Everyone here has been working under enormous pressure for a very long time. Constant layoffs have made this a very toxic workplace. When was the last time you felt like you actually enjoyed working here?
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It became toxic when we bought KCI and morals and ethics went out the window.
When I started at 3M I appreciated the long tenured employees whose ranks I joined. I felt they were the ones who had built this strong and successful company I was lucky to be part of. They were the keepers of the values that drove 3M towards constant innovation; they had dedicated their lives to 3M and passed their knowledge and wisdom to the next generation.
But then a new generation arrived who seemed to think of those dedicated employees, not as the people who built a company which now offered them a rich opportunity, but as people who couldn’t “cut it” elsewhere. They boasted about breaking the “not invented here” culture which actually fueled innovation. They portrayed 3M ans desperately out of touch and being left behind. They overwhelmed 3M with dozens of failed e-business iterations and bragged about cutting the “long tail” of R&D. They slowly destabilized 3M’s once cohesive operations at the BU level into malfunctioning corporate operations that could no longer “see the forest for the trees.” And where specialization mattered, such as in the selling organization, they became less valuable generalists who relied heavily on tech service to sell their product portfolio .
It became a company with 2 opposing missions. One group were businesses who owned the P&L and tried to stay close to customers to develop and sell products. The other had no P&L ownership but seemingly boundless executive support to turn 3M into a one-size-fits all Target.com.
Solving customer problems became less important than digital hits . Knowledgeable employees were dismissed as old school relics. And despite year upon year of little to no growth, the C-suites refused to see how dysfunctional the model had become.
In some ways, maybe the catastrophic impact of the lawsuits will be a positive in the long run. Maybe someone will be forced to recognize 3M’s valuable technical and scientific resources should not exist to be the support system for corporate IT programs - but rather the reverse. The primary creative energy should be emanating from the 3M labs with resources aligned to help facilitate the goal of serving real customers in finding unique 3M solutions; not simply generating click bait. I hope one day that is the 3M that will re-emerge from the nightmare and thrive once more.
Last time 3M was somewhat enjoyable was during the Buckley era 2005 to 2012 or so. He was post mcnerney so that made him better right off the bat. Thought he was a decent guy and I believe he soft pedaled some of the sick sigma and forced ranking cr-p imposed by Jimmy.
Inge seemed good at first but it was all financed on debt. He left us with Mike.
You really have to go back to the Desi days in the 1990s when 3M was a great place to work (unless you got one of those dreaded "you're working for newco (imation)" memos facedown on your desk in late 1995). Desi overall cared about people and innovation. It wasn't really his fault we got slapped with GE McNerney. The board was chasing fools gold and thought GE style "leadership" for the right "fix" for 3M when the company didn't need to be fixed.