Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 1
Case 1
Motorola Analog
Division: Development
of a Shared Global Vision
Ralph Krueger and Corinne Pfund
This case was written under the supervision of Dr. David O. Braaten, associate Professor, and Dr. Robert T. Moran, Professor of International Studies at the American
Graduate School of International Management. This case has been prepared as a basis
for discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of
an administrative situation. Names of the people have been disguised to preserve
confidentiality. The authors would like to thank the Motorola Analog division for its
cooperation.
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 2
Motorola in 1993
In 1993, Motorola employed approximately 107,000 people worldwide and was among the United States forty largest industrial companies ranked by total sales ($13.3 billion in 1992). It was one of the
worlds leading providers of wireless communications, semiconductor
technology and advanced electronics equipment & services for global
markets. The companys operations can be described as highly decentralized, with business operations structured into sectors, groups or
divisions, depending on size. Motorolas three main activity sectors
were: the Semiconductor Products Sector, the Land Mobile Products
Sector, and the General Systems Sector.
The Semiconductor Products Sector designed and produced a broad
line of discrete semiconductors and integrated circuits (IC), including
microprocessors, microcomputers, and memories, to serve the advanced systems needs of the computer, consumer, automotive, industrial, and federal government telecommunications markets. This sector
CASE 1
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 3
Corporate Culture
Motorola had a strong and homogeneous corporate culture despite the
relative independence of the various sectors, groups, and divisions
of the organization. All employees act according to certain corporate
values best captured in the Motorola global mission statement:
In each of our chosen arenas of the electronics industry, we will grow
rapidly by providing our worldwide customers what they want, when
they want it, with Six Sigma quality and best-in-class cycle time, as we
strive to achieve our fundamental corporate objective of Total Customer
Satisfaction and to achieve our stated goals of best-in-class people, marketing, products, software, hardware and systems, manufacturing and
service; increased global market share; and superior financial results.
People at Motorola were empowered as long as they could show adequate performance and aim at total customer satisfaction. Motorola
stressed empowered team culture that resulted in complex organizational structures that lead to team decision making. The company recognized the value of its employees. Motorola set priorities in developing
the capabilities of its people. For this reason, emphasis was placed on
training. Once an employee had worked for ten years in the company,
there was an unwritten rule stating that he/she cannot be laid off
without the permission of the CEO.
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 4
CASE 1
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 5
knew that change was only truly accepted when it was initiated by the
people themselves.
John identified a second alternative: to hire a public relations
company to create a convincing advertising campaign around the new
global vision and promote it within the worldwide Analog division.
Alison agreed that this would be a better way to convince people than
the training approach. However, it entailed the hiring of an external
organization to facilitate an internal change. This went against
Motorolas principles. Moreover, here again, the employees would not
be intimately involved.
The third option was to involve all Analog employees around the
world in the conception and implementation of a shared vision. This
ambitious alternative was clearly favored by Alison and John. Creating a shared vision was a totally new concept. It did not mean having
Marcos ideas communicated to all employees; it meant asking all
employees for their vision for Analog and integrating those values into
a common statement. The idea was to facilitate a visioning process,
which would require that managers and employees from ten different
countries develop a consensus on the future of the division. Alison realized that creating a shared vision would constitute a long process. The
potential benefits, however, were tremendous. If the visioning process
succeeded, the whole division would be focused toward one commonly
created vision. The division would work more efficiently and faster as
a global team. Alison and John prepared a proposal on developing a
shared common vision. The task was not easy. The problem was to
come up with a process that could involve all 2,200 employees.
When they explained their idea to Marco at their next meeting, he
was enthusiastic about the idea of a visioning process. He immediately
backed the proposal. In several brainstorming sessions after that
meeting, Marco, Alison, and John tried to determine how they could
get the Analog people excited about the idea and how the process could
be designed. It was anticipated that the visioning process would probably have to last between one and two years to involve as many employees as possible. The three had agreed that this process should build on
rather than replace the existing mission and objectives that at that point
existed within Motorola, i.e., the objective stated by CEO George
Fisher that Motorola be the finest company in the world. Marco and
his team, though, knew that finest might have various interpretations
in various cultures. They intended to explore these differences when
developing their own Analog vision.
