Higher still for Bridgestone: Raising the game of topflight leadership

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Higher still for Bridgestone: Raising the game of topflight leadership

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The world’s largest tyre manufacturer, Bridgestone is a force to be reckoned with. Established in 1931, it now has upwards of 135,000 employees. Across five continents, Bridgestone 3.0 is placing sustainability at the core, and continues to transform to a sustainable solutions company. In a specifically tailored London Business School programme, elite cohorts of 10 executive leaders follow an intense, nine-month programme to realise their potential as the future enterprise leaders of the business. Through highly experiential discovery modules, stretching experiences are intended to set participants’ minds not racing, but thinking, prepared to seek new pathways. Programme impact has been felt, despite significant pressures in the market. The Net Promoter Score, reported back by those who have completed the programme, is regularly 100%.

To create a bespoke solution for your team

100% Regular NPS

#9 Month

programme

#10 Participants

per cohort

The Challenge

Bridgestone is a leader in the tyre market, as well as manufacturing other rubber products for industry and sporting goods. Approaching its 100th anniversary, the business operates across the globe. Changing conditions are pressurising the company. Sustainability is an obvious governing factor. Transitioning from product dominance to wider mobility solutions requires an entirely different outlook, embracing ESG compliance, data processing, telematics, predictive fleet management and end of lifecycle disposal. It involves changing supply chains and altering financial imperatives. Agility has become a constant necessity in the leadership mindset, essential at every point in the business.

The Bridgestone team commissioned London Business School to design a programme to both build capabilities and shift mindsets. A programme to develop Bridgestone’s enterprise leaders of tomorrow.

People in a conference room participating in a hybrid meeting with four colleagues joining remotely on a wall-mounted screen.

The Approach

The nine-month programme includes four distinct modules emphasising highly experiential, discovery-focused learning underpinned by world-leading academic insights and provocations. Participants are also supported to apply their learning through meetings with the Programme Director throughout the journey. A structured experimentation process also drives this application within Bridgestone with the results shared and celebrated. This focus on experimentation, inspired by a breadth of disruptive experiences and supported by the School’s robust approach to learning application is ensuring real impact.

Given the exclusivity of the programme, candidate selection is especially rigorous, drawing people from Southeast Asia, Europe, the US and Japan. For this exclusive selected group, besides their immersion in the modules themselves, time is also set aside to connect with Bridgestone’s senior executives, including global Chief Executive, Shuichi Ishibashi. The partnership with London Business School is thoroughly sewn into the company’s fabric, with each cohort’s learning threading seamlessly back into the collective managerial body.

Implementation

A total of five cohorts of the programme are being delivered. Signposted as diagnostic learning from the outset, the three-part agenda of leadership development, career transition and business transformation remains in plain sight throughout. As progression to true enterprise leadership suggests, the ethos is one of high intensity and high expectation, but with pause for proper reflection. The participants are supported over the 9 months to balance the demands of the programme with their own role commitments. In consequence, the end of programme feedback scores have been consistently high to date.

The cross-cultural nature of each cohort also contributes to the learning outcome. Sharing regional experience from Bridgestone’s global activities broadens leadership perspectives and serves to build future enterprise leaders. The managerial pipeline is strengthened by so many factors arising from the programme’s modus operandum, a rich ecosystem of shared knowledge flowing between all involved. At no point is there the sense of jettisoning Bridgestone’s legacy of engineering excellence and utility on which its reputation is built. Instead, those foundations serve as a launchpad to fire imaginations and broaden understanding to more holistically elevated levels.

Impact

After three completed cohorts, there has been a noticeable cross-business collaboration between cohort graduates, contributing to greater global coherence. Business silos are being broken down. Mindsets are being elevated and capabilities enhanced to enterprise-level application. With more cohorts to run, the best will keep coming.

The impact London Business School is delivering includes enhanced global leadership mobility, the unleashing of entrepreneurial energy and integrating cross cultural understanding at the highest levels. The relationship is providing firm foundations on which the architects of Bridgestone’s business can build enduring success. The future is unmistakably looking up.

Overhead view of five diverse professionals seated around a circular table in discussion on a white tiled floor.

Higher still for Bridgestone: Raising the game of topflight leadership

The Challenge

The Approach

Implementation

Impact

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