At Motorola we require three things of our manufacturing employees. They must have communication and computation skills at the seventh grade level, soon going up to eighth and ninth. They must be able to do basic problem solving—not only as individuals but also as members of a team. And they must accept our definition of work and the workweek: the time it takes to ship perfect product to the customer who’s ordered it. That can mean a workweek of 50 or even 60 hours, but we need people willing to work against quality and output instead of a time clock.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 1990 issue of Harvard Business Review.