In 1988 the Leadership section of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) guidelines was based on Bob’s leadership practises when he was CEO of Motorola. His exemplary performance as a leader is still recognised as sought after worldwide. He has a reputation as a visionary. Although he’s retired and spends time learning to play cello and maintaining his energy through athletics, Bob continues to provide leadership advice on various aspects of business and to various sectors, including the U.S. government. Bob is involved in several projects to keep his ever-learning mind active in providing value for society and guidance to Motorola.
I sought Bob’s thoughts about Six Sigma Business Scorecard and corporate performance in the current business environment. His personal vitality, the depth of his convictions, and his enthusiasm for sharing ideas are evident in his reflections.
Leadership must provide direction in bits and pieces in such a way that it stimulates activities. Leaders must often engage in anecdotal, relevant and contributory activities. For example, Motorola developed a team competition (TC) that was adopted from Miliken & Company. It created the same type of mentality that permeates a football team competing in the Super Bowl. The TC provided an opportunity for teams to get together and showcase their winning attitudes and successes. These events are large sessions where people really get excited about sharing their work and are enthusiastically led by their CEO.
Such sports-like competitions provide reward and personal stimulation and encourage employees to achieve superior performance. Leaders cheering for their teams demonstrate their commitment to competitive and superior results throughout the corporation.
On the CEO’s role in achieving the desired corporate performance:
Achieving superior performance is personal. The CEO and other high level executives must commit themselves to improving their personal quality and the people they influence. For example, a phone company executive who attended a Motorola briefing (to share the experience of winning the MBNQA) decided to improve his personal quality and performance. He enhanced the way he did his job by speaking more nicely to people and becoming punctual for meetings. As a result of these personal changes, in one of his next meetings, meeting attendees all got together and finished the meeting one minute before it was supposed to start!
Quality is translatable. Whether it is a vice president, a manager, a crew supervisor, or a supervisor, personal vitality must be demonstrated in a way that appeals to the employees. Therefore, once the improvement initiative is in motion, it is unstoppable because of the vital sprit of everyone involved. For example, Bill Smith at Motorola, who taught me the concept of Six Sigma, demonstrated this principle well in how he communicated Six Sigma. I would invite people and ask what they were doing only to discover that a lot of neat things for process improvement were occurring that I could learn (from employees such as Bill Smith).
As for the sceptics, we do not need to do anything with them. They discover for themselves that if they are left out, they will not longer be vital members of the team. At a personal level, these concepts are simple to implement. We must teach employees how to map jobs, determine the time needed to do them, identify opportunities for improvement and apply statistical thinking and simple tools that have been embraced by people like you and me.
As for the link between quality and profitability, I firmly believe that the link is evident. It must be absolutely clear that when we make fewer mistakes and prevent latent defects from being shipped to customers, the savings are directly transferable. The improvement must lead to lower costs, faster delivery, and higher customer satisfaction. In the Motorola corporate auditing department, when the process was mapped and understood better, auditors realised that the audits could be done in 10 to 20 percent of the time they previously took.
Regarding COE’s or executives who do not see the direct link between poor quality and profitability, I say they must be blind. They may need a little arm twisting. If they do not work out, they must leave the company. The disposition process must be clearly communicated. The boss must evangelize Six Sigma or the improvement process; otherwise it will not be successfully initiated.
CEO’s can communicate their message about quality through case histories, success stories and anecdotes about experts. Jack Germain, Bill Smith and Dick Buetow, all leaders in quality, were credible people based on their experience and contributions in their respective professional areas. They were believable people.
I never expected any of my people to be perfect. I wanted them to at least listen to what the leadership was saying and participate in the process. People can participate in the process by simply mapping the way they do their work and discovering opportunities for breakthrough. For example, people in the patent office were doing a fine job. However, as they participated in the Six Sigma process, they discovered that the time used to file patents could be reduced significantly.
Many quality gurus have already taught us that quality never costs money. However, quality improvement, or directly linking to profitability, may need awakening. I hope that Six Sigma Business Scorecard will awaken lots of people and be able to change them with help from several Bill Smiths.
