There are two things to get straight about Marquette. First, not everyone thrives in such a fluid and informal atmosphere. Consider that half of the 70 people who came to Marquette in 1982 from GE's patient-monitoring division are now gone, many of them having complained that they "felt naked within our structureless structure," as engineering vice-president de la Huerga puts it. Several of those who have since returned to GE agree. One remembers his old job at Marquette as "moving target."
The other thing to know is that Marquette's lack of structure doesn't indicate a lack of control. "It's real interesting, trying to figure out how this place works," muses Julie Grabczyk, a research technician. "They say there are no time clocks, but shop people do have to log on the computer to say how long they've been working and what they've been doing. People supposedly don't get fired, but they do. Technically there isn't a pyramid, but obviously there is. What you see depends a lot on where you're standing."
Grabczyk sees quite a lot, actually.She is the only one of Cudahy's 11 children to work full-time for the company.
For Scott Kroeger, too, the notion that Marquette Electronics is a structureless free-for-all is laughable."If you define structure as requirements that make you work hard, this is the most structured place I've ever worked," declares the design engineer. By his reckoning, job performance is dictated not by traditional rules, but by a short list of dauntingly simple expectations: "make good products, give good customer service, and do it all fast." It was with precisely those expectations hanging over them that Kroeger and two colleagues set up shop about a year and a half ago in an out-of-the-way corner of the main plant with instructions to come up with an electrocardiographic computer not much bigger than a breadbox -- and to come up with it as soon as possible. On his rounds, Cudahy would visit the team, only to be shooed away unceremoniously. But by the following summer, he had his new machine in distribution.
Cudahy is not always content simply to wind up his employees and let them go, hoping they'll do the right thing. The boss's patient, generous side has a flip side that is mercurially opinionated and surprisingly quick-tempered. Still as enamored of the clutch play as he was when he built that first electrocardiograph system, Cudahy often seems energized by his ability to intervene in a project, either by mobilizing it to a frenzied pace, or bringing it abruptly to a stop. When Cudahy, for example, grew fed up with a supplier who was continually "jacking around with prices and delivery dates" for a treadmill used in a Marquette stress-testing device, he finally informed his manufacturing staff that the item would be produced inhouse, and gave the engineers a year to design both the machine and the production fixtures needed to build it. When one team of enterprising engineers decided that the displays on Marquette's computerized screens should come up green instead of orange, an angry Cudahy vetoed the change. Even in the case of Kroeger's miniature electrocardiographic computer, Cudahy pulled it out of distribution for a last-minute redesign -- after the ad campaign had hit the streets with photographs of the earlier prototype.
Beneath Cudahy's loose-as-a-goose exterior, acknowledges his daughter, there lurks a man who basically wants things done his way. "Somehow, though, he makes you think you're doing it not for him, but for yourself. He makes you think there's nothing too big for you to swallow. That's the most amazing part."
David Mortara says there is little doubt in his mind that Marquette Electronics is one of the more technologically aware, market-responsive companies in its industry, and that its work force ranks among the most talented, productive, and contented. He has just one question: "What about middle management?"
Mortara, a former Cudahy protege who left a Marquette vice-presidency to open his own medical-electronics company across the street, says that aside from Warren Cozzens, there is no such thing as middle management at Marquette. "Sure, there are vice-presidents, and Mike always talks about his horizontal management, but does anybody really report to these guys? Has anybody seen a management meeting take place in the past three years? No. That's because Mike makes sure everybody reports directly to him;" says Mortara. He says he left Marquette for what he perceived as his lack of responsibility and recognition.
Middle managers don't completely agree with Mortara, whose departure was not amicable. But they don't totally disagree, either. One vice-president confided that he thinks Cudahy's version of management works beautifully in keeping the rank and file happy, but as a manager, he'd be happier if he could call more turf his own. Thomas Divers, general manager of the patient-monitoring division, disagrees. "I think we have all the turf we're entitled to. . . . We call our own shots." David Ivers, the vice-president for technical services, says that Cudahy "gives you all the rope you need -- including the rope to hang yourself. I guess I'm more structured than he is. I know that I don't want to be as loose with my people." Board member Fred Luber, chairman of nearby Super Steel Products Corp., perhaps comes closest to the truth of it. "Mike likes to be the maypole," he says.
"What Mike has done most brilliantly at Marquette is turn his faults into features," explains Mortara. "He knows he's better one-on-one than in groups, so he abolishes meetings and says he's cutting red tape. He knows he doesn't trust others to help him manage, so he either promotes people he knows can't do the job, or he doesn't appoint anybody -- saying titles and organizational charts don't mean anything."
Frustrating? Invariably. Effective? Irritatingly so. "Mike gets by so well on his charm and his business insight," says his former employee, "that he's never really had to learn any of the usual ways of doing things. Whawt he does isn't management, and it certainly isn't as loose as a lot of the lower-level employees think it is. But, boy, does it work."
CORRECTION-DATE: April, 1986
CORRECTION:
In "Will the Company Please Come to Order" (March), the charts on page 83 should have been credited to Bruce Sanders.
