Thread regarding 3M layoffs

CEO IS NOW GONE END OF YEAR

Business book author Jim Collins was absolutely right about the GE plague that ki-led profitable and venerable corporations.

He talked about the importance of rewarding shareholders (defined as people who hold share 2+ years) vs shareflippers (hold under a year only to force CEOs to cut and divest).

Desi wasn't perfect but he disdained the flippers who only cared about making a quick buck and moving on to the next conquest. Jimmy Mac cared only to please the flippers and chose to slash and burn both capital investment and R&D.

It took years to destroy the place but the death is imminent in remainco.

I saw a ex MBB who has been deploy back to plant to carry out miscellaneous tasks. Such degrading. Hope they are okay as long their high salary stays intact doing menial jobs.

I'm just a peon in a plant but we sell life or death items. We cater to big buyers. We take returns. We resell those returns. We shouldn't have returns period on any items that can be life or death imo. Even if items are returned intact you can easily reseal the container and have defects passed to next customer. 3M only cares about sales and stockholders. It's cheaper to pay legality than care about quality and morality. Boeing in a nutshell where whistleblowing deters your careers so no one says anything. 3M keeps hiring their friends into positions that they don't actually know the products we make. No production experience yet manage quality of said items. Fix the root problem of nepotism or this will be Boeing.

The GE forced ranking system was even worse than the 20-70-10 system described below. There were actually 5 down to 1, with 5 being "outstanding" and 1 being "unsatisfactory"

The worst thing was finding enough 2s "basic" or whatever label was used. A lot of solid people were hoping to get a "3" ranking to be at least in the average ranking. The 1s in most cases weren't hard to find in the early days as 3M had carried around some clunkers under Desi. It was having to ante up at least 15 percent for the 2 ranking that led to some intense, political, nasty spats behind closed doors for the people leaders.

If you got the dreaded 2, you were probably a good performer but in your 40s or early 50s. Your boss either threw you under the boss or was a weak leader during those "forced ranking" brouhaha. It was ugly to see a world class culture get destroyed by a Wall Street loving jerk. Today's 2s became tomorrow's 1s.

So glad I'm retired. Amazing how one pompous GE import could gut the culture of a 100 year old company living the McKnight principles.

Another thing McNerney brought in from GE was ranking employees top 20, middle 70, and bottom ten percent. This was not a good fit for 3M, as it had always prided itself in hiring the best and brightest. While granted that every company ends up with some dead wood that must be trimmed, after a couple of years of fear about being selected for that bottom ten percent list, eventually McNerney was convinced to abandon the program.

When McNerney came in, he copied and pasted “the five initiatives” from GE, that included Six Sigma, indirect costs, and three other things. It didn’t make the splash he had hoped for, so he grilled a random employee about what the “five initiatives” were. After that, all employees carried a copy of “the initiatives” on the back of their employee badge. As a previous post mentioned, six sigma was shoveled in to all functional groups whether it made sense or not. Everyone was required to work on a green belt project, so stupid hopper ideas were endlessly floated around. After a time, “enabling” programs were invented. With those, there were no tangible savings, but it enabled you to waste time on six sigma. When McNerney went away, the worst SS programs were quietly allowed to die on the vine. Aside from nurturing a long lasting toxic GE environment at the executive level, McNerney left a long term ruinous footprint by cutting capital investment by $300mm per year, padded the bottom line, and gave credit to “the initiatives”. Happiest day was when it was announced he had departed to take his destructive tendencies to Boeing, where planes are now falling from the skies thanks to the Jack Welch management style.

Our plants are lean. The problem has been flat sales and lack of new innovative products being introduced. Our plant is one of the top SVOP plants in the system.

Still a little fat on management side. Lots of group huddles, jokes and not really talking about work or growing the business. Supervisors basically socialize 80% of shift. Engineering was trimmed too much.

Safety group is very fat.

Quality is just about right.

HR could be consolidated to cover more plants remotely.

That being said….The SVOP tells a tale of a well managed plant.

Monish has been very quietly lately. Not sure if he will stay long with the new CEO appointment

Yes, Monish is another GE parasite.

Jimbo also heavily promoted age discrimination that even Neutron Jack would have blushed about. By 2001, his first year, you had zero chance getting to be an MBB unless you were mid 30s or younger. Enter people like Mike Vale for 2001 MBB training, where he made a name for himself.

isnt the CFO from GE ??

Both infested by the Welchian GE plague. If your company hires senior leaders from GE, you know your company will die a slow but excruciating death.

i was there when Mcnerney took over helm. Lots of 6sigma LSS DMAIC DFSS being shovel into different functional groups. after he left, all the damages were seen, and slowly these implementation were removed. The final piece was LSS, which laid off the last batches of MBBs BBs which left them jobless. practically the plants are back to pre-2001 time where this company didnt have sick sigma.