimed to
create an environment similar to a Major League Base-
ball team’s farm system — acquire talent early in their
growth and develop them, or “build up,” through for-
mal and experiential learning and stretch assignments.
Ultimately, VanderLind wanted to create a develop-
ment strategy addressing two sets of employees. The
first were high potentials. Targeting this group would
immediately help close the senior leadership gap im-
peding Goodyear’s restructuring efforts. The second
group was emerging leaders and line-level managers.
Focusing on this group would build a development cul-
ture the company previously lacked.
As one of its first steps, Goodyear in 2011 hired Amy
Alexy as its director of learning and talent development,
a new position within the company. Then, after getting
buy-in from Goodyear’s executive team, the company
initiated a partnership with Harvard Business Publish-
ing to help with curriculum design and implementation.
“We believe the highest probability of success in our
top leadership positions come from those who have ex-
perience within the company,” Alexy said. “As part of
this new talent initiative, we wanted to acquire and
identify that top talent early in someone’s potential
so we could make sure we provide them with devel-
opment tools to help prepare them and improve the
probability they’ll be successful in those top positions.
We didn’t want the focus to be development only at
times of need, last-minute. We wanted to change the
culture around learning.”
According to Ken Blanchard, co-founder and chief
spiritual officer of leadership consulting firm the Ken
Blanchard Cos., it’s that kind of mindset that makes
most talent initiatives successful, though for most
companies, creating a culture around learning is an
ongoing endeavor.
“The best companies focus on people and results in
good times and in bad,” Blanchard said. “Your people
are your best asset, and if you continue to develop
them, they will continue to think of new ways to serve
your customers and bring in more business.”
With executive buy-in locked in, Goodyear then con-
ducted a learning needs analysis to identify the core
competencies for the high potential development pro-
gram. To do this, the group worked through a card
sorting exercise to match dozens of competencies to-
gether. The goal was to identify 10 competencies for
leaders to carry out the target market segment strategy.
The 10 they settled on: financial acumen; accountabil-
ity; strategic planning; change leadership; visionary;
continuous process improvement; decision quality; de-
veloping others; challenges the status quo; and building
relationships.
VanderLind said these competencies were chosen in part
Goodyear’s Gary VanderLind and Amy Alexy created a strategy to
develop the company’s next crop of leaders. Courtesy of Goodyear

4. July2014
talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com 39
because they aligned with the five core leadership traits
the company already had in place — team-building,
problem-solving, communication, decision-making and
results. Taken together, the two sets would be the skills
measured within Goodyear’s management population.
The team then sent a survey to 1,800 emerging lead-
ers and managers in the company’s North American
division. In it, the team asked the leaders to rate their
current performance on each skill as well as each
skill’s importance. Through the survey, four key top-
ics emerged: strategy, change management, developing
others and a focus on results.
These would be the basis for the company’s broader
leadership development engine, Goodyear’s Great
Leader Academy. The main focus of the academy would
be led by the program specifically for high potentials,
the Senior Leadership Development Program, or SLDP.
Ramping Up Development
The first SLDP cohort, selected by the executive team
to begin the program in February 2012, represented all
business units and functional areas within Goodyear
North America and consisted of nearly 50 participants,
including managers, general managers, directors and
the chief marketing officer.
The high-potential-focus SLDP is a yearlong program
structured around the 70-20-10 model of learning deliv-
ery. The model says that 70 percent of learning happens
through on-the-job experiences, while 20 percent hap-
pens through informal conversations and 10 percent
takes place through formal learning programs.
The program began with a face-to-face meeting during
a two-and-a-half-day event with formal learning ex-
ercises with Harvard faculty. The weeks that followed
consisted of other elements of formal learning, includ-
ing virtual sessions broken down into modules. Each
module consisted of readings from leading thinkers on
the topic, webinars, case studies and virtual lectures
from Harvard Business School faculty.
Goodyear’s executive team interacted with partici-
pants through the modules. Their role was designed as
a way to set context and provide input on important
takeaways from the virtual sessions, which covered
topics like financial analysis, drivers of profitability
and value, and evaluating opportunities.
VanderLind, for instance, said he moderated one of the
“Results Focus” modules during the first high-potential
cohort. Each of the virtual learning components was
designed so that participants attended one learning
event a week over WebEx for a month for each module.
To address the 20 percent learned informally, Good-
year created a program to help participants identify
learning areas of need and to find a partner in the
organization that could help them address it.
To start, Alexy said all high potential program partici-
pants complete a development plan. During the kickoff
session, they are asked to identify people in the pro-
gram who can help them close a developmental gap.
The company says the concept is different from that
of a mentor, because the relationship is designed to be
much shorter and specific to a learning need.
The process of identifying a learning partner starts
with a development plan that includes pre-identified
general manager competencies, desired experiences
and Goodyear’s leadership traits. Based on where peo-
ple want to focus their development, they’re asked to
identify internal and external resources that would
help them learn something new.
Participants then determine the plan and frequency for
meeting with their learning partners, and they meet
with their manager to review. In the first year, 41 per-
cent of participants had one learning partner, 19 percent
had two and 40 percent had three or more.