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 6
CASE 1
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 7
the future global vision. Prior to the meeting, the participants were
asked to read Kenichi Ohmaes book The Borderless World.
To achieve these objectives Alison and John developed a procedure in which participants would work in multicultural teams. These
team ventures were reconstituted frequently to encourage a constant
exchange of ideas between all managers. This had another advantage
in that the managers for the first time really got to know each other.
At the end of the first phase the team effort had developed several
essence words in English that would be shared by each country
manager with his or her local employees. The essence words were:
Global Teamwork
Unity
Helping Others
Global Family
Innovation
Leadership
Personal Growth
Trust
Respect
Mutual Understanding
Esprit d Equipe
Helping Each Other
Premier/Finest
Alison and John knew that the greatest problems during phase one
would center around management expectations. All of the thirty-two
participants wanted to finish the discussion as quickly as possible. At
first, the managers regarded the visioning process as a task to be completed in the same way they completed their daily tasks. Alison remembered one manager saying: All right, so lets get started. We should be
able to come up with a sentence by the end of the day. Also, most of
the people believed that a vision was imposed, and, therefore, expected
the activities in this first meeting to be a lot of fluff. The meeting was
perceived by most participants as being part of a Motorola training
program. One other comment that John heard was: The company
wants top management to get more training. Here again the meeting
was seen more as an exercise. Most of it would be soon forgotten.
However, once the activities started, the managers discovered they
enjoyed the process of talking to and learning about each other. This
allowed Alison and John to view this meeting as a success.
Furthermore, Alison and John also had to consider the varying levels
of written and spoken English. To accommodate everybody the
processes had to be slowed down to avoid losing lose port of the group
that typically consisted half of Americas and half of people from other
countries. Non-Americans had difficulty with the constant use of
English and dialogue was necessary to clarify the meaning of each
essence word. For example, the word family had very different meanings from culture to culture. For Japanese and Korean managers to be
a family meant that each of them would be willing to give up his or
her life for the company. On the other hand, for Americans or French
it had connotations such as unity, bonds, or nucleus. Asians were more
reluctant to use this word. Long discussions were necessary to reach a
common understanding of all the essence words meanings.
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 8
Immediately following the phase one meeting, Alison and John discussed the results of the first meeting. John at one point said, I am
convinced that with all these discussions and exchanges, all the managers have a common understanding on what each of the essence words
means to the division. In a communique sent to the participants of
the phase one meeting. Alison tried to summarize the main findings and
to provide guiding questions for the managers to use when sharing the
results of this meeting with their respective organizations. Most importantly, Alison stressed that the words selected were less important than
the spirit and the shared experiences that generated the words.
CASE 1
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 9
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 10
10
CASE 1
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 11
My culture
My country
My employees
Motorola
Myself as a leader
11
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 12
What challenges do your organization and Analog face in successfully implementing the global vision?
How should the mission alignment process be coordinated with the
plan you developed to share the global vision?
What has to be decided upon before you can involve your organization in the alignment process?
What have you discovered to be familiar or in common across the
Analog organization with respect to your mission?
Task Seven (Saturday Afternoon):
1. Working in a group that represents your region or function,
using what you have learned from your individual reflection,
develop a process plan that will align the various missions of
your group with the global vision.
2. Identify critical steps and set dates
3. Be prepared to share your entire plan with the whole group.
(The entire plan includes the work of this morning on the process plan
to share the global vision as well as the plan to ensure mission alignment with the vision.)
Whereas almost all of the tasks were tackled in teams, the participants individually had to develop a procedure for their organizations
to address the alignment of their local mission with the global vision.
In all these activities, which can be considered the first steps of the
implementation process, Alison emphasized setting deadlines by which
the changes in structure, systems and behaviors within the organizations should be implemented.
Although, in retrospect, she considered this meeting in Tokyo a
success, Alison remembered all the problems she and John encountered.
First, the decision to let some Japanese Analog employees who had not
attended the first meeting in Phoenix participate created some confusion and delay, because the newcomers did not understand why all this
was happening. As a result, a few confused participants left the room
or did not come back the second day. Alison and John did not consider
this to be detrimental to the process.
