How do executives stay organized? What are their management strategies? And what do they do for fun? Executive Suite seeks answers to the behind-the-scenes questions. Here is an excerpt from an interview of Keith Wendell, CEO of Harley-Davidson since 2009, conducted by Rachel Feintzeig for The Wall Street Journal. To read the complete interview and check out other resources, please click here.

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Feintzeig: You were Harley-Davidson’s first CEO to come from outside the company. Did you face skeptics?

Wendell: I don’t know how to quantify it, but there was a significant amount of concern from our employees and our dealers. “What can this person possibly know?” — that type of thing.

Feintzeig: What were people’s concerns about?

Wendell: First of all, I think there were some misconceptions about my background, thinking that my background had been largely in automotive. [That] really wasn’t true, even though I did have some experience [there]. The automotive industry is a hyper competitive industry [and] there is a different sort of mentality to how the car companies look at the supply base: It’s a more slice and burn kind of mentality. All those things culminated in a concern around “This guy is going to turn us into an auto-like company.”

Feintzeig: How did you earn employees’ and customers’ trust?

Wendell: Really by just listening and engaging them [and] recognizing the long, rich heritage of the company. That’s important to all of our employees and all of our dealers – Harley-Davidson and what it stands for. So using that as sort of a backdrop, [saying] “Guess what? We’re not going change the formula for Coke here and mess it up, but the future’s going to be different than the last 110 years.”

Feintzeig: How did you get up to speed on the company, coming from the outside?

Wendell: I don’t sit in my office and wait for people to come see me. I walk around and talk to people. I walk into a meeting and ask, “Why wasn’t I invited to this meeting?” and sit down and start to participate.

Feintzeig: Did you ride motorcycles before taking this job?

Wendell: When I was younger.

Feintzeig: Now do you ride?

Wendell: Oh yeah.

Feintzeig: How often?

Wendell: My first couple of years [at Harley] I rode a lot. I’ve ridden the Sturgis [South Dakota motorcycle rally] three times. I’ve ridden from Beijing to the Great Wall. I’ve ridden from downtown Tokyo to Mt. Fuji. I’ve ridden in the Hamburg rally. I’ve ridden in the San Tropez rally in France. I would go home at night and just take my bike out in the summer and ride for a half hour, an hour, whatever. But then I had a surgery last year on my neck and lost the use of my right arm for a while.

Feintzeig: As CEO, do you feel pressure to walk the walk — or ride the bike — so to speak?

Wendell: At first I did, sort of. About three months after I was with the company, my wife said to me, “Did they hire you to ride motorcycles or run the company?” Because that’s really a big priority in our company. We call it, “We ride with you.” We ride with our customers. We listen to our customers because we’re out there with them riding with them. We have this program where all of our executive management is required to attend like two rallies a year so that we’re out there with our dealers, with our customers, listening to their feedback.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Rachel Feintzeig covers management trends and chief executives for The Wall Street Journal and WSJ‘s At Work blog. From 2008 to 2013, she wrote about bankruptcy and restructuring, focusing on companies like the publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Twinkie-maker Hostess. Now based in New York, she previously reported for Dow Jones from Washington and Philadelphia.