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• Execute. Achieve results significantly better and faster than our competitors
by employing innovative, proven, and rigorous management practices.
Personally meets commitments and keeps promises.
• And always, Ethics and character. Conducts business ethically always
and everywhere. Treats all people and all cultures with respect and
dignity. Keeps one’s personal ambitions and emotional reactions from
interfering.
Motorola’s CEO also articulated a five-point plan for achieving business
results in which improved leadership effectiveness topped the list.
Motorola’s Performance Management Process
Motorola’s performance management process is an ongoing cycle of setting per-
sonal goals that align with the business’s scorecard objectives, then observing
and discussing performance issues, development plans, job match, and career
plans throughout the year. The process culminates with year-end assessment of
leadership behavior and business results, calibrated across leadership ranks,
which in turn informs differential investment decisions (for example, incentive
plan payout, executive education opportunities, assignment to special CEO
project teams) based on relative contribution to the company’s performance.
Outcomes of assessment and calibration of relative performance feed into goal
setting for the next year, and the cycle repeats.
Planning Dialogue. The planning dialogue occurs at the start of the year, and
its purpose is to create mutual understanding of performance expectations
between employees and their managers. The discussion focuses on defining
results goals aligned with the business or function scorecard, and leadership
goals focused on behavior most critical for attaining expected results. Once goals
are defined, the discussion turns to establishing professional development and
career plans that will enable employees to achieve their immediate performance
and future career goals.
Checkpoint Dialogues. The purpose of checkpoint dialogues held in the sec-

cuss calibration outcomes, refine development plans, and begin planning for the
coming year. Aiding the discussion is a comprehensive feedback report derived
from the multirater assessment that not only displays ratings and comments but
also suggests development actions from For Your Improvement (Lombardo &
Eichinger, 2000) for areas requiring improvement. These suggestions are very
useful in guiding development of performance goals, creating development
plans, and discussing career plans.
Link to Rewards
Executive rewards play a key role in driving Motorola’s change to a performance-
based culture. Differential investment—rewarding executives commensurate with
their overall contribution to the success of the company as determined during
calibration—sends a clear message to employees that results and leadership
behavior are what count. Leaders considered most effective have produced break-
away results and have demonstrated exemplary leadership behavior. They are
rewarded with challenging job assignments, promotional and developmental
opportunities, and significant monetary awards. Somewhat less, yet still consid-
erable, investment is made in solidly effective leaders—those who “deliver the
goods” consistently and demonstrate leadership behavior. They are compensated
competitively and provided opportunities for continued learning and develop-
ment. Modest investment is made in least effective talent to find a way to
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improve performance through job reassignment, performance improvement
plans, referral to the company’s employee assistance program, or as a last resort,
separation with dignity.
SO WHAT?
By the end of its third full year of implementation, the leadership supply
process was producing observable change. In those years, new leadership tal-
ents were placed in all but three of the roles reporting to the CEO; one-third of

• Hiring an outside consultant to complete the benchmarking study gave
Motorola access to information about leadership programs in other
companies without expending scarce internal resources to collect and
consolidate this information.
• Web-enabling the process was key to achieving consistency of applica-
tion throughout the company. It also minimized ongoing administration
because the web-based tools compile and report without the need for
human intervention.
• The Office of Leadership, the new central organization created to
manage the leadership supply process, was purposefully kept very
small. With web-based tools and implementation carried out by
resources within the individual business units, the Office of Leadership
was staffed by fewer than ten people, minimizing cost to the organiza-
tion and avoiding the trap of creating a centralized bureaucracy.
• The CEO mandated that executives comply with the new leadership
supply process, particularly with respect to assigning rewards commen-
surate with personal and organizational performance. Although unpopu-
lar, the mandate served to jump-start the process, short-circuit resistance
to change, and quickly gain acceptance as the value of the process
became evident.
• Establishing semi-annual talent management reviews between sector
president and CEO created a rhythmic cadence to the process, reinforced
the expectation that development and deployment of leadership talent
was to be managed as aggressively as P&Ls, and ensured continued
ownership of executive leadership talent and the leadership supply
process by the CEO.
“Do Differentlies”
• The broader human resources organization was not kept up-to-date
during the redesign phase. As a consequence, implementation was
hampered by the need to assuage feelings of ill will from having

directing Motorola’s leadership supply core process redesign effort, including
design and development of the procedures, tools, support materials, and inte-
grated information systems required to translate the leadership supply process
from vision to reality. Prior to joining Motorola in 1997, Kelly was senior vice
president of Aon Consulting’s start-up preemployment testing outsourcing group
established in 1994. Her career began as a human resource consultant with
HRStrategies, during which time she designed, validated, and implemented pre-
employment testing, developmental assessment, and performance management
programs for numerous Fortune 100 companies, including Motorola. Kelly
obtained her doctorate in industrial and organizational psychology in 1987 and
is a member of the American Psychological Society and the Society for Indus-
trial and Organizational Psychology. Kelly currently is director, leadership devel-
opment at Capital One Financial Services, Inc.
Jamie M. Lane, vice president, leadership, learning, and performance, Motorola,
Inc., has been with Motorola since 1998 and was actively involved in the lead-
ership supply core process redesign efforts. Jamie’s current role is vice president
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