Furthermore, a polarization in some of the smaller groups was
noticed. The groups stuck to their interpretations and ideas and refused
to further discuss other groups statements. Alison was somewhat discouraged when one of the American participants said, Our statement
is the best, why should we discuss it? In these cases Alison had to lead
the participants back to the common ground, namely the essence
words, they started from.
These problems made it difficult to keep the groups focused at times.
Nevertheless, this meeting must be considered a milestone on the way
to a global vision because Marco, Alison, and John recognized that
12
CASE 1
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 13
visioning was a process that would not end on a certain date as they
had first anticipated. Instead, the phases would continue indefinitely.
Marco institutionalized the visioning meetings. They would occur after
each strategic meeting, twice a year. Visioning was considered from
then on as an ongoing process of positive change. This decision led to
a change in the managers attitude as they realized they were in for the
long haul. Their commitment to the process and the implementation of
the vision increased noticeably.
Looking back at the final wording of the vision, Alison had to smile
when she read the words mutual prosperity. Prosperity was a word
the Japanese and Korean had fought for. The Americans had preferred
the word success. The Asians disliked the word success because it
13
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 14
had a very strong monetary connotation. Prosperity was more longterm oriented and broader in meaning. When she looked at the French
draft of the vision, she remembered the comment of the country
manager: In France, we have leaders, but the word leadership does
not exist. I have to change the sentence a little so that it fits. She realized once more that the words by themselves were meaningless. The
meaning of the vision was the key to the whole process. She was almost
sure that by the third meeting everybody understood the vision.
The development of the final statement in all languages was postponed until after the Phase Three meeting. Based on this achievement,
Alison and John wanted the group to get a good grasp of what the
vision meant in the various cultures. This was particularly aimed at
developing the division into a global family that would understand that
each culture had unique differences and strengths. For the third
meeting, all the managers were asked to bring a symbol that would best
represent the shared vision they had developed with their peers. To
instill this mutual understanding, Alison once again split up the large
group into six smaller groups.
Within these teams, each of the participants had to share what
symbol he or she had brought and in what way it represented the vision.
For example, one manager from India showed a picture of a salad bowl
and explained, We selected this symbol because we are not a melting
pot, but individuals with our own rights. Therefore, this compares well
with a good salad that consists of many different ingredients each of
them contributing to the whole. So, we are all ingredients of a big salad
to which the seasoning is added in the form of a global shared vision
and a global strategy. A French participant brought a drawing that
showed two hands reaching out for each other. He stated, These two
hands reaching out for each other symbolize relationships between two
partners like wife and husband or supplier and customer. What we are
trying to achieve with our vision is to close this gap between the
hands. Expressing the vision in the form of a symbol allowed the participants to get a feel for what the vision really meant to the other
culture. This procedure also exposed the participants to the cultural
differences and strengths that would have otherwise been difficult to
detect.
Having developed a global-shared vision and the necessary mutual
understanding, the other main objective that was set for this meeting
was to continue the implementation of the vision statement. The global
team had already started this process during and after the Tokyo
meeting. Local mission statements of each country organization were
aligned with the global vision. This process was now pushed further
by carrying out a global whole system assessment. This assessment was
aimed at designing a strategy meeting that would be more efficient due
to the implications and changes occasioned by the global vision. For
this reason, this was the first of the semi-annual meetings in which the
14
CASE 1
CASE-H8247.qxd
11/10/06
21:25
Page 15
Throughout the last year and a half, Alison had spent a lot of time
thinking about whether or not the process was perceived to be successful in the various countries. She feared to some extent that the
Americans were more positive than the Asians about the whole process.
Did all the different countries feel the change in their organization?
More importantly, does every Analog employee know and understand
the shared vision? Have the managers been able to communicate to
their people what was involved?
She now realized that the meeting in Manila would be another challenge. The division was now in the process of implementing the shared
vision. Each of the plants had to change its systems and structures to
be in line with the shared vision. She knew that the success of the implementation would primarily depend on how well the global vision
was accepted and understood by each and every person in the global
division.
15