Motorola Case Study

Problem Identification:

CEO Bob Galvin ended his speech on April 24, 1983 with words that brought much

confusion to Motorola. He stated that he “wanted to decrease the many layers of

management and to bring management closer to the product and market.” This was a

revolutionary idea with great vision. However, the timing of the speech and lack of

proper preparation for the following after effects were ill advised. Bob had not consulted

with his two upper management partners, William Weisz and John Mitchell nor had he

discussed it with Human Relations. The main purpose of Bob wanting to make these

changes were the issues he was constantly hearing about employees stating there was too

many issues with the management matrix and thusly projects were not being seen through

by a single point of contact. Motorola’s rush to stay ahead of the curve as well as the

leader in the marketplace had placed a huge minutia of middle managers into the picture

with most of them managing less than 5 employees. This extremely low employee to

manager ratio was putting anywhere from 9 to 12 people in line from middle to senior

managers. This caused drastic confusion and frustration throughout the company. Bob

knew as the company grew it would only get worse. This was not a situation he wanted to

leave Motorola in before he retired.

Situation Analysis:

Due to the fact that Bob had not consulted with pretty much anyone at the time of his

speech, he had not taken any of the steps that would be necessary for it to be brought to

fruition. He had not created an implementation plan nor lined up any sponsorship. Middle

management certainly would not want to change their current day-to-day business plans.

As well, the changes would mean a loss of power to their power base. The new plan

would have a lot of middle managers cut out of the picture all together. Weisz and

Mitchell would be up to the challenge but being caught off guard did not help the

situation at all. Human Relations VP Joe Miraglia worked with Galvin to set the wheels