The McKnight Principles

It is sad, there are good people working at 3M today, who may have never encountered the McKnight manage philosophy in action.

The Mcknight Management Philosophy. As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way.

Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs.

Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made ki-ls initiative. And it’s essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.
“If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give the people the room they need.”
— William L. McKnight

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To me, there are four critical words that depict the demise of the McKnight principles and they are “in the long run”. Back in the early 2000’s when McNerney became CEO, the focus began to shift to short-term results at a dramatic rate. If you did not make the next quarter results, they’re more cuts. This went on for two years,…cut after cut, after cut….

Some of this might have been needed, but when the only thing that is rewarded or punished is based on short-term results that is what you get. Top this with the forced fit bell curve with a mandatory % of employees getting a 2, 3, 4, 5….employees learn that they better fall in line and make decisions that will get results today vs an exponentially better results tomorrow.

I see this same “short-term” focus behind many of the decisions that has gotten 3M into many of there legal issues. Peoples need or pursuit to survive, desire to “win”, be promoted, rewarded, recognized….began aligning to how they were recognized/rewarded and if your only focus is the next quarter, end of year, your decisions can be very different than if you have longer end game. No longer was it making decisions that were best for the “big” 3M. Narrow your focus and shorten your horizon.

I remember my orientation at 3M like it was yesterday. Learning the McKnight principles, setting foot on campus, I had an almost reverential experience that first day in St. Paul. It was the same reason I left - once I saw that you could no longer find the McKinght principles on the company website I just couldn't keep pretending. Would have stayed there my whole career if leadership truly lived the original values. Innovation and growth were replace by "fewer bigger programs" which translated to fake numbers, not investment, and unethical behavior at the top. Shareholders would be horrified to know what's really going on at the "Dividend King"

Action the failure mode by doing a 5Y to get to "true root cause." LOL

Principle four: Ask Monish

Principle 2 ask for more data to avoid a decision

All decisions are made by or must be approved by Monish. On all topics.

Very true. The senior leaders that I work for love to micromanage, nitpick and criticize. They think they are experts in fields where they have no expertise. They have only worked at 3M or have worked at 3M for at least 20 years. They thrive in putting people down instead of building them up.

Someone should compile the Roman principles

Let me start
"TRUST THE PROCESS"

Thread regarding 3M layoffs

The McKnight Principles

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