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| SuperBikePlanet.com Interview: AMA President Rob Dingman
part one by dean adams and susan haas Wednesday, December 19, 2007 AMA President and CEO Rob Dingman has an ambitious plan for the American Motorcyclist Association, probably more ambitious than anything seen out of the Ohio organization in the modern era. The long criticized association's departments are being knocked down, long-time personnel being shown the door and he plans to sell off the commercial rights to all of the AMA's racing properties. Obviously it is the latter that concerns fans of racing in the US. And not just the fans, the manufacturers and the racetrack promoters are very interested in Dingman's plan. Initially, the manufacturers were fairly supportive of Dingman's broad-swipe plan to sell off the rights to the series. However, in the last few weeks the manufacturers have begun to talk amongst themselves about how this could actually be a very bad deal if the AMA partners with the wrong entity, one without capital, one without vision and one without respect for the investment the manufacturers make in the sport. As I have long said privately, the AMA claiming to own roadracing in the US is tantamount to the guy who owns the bleachers and parking lot for an Evel jump thinking he owns the event. Sure, on paper these events are AMA events. But the reason they succeed, the reason there are asses in the seats, is because of the manufacturers and the promoters, and the success is sometimes more in spite of the AMA's involvement than because of it. Dingman has been criticized in the last few weeks because of the firing of some high profile AMA employees. Some may view his job as presently being in a precarious state; that may be true, but it's not because of the firings. The manufacturers seem to be rattled because of some of the 'what if' scenarios regarding the sale of the racing entities. That, coupled with motorcycle sales slowing with the rest of the economy, and 2008 being the final year of the Speed contract for roadracing, presents a very unstable future for the sport. As Dingman concedes in this interview, if he doesn't have the support of the manufacturers, he doesn't have a series. Q Can we start with a little bit of background? A I grew up in upstate New York. When I got out of college at the State University of New York at Albany, I worked in the state legislature. After about a year, I was tired of being overworked and underpaid, and moved to DC to find a job there. Shortly after moving there, I answered an ad in the Washington Post and got a job working for the Motorcycle Industry Council, doing land-use issues specifically, trying to protect riding areas, get riding areas open, that kind of thing. Through my involvement with securing passage of the National Recreational Trails Fund Act - the name has changed since then, but it was then called the National Recreational Trails Fund Act - the AMA hired me away to run their Washington, DC office. So I worked for them for four and a half, five years, and had a pretty significant record of accomplishment there, in terms of our legislative agenda. Then I had an opportunity to move back to my home state of New York, and I ran the highway safety office for the State of New York for about nine years, until I came back to the AMA just about a year ago. My first bike I guess was a Yamaha XT350. I've ridden all kinds of stuff. I'm an off-road rider and an on-road rider. Mostly trails. Never raced. I currently ride - I currently have a DR350 and a Gold Wing.Q Do you ride to work?A Yeah. Not all days. I ride to work a couple times a week.Q Your job in Washington, what was that like? A The office was opened by my predecessor, who was there for probably, I don't know, maybe four or five years, Jim Bensberg. I don't know if you remember him at all. I replaced Jim when he left. It was very exciting. There was a lot of work to do there. At the time, it was just myself in the Washington office, so there was a great deal of work. Before I left, they brought on a legislative assistant. Then Ed Moreland replaced me, then Ed went on to become Vice President for Government Relations, to head the department, and he stayed right there in DC when Rob Rasor became president.Q What's it like dealing with the government regarding motorcycles and riding issues? A It's challenging, because a lot of people have perceptions about motorcycles that aren't necessarily correct. Q I've heard that.A [Laughing] So it's certainly a challenge to educate legislators ... not only legislators, but also, we do a great deal of work with public agencies, whether they're federal agencies or state agencies, whether they control public lands or ... everyone's familiar with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. There's all kinds of work to be done beyond the legislative stuff that typically people think about when they think about the government relations work that the AMA does.Q Do you think there's been landmark change in the way that Washington perceives motorcycles in the last ten years?A Well, certainly with the growth of the industry, I think there's a greater awareness to motorcycling. When I worked for the AMA in DC, I'm not sure that anybody at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could spell "motorcycling," let alone do anything about it. And now, they've recognized the need to take a look at motorcycling in general, and not be focused solely on helmet laws. I think in many ways, that's good, but in many ways, that presents us more challenges. Q Looking at it, you've got a fairly impressive resume. I'm curious as to why you'd come back and run the AMA. A [Laughing]Q Really. That's an honest question.A Well, I'll tell you, Dean, having worked for ... in the industry, and then having worked for the AMA, I have a real passion for, not just motorcycling, but for the AMA. I recognize what the AMA could be, and the potential that exists for the AMA. I, like many AMA members, and many former AMA members, I would imagine, want to see the AMA be the strong organization that ... not only that it can be, but that it needs to be, to ensure the future of motorcycling, and to ensure that we have places to ride, and that our sport is maintained well into the future.Q When you came back were you slated to start running the AMA? A Yeah. When I came back, I was hired as the result of a nationwide search that the Board of Directors undertook. In the process of that search, Patti DiPietro had been named CEO, and it was always the intention that Patti would stay on as CEO until they got a new president in place, and there would be a transition period, and then she would retire. So when I was hired, I started in November of last year. I came on as president, and