Thread regarding 3M layoffs

Is that really the current mission statement ?

I don’t think that dude has been around for awhile

There are not leaders at 3M, there are only people getting names for themselves to move onto other companies. One “”leader” had a vendetta against a company that let him go. He was instrumental in spending billions to buy that company after 3M bought his line of BS.

One of the good vision statements I've seen over the years was this:

This is a great place to work.

Leaders got measured and rewarded or moved along based on genuine employee surveys, not the bs these days.

Some of us do remember how good leadership made:

1. People feeled important to the success of the whole operation or team. This means most work is done by long time employees and not outsourced to save a few bucks.

2. A nice mix of team and individual rewards, with more rewards actually being nominated by team members for other team members, not mostly the boss picking winners and lovers.

3. Positive and frequent interaction with the employees and community. They is a better way to address PFAS than make claims that " it does not affect human health at these levels" even though there is no science (at the time PFAS first became a concern) to say one way or another whether it is healthy to drink the water or now. When you have communities packed with current and retired 3Mers like Woodbury and Oakdale that have people worried about the wells, they have come to NOT trust one of the long time big employees in the community because of the corporate gobblygook lingo.

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I understand your thinking, but I disagree that the "make it by the mile and sell it by the inch" is fully dead. 3M commands well above market average margins in some very commodity areas. (abrasives, various tapes, respirators among a few) It also holds some very strong technologies that are not easily, quickly, or cheaply copied by others. (Various forms of microreplication to start.)

I do agree that 3M needs to re-think the whole business model. It will never be everything to everyone and 3M shouldn't try. It can however build a very solid business by being selective and using the raw technical strengths tied with the existing and mostly fully paid for manufacturing base. Was shutting down PCD a good idea, he-l yes. Is shutting down AAD just because it sells sandpaper and tape a good idea, he-l no.

One thing 3M needs to stop doing is swinging for brand new $100M+ single product lines. It won't work, one cannot rely on home runs to win baseball games. One wins games with a lot of reliable singles (a bunch of $10M new product lines) where there might be a home run or two hidden in the bunch. Anyone who claims with certainty to know which hits are the home runs ahead of time is a liar or a fool.

In addition 3M really needs to re-evaluate its relationship with distribution-based sales models. The current model flat out isn't working. The distributors want to own their brands and don't care about technology, that drives a hard wedge against pairing up with 3M.

The purpose of a mission statement is to define a company’s collective purpose. The 3M mission statement (below) is a rambling word salad of meaningless gobbledygook.

3M mission statement is “3M is committed to actively contributing to sustainable development through environmental protection, social responsibility, and economic progress.”

The word that comes to mind is callithumpian. It refers to a band of discordant instruments or a noisy parade.

If the mission statement is unclear or outdated, how can employees rally around it? Unless and until the entire organization is singing from the same hymnal, the chaos will continue.

I worked at 3M for 30 years, over 10 years on Exec conf, retired last year, led many different businesses as Director and VP/GM or President.

Analysis here is accurate - materials science, make it by the roll -- sell it by the sq. in component 'sweet spots' in the middle of long solutions value chains is no longer viable business model in most industries.

3M did well where it had massive scale and unique materials/mfg to sell at acceptable customer premium but make massive margins in these tiny market profit zones.

Thos sweet spots are mostly gone now - 'good enough' from other players is fine for these components, and customers are paying up for digital which really changes their product or productivity.

3M will never be a digital company for myriad reasons, and they are not very important to customers in many areas. T

Still a lot of good businesses but need to be managed by someone else in a different way. Private equity, cost out model for some and invest in customers/grow in others. 3M can only execute on the cost out model with Monish / GE people in charge.

HC spin is a good idea, but that portfolio makes no sense so I think it will be a sell off vs. spin.

Legal issues are actually not as bad as people think. US government ultimately wants 3M in business. They will pay billions but not go BK.

New leadership NOW is critical.

Great companies have leaders. 3M has an excessive amount of managers. "You manage things; you lead people." - Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

I'm retired but did experience the GE plague from a higher up leader. The key traits I saw were passive aggressive- when they were around us and their boss was also there, they gushed with praise on what a great team we were. However, behind closed doors our leaders were being shamed and bullied to overpromise well beyond what was reasonable, which led to cost cutting to meet the goals and some bs where we'd make more product and build unnecessary inventory to meet a bogus production target.

Management by fear was the norm. One leader even wanted to return to the full fledged forced ranking that mcnerney used within his own business. Word is he forced leaders to give him secret spreadsheets with people ranked 5 to 1 on the GE scale.

It was demeaning, demoralizing, and disgraceful. Glad I'm out of this circus and collecting a pension.

How many of you here report to one of those ex GE? Do they share the same (egoistic i know it all) characteristics?

1. Sales growth resulting from organic product development lags sales from acquisitions. If you plot out 3M sales growth over the last decade, you can see that without acquisitions, 3M sales declined. As Aero shows, there is risk to that approach.

2. There are too many internal metrics, and the focus that goes with that. Portfolio leaders are basically managing internal process and metrics rather than really understanding and delivering to customers.

3. SAP and A3M - both are taking along time, consuming resources and further distancing the company from their customers.

4. Leadership - very few, to none, of the current leaders have ever really grown a business, whether from start up, or managing through a business life cycle to achieve growth.

There are no mature markets - just mature managers.
Managers are not leaders - 3M needs leaders now.

Mike's playbook is based on a 20th century 3M and marketplace. People will not pay 20 percent more for 3M products when they can buy a copycat for less and get good enough quality. Those days are over.

Smaller companies, not burdened with top down decision making, 2nd guessing from a COC focused on conflicting metrics, where ESG is more important than ROC/ROI, and fighting for survival vs. Sitting around waiting to see what happens in the marketplace - these competitors have the right mindset and are winning the battle, which is why anemic organic sales growth is happening.

The only growth 3M has had this century has been driven by acquisitions, including the corporation ki----g aearo in 2008.

The HC biz will do well if they hire and outsider who is a industry expert, please not a GE bully/clown.