by Stephen Monaco — 2014 was a big year for change at Motorola. The company, which has been a powerful, globally recognizable brand for 83 years, separated into two companies. Shortly thereafter, it was purchased by Google, transformed its mobility business and was purchased by Lenovo. Here, the head of the Motorola Mobility’s Global Real Estate and Workplace Services team explains how company employees artfully navigated what was, by any measure, a daunting year of change for the global telecommunications giant.
I was fortunate to be part of a team that was entrusted with the challenge of relocating Motorola Mobility’s Chicago headquarters from a suburban campus to the company’s new 2,500-person tech hub in the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago. But the move from a suburban campus to an urban setting was just one in a series of changes the company had recently undergone. In short order, Motorola, the 83-year-old company, separated into two companies, was purchased by Google and transformed its mobility business. Then, just one week before we were scheduled to move into our new location, Motorola Mobility announced its sale to Lenovo, the number one PC manufacturer in the world.
Change is never easy, but our team embraced it fully and emerged stronger than ever. When our relocation was complete, the majority of employees characterized the process as “an amazing user experience.”
What was our secret formula? Why did most of our employees regard our massive change process as positive, rather than negative? I could share the metrics of our open workspace, cite our high-tech amenities, list the tasty, free items on our menu, or describe the multi-level change management model we developed with easy-to-remember acronyms (I named the project CRE:ative—The Art of Leading a Change Management Experience. The first three letters of the acronym — CRE — stands for corporate real estate, and the “-ative” stands for “advocate, transparent, inspire, vision and engage,” the values that drove or project.) But our team’s success was due to more than those things. In fact, I have read numerous case studies about other great companies that have achieved a similar level of success when undertaking a change management project and identified several characteristics all those stories share. For us, it boiled down to three things: a genuine care and appreciation for our employees; a spirit of adventure; and a dedication to a common goal.
Care and Appreciation for the Company
Motorola Mobility’s change management team was a passionate group of leaders with a brightly lit north star—genuine care and appreciation for our fellow employees. Anyone leading an initiative with a high degree of change who does not have real empathy for their team or a willingness to be transparent with them will most likely deliver results within the median scores of satisfaction. In an effort to be fully transparent and listen to those who don’t fill out surveys or attend Q&A townhalls, we conducted one-on-one interviews with every employee, only to realize later that we, the managers, were the ones being interviewed. We surveyed the entire company a few weeks after each phase of the move; at the project’s completion, employees rated the overall relocation experience and our new workplace environment with an 87 percent positive score.
A Spirit of Adventure
The second element of our change management success was the fact that our team embodied a spirit of adventure. The magnitude of risk involved in our headquarter relocation project was obvious to everyone. We were moving from an office environment with 8’x8′ cubicles, dedicated office entitlement policies, an in-house health club, daycare facilities and free parking, to an open, shared workspace that included none of the amenities we’d enjoyed previously. To top it off, 65 percent of our employees, who had been able to drive to work at our former location in just 20 minutes, now endured an average one-hour-forty-minute drive into the office. One way.
The onus was on my team to showcase the unproven benefits of a new workplace that so many other companies were adopting, and, as can be expected, we met with resistance on multiple fronts. We faced doubt and skepticism from employees who didn’t want to convert to the open workspace. It would have been a natural reaction to defend the position with expert opinions and white papers or ignore the outcry, but our team, who had decided early on to meet this task with a spirit of adventure, took this as a challenge and addressed the concerns head-on. Rather than issue a “father-knows-best” counter-attack, we chose to lead with the heart and face the possibility of being wrong.
We transformed a portion of the cafeteria into a mini office with 14 desks and one office. I recruited 14 well-respected engineers and asked them to fit-out a desk and populate it with equipment, dual monitor screens and personal items that would be easily recognizable to their respective teams. On each desk, we placed a “Hello my Name is” sticker that listed all the tasks that could be performed at the desk versus the new lab environment. In an effort to help each individual see the benefits of a larger workplace that offered diversity of work style and function, we printed six vignettes on eight-foot-tall renderings that captured the look and feel of themed kitchens, open collaboration, conference rooms, rooftop deck, etc. We took a skyline panoramic from the 19th floor that captured the famous Chicago skyline in the background and printed it on window film. This was the moment when we shifted the focus from “me and my space” to our space and giving employees a choice of where in the space they could work.
For 10 days, this section of the cafeteria was blocked off with black drapes until the big reveal, where 70 percent of our employees toured the mock-up. Afterward, employees participated in a survey and gave amazing feedback that resulted in valuable modifications. Over the next 30 days, groups of employees and engineering teams took turns working at the new desks. Ultimately, the hecklers became the cheerleaders. To use an athletics analogy, managing the move to our radically new workplace environment was a lot like the “big game,” where the underdog competes against the legacy champions. I liken our success to that moment when the entire team realizes that not only is there an opportunity to win, but that the momentum has shifted in the underdog’s favor and victory is inevitable if everyone agrees to “leave it all on the field.”
Dedication to a Common Goal
Our team was steadfast in our mission and exerted extraordinary effort on a consistent basis. It’s important to the survival of the project to enlist a large enough team that includes consultants (we used Gensler, CBRE and JLL, among others) to keep the momentum and pass the baton of enthusiasm when the individual workload creeps up. Additionally, relying on a diverse team of employees (Facilities, HR, IT, Engineering, Communications & Marketing), rather than an exclusive group of real estate and facilities management employees, gave us a unique advantage. To be clear, we could not have succeeded without our consultants, but working with other in-house departments allowed us to keep a pulse on what was happening in the office—on the vibe, on what was being discussed at the water cooler and how employees were truly perceiving the move.
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The DNA of our team evolved over time with a fascinating collection of personalities and expertise. Initially, a few people were appointed to the team by top leadership but either were unable or unwilling to commit to our regular working meetings.
I believe the most successful change management teams leave the ego at home and roll up their sleeves on a consistent basis. I’m often asked what we would do differently if faced with a similar challenge. Without hesitation, I would send out a company-wide email inviting interested employees to submit a video application explaining their desire to join our core team, and I would ask them to serve on a rotating basis for a short period of time.
The relocation to our new home in Chicago has proven to be a valued chapter in the story of Motorola and continues to be written under our new Lenovo parent company. We are continually learning that change is not only inevitable, but it’s the new normal, and quite possibly an integral ingredient for success. The components of great change leadership are numerous, but the secret to success is finding the ones that fit your company best. If you find yourself in the position of influence, I challenge you to find others who share the vision without egos; who acknowledge the need for an extra measure of hard work; who lead with the heart and a spirit of adventure.
Steve Monaco leads the Global Real Estate
and Workplace Services team for Chicagobased
Motorola Mobility. Monaco earned an
MBA and Master of Architecture from the
University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
He is a Board Member of the Chicago chapter
of CoreNet Global