the plan was for me to assume the role of president and CEO upon Patti's retirement, which was going to be anywhere from ... I guess at that time, it was planned for about a year she was going to stay on. So you'd have somebody who was here, who was more familiar with the organization. So there would be a transition period, so the learning curve wouldn't have to be so steep with respect to the intricacies of the organization. And then she decided that she would leave a little earlier than that, and left in the end of March... or I guess, in April of this year. Q When you had your conversations with the Board regarding employment, were there any statements made to you, or did you make any to them, regarding future plans, and what you thought you should do with the organization, and membership, et cetera? A Absolutely. I expressed to the Board that I really believe that fundamental change needed to take place at the AMA. You take a look at ... we mentioned the growth of the industry over the last ten years or so, and the AMA membership has not kept pace with that growth. If you take a look at just sales figures alone, the industry has been booming, and during most of that period, the membership in the AMA had kind of been tapering off. I really believed that we needed to do more to encourage people to join the AMA, and that we needed to improve the image of the organization so that we could get more people to want to join the AMA. For all motorcyclists.The AMA exists to protect the rights of motorcyclists, and protect the future of motorcycling, and everybody has a stake in that. So there's no other organization that represents the variety of different motorcyclists, no matter what you ride, whether it's road or off-road or what brand you ride, the AMA's the only entity that kind of represents all of motorcycling interests. It really is an organization that needs to exist. It needs to be strong. And frankly, I didn't feel it was as strong as it needed to be, or headed in the right direction. Q In the initial press release upon your hiring, I think you stated something like you supported the three R's (Rights, Racing, Riding) that the AMA has stood for for a long time. There wasn't a lot of mention that landmark change was going to happen. Was there a cataclysmic moment after you came on board, when you just said, "Man, this has got to start happening now"?A That's a good question, Dean. With the transition such that it was, and the fact that Patti DiPietro stayed on for the six-month period, it was a period where I was trying to learn the things that I was less familiar with in the organization. Having come out of the government relations side, I was less familiar with the racing stuff, although I kind of had a tangential awareness of a lot of that stuff. I knew coming in that there were many challenges facing the AMA, and recognized that fundamental change needed to occur. But it's one of those things when you get in here and you see everything that's going on, and everything that needs to be done, you have to take a measured approach, and you have to take a good hard look at how what you do in one area will affect another area. I quickly came to realize that the AMA had become involved in so many things that its core mission had become diluted, and it had taken on more than it could reasonably accomplish. Which is why we set upon a path to—back in September, I put out my vision for the future of the AMA. There was a lot of discussion at the time about the racing portions. The big piece of that announcement was that we were going to get out of the racing series and event promotions business. Because I believe that our activity in that area was hindering our ability to grow, and that we were not properly resourced to do all the things that we were trying to do in racing. We were not properly resourced to be effective series promoters, and therefore, I believed it was in the best interest of the membership of our organization to try to get out of that aspect of our business, but do so in a way that racing could also grow, and the sport could grow. What didn't get a lot of mention at the time was as part of that vision, I outlined a number of other objectives as part of the plan. Those other objectives were to rededicate the association to its core mission. First and foremost, the AMA is a membership organization, and we've got to provide service to our members, in the promotion and protection of the future of motorcycling, which I've talked about already. We've got to strengthen and improve our menu of member benefits. There are some good benefits that the AMA provides. Many benefits are kind of intangible, like government relations.It's very hard for people to get their hand around the value of that. They say, "Hey, we know the AMA is there to protect our right to ride," but they don't really know what we do or how we do it. But part of it begins with being a better partner with the motorcycle industry in general. We've got to be humble and work harder to develop and maintain relationships, be more collaborative and take the needs of our partners into consideration. Because I believe that if we are more cooperative with the industry, that will lead to - enable us to grow our menu of benefits, which will help us to grow our membership, which if we have a larger, stronger membership, we become a more effective voice to protect the rights of motorcyclists. One of the other objectives was to create more of a team environment and staff accountability. Each department and staff member is responsible for adding value and benefits to the AMA membership. My expectation is that staff will work together as a team, rather than individual departments competing with each other for attention and resources. I've described this to staff, but also in my vision, as "One AMA." I want to break down the silos that existed here, and have us all working as one organization, rather than the racing department or the communications department or the marketing department all working independent of each other, and therefore not following a path that's going to benefit our members to the greatest extent that they could. I talked about improved communications. As an advocacy organization, we absolutely have to have top-notch communications functions. The ability of the AMA to communicate both internally and externally needed to be enhanced. I said at that time that during our restructuring, that people would see major improvements in those areas. We've just begun that process, and there's more to come in that area, and we're going to make significant improvements in that area. With respect to government relations, I view government relations as our marquee benefit, and we need to resource the government relations department so that we can, again, serve