Page 177 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

158 The Disney Way

Their behaviors provide signals to new employees as to the company’s underly-
ing culture.
Illinois Power, which invested thought, money, and effort in developing
a training program that supports its cultural transformation, exemplifies a
company that has reaped the rewards of an organization-wide commitment
to customer-focused training.
As an initial step in the implementation, we instituted an intensive training
program that included a three-day Dream Retreat and a complete immersion
in the concepts of a customer-centric culture. The aim was to improve team-
work, customer service, and employee empowerment. In one small example,
line workers were allowed to rearrange work schedules to allocate time more
efficiently. By making a point of training its employees in a “customer first”
approach, Illinois Power instigated a remarkable turnaround throughout the
company. Capping the utility’s accomplishment was its 1991 receipt of its
industry’s most prestigious tribute, the Edison Award.
Another top-flight company that has achieved enviable results with its
training initiatives is Motorola Inc., a Fortune 100 global communications
leader. In the l980s, Motorola pioneered Six Sigma, a quality and busi-
ness improvement methodology that is still revolutionizing industry. Two
decades later, in 2002, Motorola achieved the unique distinction of receiving
the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for a second time. Motorola
became the only company in the world to have received this award twice,
having won it earlier in 1988. Motorola is still finding ways to reinvent itself
using Six Sigma (a registered trademark of the company), and Motorola
University offers Six Sigma Certification and Six Sigma consulting and train-
ing services to organizations throughout the world.
At a time when management became increasingly aware that Japanese
manufacturers were invading the company’s markets with considerable suc-
cess, Motorola was by no means in bad shape (profit improvement hovered
between 5 and 10 percent per year). In 1981, Motorola’s CEO announced
an ambitious five-year strategy designed to improve process, product, and
sales. The measures put in motion included setting a strategic goal for qual-
ity (target of no more than 3.4 defects per million products); instituting
performance rewards (savings stemming from team recommendations shared
as bonuses); initiating senior management reviews (constant reinvigoration
of quality programs with results passing through the entire organization);
and, most important, training employees (40 percent of training one year
was devoted to quality matters). The success of this creative combination