To address the 70 percent on-the-job portion of SLDP’s
design, Goodyear tapped two methods: action learning
projects and leadership career path management.
The action learning projects, which participants have
nine months to complete, were conceived by Goodyear’s
executive team to address real business decisions.
“These projects are not just case studies that we
want them to go work on,” VanderLind said. “These
are real, live business problems. The leadership team
looks at our strategy, looks at our concerns and says,
‘What are the top four-five issues that we’re faced
with right now as a company? Let’s turn those issues
over to the teams in our courses and have them de-
velop solutions.’”
Team members for the action learning projects aren’t
always co-located, meaning there’s a significant reli-
ance on virtual collaboration. The challenge of having
to work virtually ends up mirroring how leaders
operate in the real world, VanderLind said, which ul-
timately adds to the program’s impact. In many cases,
teams don’t meet face-to-face until the project’s two-
day closing module, when each team presents its
action learning results to Goodyear’s North American
executive team.
So far, the projects have varied in complexity, and not
“No longer are senior
leaders only familiar with
talent in their individual
business or function.
They have a broader view
of our people, and
our people have a broader
view of the business.”
— Gary VanderLind, vice president
of human resources for Goodyear’s
North American division

5. July2014
40 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com
everything has been implemented. However, Alexy
said a member of the executive team will always take
the recommendations back for further review. From
there, some of the recommendations may be shared
with a broader audience who might decide to use the
project’s proposed solutions.
Thus far, two cohorts — 90 high-potential employees
in total — have completed the program, and Vander-
Lind said each cohort stays together as their learning
experiences continue.
“We have identified the 90 top leaders of the company and
are keeping them fully engaged in their learning and want
to give them additional learning as
the business strategy changes,” he
said.
As part of the company’s leader-
ship career path management
process, VanderLind said the
company’s executive team spends
one day per quarter discussing
the progress of these 90 individu-
als. The talks consist of what the
executive team in particular can
do to help move these high poten-
tials in the organization, how they
can challenge and stretch them,
and how they can give them new
experiences in different functions
within the company.
Finding Stride
Today, Goodyear’s cost structure
is on positive footing, something
the company credits in large part to its high potential
leadership development revamp.
By 2012, Goodyear’s North American business segment
reported full-year operating income — a measure of
profitability from its core business — of $514 million,
compared with $276 million in 2011, according to the
company’s 2012 annual report. In 2013, the business
unit delivered a record $691 million in full-year operat-
ing income, according to its 2013 annual report.
What’s more, the company at large reported a record
operating income of $1.6 billion in 2013, according to
the annual report. And from 2010 to 2012, Goodyear
realized a total cost savings of roughly $1.1 billion, its
2012 annual report said, exceeding its goal.
“We’re selling fewer tires,” VanderLind said, “but we’ve
focused our brand, and we’ve lowered costs to our goal.
This is the evolution we needed to change the business.
This is what drove the ship to change our talent devel-
opment strategy.”
VanderLind said a strong leadership bench has been in-
strumental to the success of the new strategy.
“SLDP isn’t just a training program,” he said. “It’s a
whole way of thinking of developing leaders, prioritiz-
ing talent and preparing the company for the future.
No longer are senior leaders only familiar with talent
in their individual business or function. They have
a broader view of our people, and our people have a
broader view of the business.”
Roughly half of the first SLDP cohort have received
new assignments or increased job responsibilities as
a result of completing the program; 28 percent have
made lateral moves or changed the scope of their
role; and 22 percent have received promotions.
In Goodyear’s most recent employee engagement
survey, learning and development went up by 5 per-
centage points from 2010 to 2012 — the largest gainer
among the data collected in North America. “We fun-
damentally believe that’s a result
of increased potential but also
the collective ownership of talent
and co-moderation of this work
by our senior executive team,”
VanderLind said.
Though Goodyear has made prog-
ress mending its high potential
leadership gap, the company is
still working on its goal of cre-
ating a broader culture around
leadership development. “With
more programs in place and our
L&D infrastructure becoming
more global, we are gaining mo-
mentum, but we are still early in
our journey,” VanderLind said.
In terms of continuing to mea-
sure the high potential program,
every month the team identifies
how many ready-now succes-
sors are in place for each position two levels below the
CEO. The team is also keeping a close eye on retention,
which it says is at 98 percent for North American di-
rectors and above.
The company says its success domestically has also led
it to roll out similar leadership development programs
in segments across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Af-
rica and Latin America.
The North American team, meanwhile, now finds
itself in the middle of a new learning needs analysis —
an effort to stay ahead of changing market conditions.
“In the course of the past two and a half years, we’ve
moved the mark on the competencies we measured in
our first analysis,” Alexy said. “We want to ensure the
behaviors and skills we need to develop are still the
same and adjust accordingly.”
For VanderLind, measuring the progress Goodyear has
made on the leadership development front comes down
to being able to answer a simple series of questions.
“If you go back to Rich’s original question that started
this whole thing: Who are these leaders? What are
we doing to make sure they’re ready in the next two,
three years? We now have an answer and measures
for that.”
Goodyear aimed
to create an
environment
similar to a Major
League Baseball
team’s farm
system — acquire
talent early in
their growth and
develop them.