that primary function I think that many in the industry, and all motorcyclists, look to the AMA for, that is to protect the future of motorcycling. Q How would you describe your management style? A I would say my management style is collaborative. It is ... I try to take the views of people that know, which is why it's important to break down those silos, and make everyone ... or encourage everyone to work as a team, so that we can have all of the department heads sit together and work together toward a common vision, as opposed to having each of them work independently. It's ... you have to have the appropriate infrastructure in place to be able to accomplish that, though, and you have to have the right people in place to accomplish that. And that's what we're embarking on now, is to try to restructure the organization in such a way that will enable that collaborative management, and make that more effective. Q Can we talk a little bit about the AMA magazine? I looked into it and two things that really surprise me are that the subscription level is above 300,000 right now, and the book is said to be losing money. Those two facts just seems incredible to me. A It is amazing, and that's one of the things that I've tried to look at ... profit and loss for everything that the AMA does. Part of this restructuring is I'm looking top to bottom at every endeavor that the AMA is involved in. We need to evaluate, if we're losing money on some things, we need to figure out either how to do them more efficiently, or figure out whether we really need to continue to do that. With respect to the magazine specifically, I think it's important to point out that, unlike other magazines where there's a subscription price that goes toward the revenue of the organization, typically there is no assessment for the member - the cost of a membership. None of that gets returned back into the magazine.So it's very hard to compare a controlled circulation publication like ours, with something that gets sold on the newsstand and through subscriptions, because obviously there's revenue from those things. So there is no ... when you look at the profit and loss of the magazine, there's nothing that is attributed to the cost of membership, but everyone knows that there should be some portion of that. Do you follow that? Q What we saw with Cycle magazine in the early 1990s, that a subscription level that's really, really high, and the thing being upside down, can be a very, very precarious situation. So I'm not sure the layman understands the gravity of the situation. When you have a lot of subscribers, and you're pumping out a product that loses money, that's really bad. A It is. It is. Although you have to also look at, I think the AMA for a long time has viewed the magazine as a member benefit, and so we're producing that as a member benefit. And if there is a cost associated with that, then it's viewed as, "Hey, that's the cost of providing that benefit to our members." I'm trying to look at it more from the standpoint of "How much does this cost to provide this benefit to our members?" I think that we're going to find a way to make the magazine work very well for us, and work well for our advertisers, and most importantly, work well for our members. We've got some interesting things in store for the magazine, and the future is very bright for not only the magazine, but for the organization. Q People criticize the AMA magazine, and they've been doing it since I got into this sport in the late '80s. What does membership say about it, I wonder? Has there ever been a reader survey?A They've conducted surveys over time, reader surveys. I don't know how scientific they've always been. One of the challenges with the magazine is that, as an association, when you try to be all things to all people, everybody wants to see in the magazine that for which they joined the organization for. So if you are a flat-track guy, you want to see more coverage of flat-track in the magazine. If you're a rights guy, you want to see more coverage of the government relations in the magazine. And we can never do enough to satisfy those individual needs. And it's very hard, when you try to be all things to all people. I think that's been one of the difficulties, not just for the magazine, but for the entire association. Because people join the AMA for a particular reason, and that reason may be different from the next guy who joins the AMA. Q Switching gears, when you came in, had you attended any races before you became the AMA's CEO and President? A I had been to races. I hadn't been to a whole lot of races, but I had been to races before coming back to the AMA. Motocross races. Q Is it fair to say you're probably not a race guy? A I would say over the last year, I have become a race guy. I've probably spent as much time dealing with racing and racing issues as anything else. It would be hard to say that, with that experience, I'm not a race guy. But my perspective coming in wasn't from the racing perspective, no. Q Critics would say that since racing didn't seem to be your passion when you came in, when changes needed to be made, racing was the first thing you said had to be sold off. A Well, no. I'm glad you asked that question. Part of motorcycling and racing is that most people, or just about everybody, who is involved in motorcycling and racing, are very passionate about what they do. When you have passionate people, sometimes that passion gets in the way of good decisions. So I think, frankly, it's good that I come in as sort of a dispassionate, objective person, that says "we need to take a good hard look at what we're doing here and how we're doing it." I believe that we can improve racing, and we can grow racing, if we try to look at it objectively, and not say, "Oh, we need to do that because we've always done it that way," or "We need to do that, even if we're losing money in this particular area, we need to continue down this path because we've always done it that way." With respect to the second part of your comment about that we looked at racing first, that certainly wasn't the case. Racing was the most pressing need. And I think everyone would agree, if you look at all the postings on the internet, if you read the publications out there, that there's a constant drumbeat about the AMA not being capable of doing this, that or the other thing. Typically, it's just about all associated with racing. That's an area that we needed to focus on immediately to try to improve what we're doing. And I'm confident that the direction that we are following in racing is going to improve racing. It's going to grow racing, to something that people are going to say, "Oh, okay, now I get it. Now I get why we're doing that."
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