Art Sundry led that awakening at Motorola when he stood up at a management meeting and proclaimed Our quality stinks! People like Sundry have credentials. He was a successful leader who still desired to improve. He kept looking for opportunities to improve and places to find some tools to help him improve. Improvement in performance is an aggregation of a lot of little details.
Different people take different stimuli. At Motorola, we happened to be lucky that we made a point of having an open dialogue in officers’ meetings. At such meetings the chief must listen instead of talk. People begin to respond when the leadership listens. We do not change over a weekend. Because of the open communication environment, Bill Smith had the courage to present his idea about Six Sigma and listeners were willing to entertain it. In such an environment, officers know what needs to be done, take risks and challenge the existing processes. They find a champion, nurture the seeds of success and multiply that success into many successes.
Bill Smith wanted to see me and he took the risk to do so. I immediately listened to him, and when I could not understand his hypothesis, I asked him to come again next the next morning.
On sustaining the corporate performance:
The CEO of a company is like the captain of a team. If the CEO cannot stimulate the team, he or she does not hold high promise for the company. Leaders such as Roger Miliken of Miliken & Company and John Pepper, ex CEO of Proctor and Gamble, bring in 10 to 15 like minded individuals who have similar beliefs. The leader becomes a zealot and goes about promoting his or her quality religion throughout the company. The demeanour and conduct of the institution where quality has emerged, radiate throughout the entire corporation. As quality improves, financial measures improve. By giving attention to all, people recognise that employees’ contributions are a much-appreciated phenomenon. The CEO must listen and react to employees’ ideas.
Speaking of attention, Motorola developed an excellent education programme through Motorola University. The objective was to get employees into the classroom for communicating corporate beliefs, to learn the new processes and for encouraging team competition, where good ones share success stories for others to follow. Personal visibility is a human need. At Motorola we even invited suppliers to learn about our improvement process. All said they wanted to be better suppliers. Institutionalising corporate beliefs, values and goals throughout the theatre of operations is critical to sustaining long-term performance. When the CEO’s belief permeates each and every employee, the results will surprise us, as we experienced at Motorola from 1987 to 1992.
On creating a sense of urgency to achieve superior financial results:
I set my own deadlines for achievement, and my people had to satisfy their objectives. If someone does not understand the objectives, then the leader has to work with the person. Sometimes we make changes in personnel if the objectives and the current employee skill set appear to be divergent.
Financial measures take care of themselves. If we map the process and do the work in the most effective way, we end up having good results. Such an approach brings down the cost, is appreciated by the customers and is reason enough for repeat business and even more business.
On executives’ accountability for improvement:
Every month at Motorola, the top 15 to 25 executives met. One was designated to be the main speaker and to present the best idea to improve quality in his or her area. For the meeting, the executive became a teacher, sharing ideas with his or her counterparts. Whatever the religion preached at the company, one must accept it or go to another church.
On thoughts about a participative management programme:
We first learnt about the participative management process in the early 1960’s. We took the essence of it, refined it in the Motorola way and implemented it. This process allowed employees and groups to establish stretch goals to generate savings or execute their tasks better. The savings were shared with employees of the group. This process did wonders for us. We created numerous pockets of excellence and success stories. Employees earned a significant percentage of their salary due to the savings they realised for Motorola.
The CEO Quality Award was created to recognise the extraordinary successes of a team or individual who has significantly improved a process, leading to higher customer satisfaction or less waste of resources. For people who received the CEO Quality Award, it was a very important award, as the standards to achieve this award were very tough.
On Motorola Today:
The Six Sigma and process improvement initiatives were attenuated in the mid-1990’s due to company growth. However, they are being restored currently. The way they are being applied today is somewhat different. The programme is now called Six Sigma Digital. People who are advocating it and living it are very enthusiastic about it. There is a personal vitality to the entire programme that comes through Chris Galvin, Chairman and CEO and Mike Zafirovski, President and COO. They have truly personalised it.
Interestingly, the leaders at GE, Honeywell, Citibank and other companies all recognise that they have learnt something from Motorola that helped them bring about their recent successes. Motorola being recognised is a rewarding experience.
