Zenglo Chen reports to work, eager to begin his first day on the job as a product manager at GlobalCom, an electronic games manufacturer. He logs on to his computer, sips his coffee and -- wham! In the first five minutes at his desk, Chen receives eight e-mails marked urgent: one from his boss and the rest from other senior managers in the hardware peripherals group. While he's diving into the first assignment, an operational review of his department, the phone rings. It's the receptionist wanting to patch through an irate customer demanding to know why his product delivery is late. After calming the customer's nerves, Chen looks back at the computer where another 10 e-mails and a video-mail from HR asking him to screen and recommend internal candidates for a key IT position await his reply. What to do first? Follow up on a product glitch or get moving on his supervisor's request to meet with another business unit about sharing their new wireless technology? Before he can even pick up the phone to call his boss, it rings -- this time it's one of his employees. Her long-simmering dispute with a manager in the Asia office has blown up and she wants Chen's backing. A few hours later, Chen fires off one last e-mail before lunch. He stands up and with a sigh of relief thinks, It's just a game, thank God.

In real life, Chen is a manager in the office of leadership at Motorola Inc.'s headquarters in Schaumburg, Ill. His hectic "first day on the job" was a four-hour multimedia management simulation that Motorola uses to assess and develop its middle managers across the globe. The struggling communications giant hopes its new Web-based skills assessment tool, Aon Consulting Worldwide's Catalyst software, will help managers change with the times and become the company's future leaders.

Like many large manufacturing companies, Motorola has been blindsided by the ruthless pace of its global competitors--L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co., Nokia Corp. and Qualcomm Inc.--and a marketplace that requires agility, customer focus, and leaders who know how to collaborate and can thrive in chaos. Online management simulation holds promise for companies that need an accurate and efficient way to hone managers' skills. E-learning can also save companies a lot of money in travel costs and instructor fees. But the programs aren't perfect, and they will never substitute for the human touch of coaching.

CHANGE THE MANAGEMENT

For Motorola, speed is the missing ingredient. After several quarters of declining market share in the mobile phone industry, the company has embarked on a gargantuan restructuring and reorganization project, closing plants and laying off 22,000 workers (15 percent of its workforce) since last December. Motorola executives came to the stark realization that the company's managers did not have the fast-company skills necessary to win in the global marketplace. "In a lot of our markets there is no management talent, period," says Kelly Brookhouse, a director in the company's office of leadership and organization effectiveness. Motorola's plan to

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