In China, It's the 'Year of the Manager'

Leo Burke of "Motorola University" has a problem. At roughly $2 billion in sales, Motorola China Electronics Limited (MCEL) is already one of the biggest global companies in the People's Republic. The pagers, cell-phones, semiconductors, and other mobil communications equipment the company makes feed a market that is only going to grow. Official government policies call for Chinese telecommunications to achieve parity with the developed world by the turn of the century.

By the year 2000, that means, MCEL expects to triple its Chinese national workforce from 3,500 to 10,000. These new hires will be mostly middle managers and technical people, not laborers; telecom equipment is made by computer integrated process technologies, not by hand. But as an internal Motorola University document recognizes, China has "a shortage of management talent in the labor supply." MCEL has been plugging the hole with more than 100 U.S. expatriates, stationing them in Beijing and the plant complex in Tianjin to the east. This reliance on expats has slowed down the company's strategy of "localization" -- relying on Chinese managers who are closer to and more imaginative about local market opportunities.

Besides, expats are expensive. Western-style apartments in Beijing cost $10,000 a month; add to that figure the cost of salaries, trips home, and the international schools for children. Overall, compensation and support for expats amount to about five times what Chinese employees require.

So here's Leo Burke's problem: How do you teach business to 10,000 Chinese? Bright, university-trained candidates are everywhere. But how do you teach customer service, quality manufacturing, profit and loss -- never mind the time value of money -- to two different generations, each of which bears its own unique scars from the People's Republic? Those who are past the age of 35, MCEL has already learned, have terrifying memories of the Cultural Revolution and are disinclined to take risks. Those who are under 35 are products of rigid schools that permitted individual ambition but taught that individual curiosity and conscience are signs of impudence. On the whole MCEL's employees simply want to know the rules; they do not ask "embarrassing" questions.

After Jason Lum, vice president of human resources at MCEL, identified the need for some kind of rapid-entry training program, what Burke and his team at Motorola University came up with is CAMP, the China Accelerated Management Program: six full weeks of classroom work, spliced into 14 months of on-the-job training, including action learning, project management, expat coaching, and rotation through Motorola's worldwide facilities. The program runs up to three cycles at a time; each cycle trains no more than 15 people. The curriculum includes modules on market economy, value creation, business process design and improvement, benchmarking, and more. It also teaches presentation style, team facilitation, and situational leadership -- all subjects that are particularly challenging in China, where improvisation is generally frowned on. For Burke, breaking through that inhibition is the most compelling dimension of Motorola's opportunity.

You go to CAMP about a mile-and-a-half from Beijing's airport, at the Swiss-chain Moevenpick Hotel, the center of a compound of several acres -- Western-style restaurants, conference rooms, a swimming pool, tennis courts, mostly surrounded by a high fence abutting the new airport tollway. It's demonstrably unSwiss -- with abrasive pile carpeting on the floor, fuzzed-up CNN on the screen, and telephones that crackle in your ear. The windows don't quite seal out the dust but do provide a nice view of 747s and Airbuses taking off at one-minute intervals from the much-less-Swiss international airport terminal.

Five women and seven men are cycling through camp, all carrying newly-minted Anglo names -- "Jessica", "Howard", "Boris", names that, unlike their own, can work in Motorola's global e-mail system. Simply to make it into CAMP, the twelve have had to pass through a selection process meant to identify the very few who might succeed -- and stay with Motorola once they have made it. "Every Chinese employee we train becomes a rare prize for every other foreign company operating in the country," Burke explains. "So part of the program's design must inspire a deep sense of identification with Motorola."

Each applicant must produce nominations and supporting letters from managers, endure individual interviews, pass English tests. Then every candidate submits to a 32-part structured interview with questions such as, "Do you think you make decisions quickly?" and "If a coworker asked to discuss a personal problem with you, what would you do?" From all of this, the camp team works up a complex psychographic profile of people with "high potential." The algorithms are numerous; few candidates make it through.