Okay gentlemen, time to get to work on growth. You’re going to need to compile a list of willing former employee technical experts in product, process, and capital equipment. They’ll need to be called on and will be happy to participate in helping the young teams that need help. Get busy!
13 replies (most recent on top)
Yes we need heavy investment in R&D.
The statement “Customers can order online now. What do we need sales for?” Is wild. Especially with the lack of investment in R&D and lack of new life changing products. The sales group is making sure the customer orders 3m again.
Well mister ffs silos if you had a clue about what to focus on then we wouldn’t be where we are today, would we. But no, just cut cut cut to short term prosperity, damn the future. You’re so damn smart, get an outline together.
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Oh ffs now. 3M is already a basket case of silo’s and pet projects. Do you really want to enable researchers to all be running around with 15% projects ? At some point gotta focus.
Make it ONLY if you can do so uniquely, protect it and make it at a reasonable profit.
I disagree, again.
We need to widen the moat.
I'm not taking about making products to sell; I'm saying we need to put our engineers to work inventing, where or not it looks like it might be profitable.
Our portfolio is full of great ideas that just needed to find the right application: Scotch-Brite and Post-It both are flagship products that came about because our stable was full of ideas just waiting for an application.
There's this recent belief that it's worthless to spend time developing anything we can't immediately sell; that kind of thinking is what's ki-ling the company.
It's Post-it™️ Notes. Not "post-its". There's a litany of failed products that disprove "if you make it, they will come". That's an uniformed perspective.
Listen to the customer. Make it ONLY if you can do so uniquely, protect it and make it at a reasonable profit.
For the love of all things holy, quit hijacking my handle. Seriously, there are plenty of other good handles available.
When sales people will stop thinking they are tech, when tech will stop acting as marketer and managers and when marketer will stop claiming as sales reps perhaps everyone will concentrate on its real competencies and provide growth?
Yeah thank god for McNerney and his acolytes budgeting the company into long term prosperity
Engineers must never be allowed to senior management again. They have destroyed the company I loved.
Portfolio needs serious pruning before canngrow
I'm gonna go out on a limb and disagree.
Customers can order online now. What do we need sales for?
We need to cut marketing by half. We need to triple R&D. We need to go back to the old strategy of acquisitions only for the moat, not for the product.
Plants are fine, but some product lines can go.
We need to invent new stuff, and we need to make a premium product. Like we used to.
We don't need to aggressively market and sell post-its. Those days are long gone. Focus on the future. Make it and they will come.
Joe Harlan should have been the CEO after Buckley. He stressed emphasis on customers. Instead we got Inge who emphasized saving 3M from activist investors who wanted to break it up. It's happening anyway.
What things can we do to increase the rate of growth with customers? Hire back all the sales people laid off. Get back to customer first and take care of customers again. Make sure they are supported with marketers and programs. Ship what customers order! Stop asking how to do this when you dissolved the part of the gears that run part of that engine. Oh and don’t further alienate your employees who are left