Case Incident “Data Will Set You Free ” Ford CEO Alan Mullaly is known for starting meetings by saying “Data will set yo

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Case Incident “Data Will Set
You Free ”
Ford CEO Alan Mullaly is known for starting meetings by saying
“Data will set you free” and for trying to change Ford’s culture to
one that is based on increased accountability, more information
sharing, and hard metrics. “You can’t manage a secret,” he is also
fond of saying. Although it’s not clear whether Mullaly’s approach
will work at Ford, which is known for its self-contained fiefdoms
where little information is shared, some companies have found that
managing people according to hard metrics has paid off. Consider
Freescale Semiconductor, a computer chip manufacturer based in
Austin, Texas.
Freescale has discovered that in order to have the right people
at the right time to do the right job, it needs an extensive and
elaborate set of metrics to manage its 24,000 employees in 30
countries. Of particular concern to Freescale is retention.
“There’s no greater cost than human capital, especially in the
technology industry,” says Jignasha Patel, Freescale’s director of
global talent sourcing and inclusion. “When you’ve got a tenured
employee that decides to walk out the door, it’s not just one
person leaving, it’s that person’s knowledge and network and
skills.”To manage talent and prevent turnover, Freescale holds line
managers accountable for recruiting, hiring, and retaining
employees. To do that, managers need to project their talent needs
into the future and reconcile those with projected availabilities.
Patel provides line managers with census data that helps them make
their projections, but at the end of the day, the responsibility is
theirs. “What we have done is taken all of our inclusion data, all
our metrics, and we’ve moved the accountability over to the
business unit,” Patel says. Patel also provides Freescale managers
with benchmark data so they can compare their effectiveness with
that of other units. The benchmark data include the number of
people hired, turnovers, and promotions—and breakdowns by
demographic categories. “There’s [a return on investment] for
everything we do,” says Patel.
In general, what do you think are the advantages and limitations
of such metrics? Based on what you have learned from Organizational
Behavioral Science, how would you deal with acquisition and
retention of employees you supervise if you were a manager?