Wiggenhorn, William. 1990. "Motorola U: When Training Becomes an Education." Harvard Business Review 5:35-51.

We found that much of our manufacturing workforce was illiterate and couldn't do basic math. So we had to create new training classes for remedial skills.

We started with SPC, basic industrial problem solving, how to present conceptual material, effective meetings, and goal setting. But we were wasting people's time via these classroom seminars.

Getting People to Want to Learn

Classes didn't motivate people to learn, self-learning methods didn't either.

So we had to convice people that an unwillingness to change was "poor performance". We also had to get managers to change their behavior about quality, not just understand the concepts.

We learned change must begin at the top. We also needed a common language. They upgrade the status, rewards and recruiting for going into manufacturing (rather than design). They started an annual training event for senior management. It helped but not much.

They found that manufacturing workers could read to do basic math, so they set new hiring standards. Half of their 25,000 employees didn't meet 7th grade standards. We required them to take classes and fired them if they didn't comply.

We also found that "technical college" hirees didn't have the basic accounting and computer skills either, so we worked with community colleges to develop and teach courses too. But the community colleges weren't up to date either and eventually we started Motorola University as a joint venture with local colleges. We also provide instructional materials to high schools we draw workers from.