At the global town hall held on October 22, a very courageous employee rose to ask the first question. Stating that he "was not a VP yet," he proceeded to ask Bryan Hanson to explain the rationale behind adding additional layers to the ranks of senior executives while engaging in yet another round of Q4 layoffs.
By my recollection, counting our pre-spin days, we had layoffs in 2019, received US government pay during the pandemic to avoid layoffs in 2020, and then followed with layoffs in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Now in 2025, we are sacrificing more people upon the altar of growth, while making room for more executives to augment the ranks of our C-suite. That makes the question particularly timely —Hanson fashions himself as a leader, and historically, leaders who can both speak and demonstrate shared sacrifices tend to earn followers. Hanson says a lot of the right things, but his actions indicate otherwise.
His answer was supremely unsatisfying. He provided corporate doublespeak about how we will continuously evolve, and occasionally, that evolution will cause his leadership team to eliminate jobs. That answer is the standard boilerplate C-suite talk that those folks have been spewing for many decades now. But it did not answer the question. In fact, it did not come close.
As a leader who came in claiming he wanted to flatten the hierarchy, he has significantly thickened it. The tie that binds Hanson to his clique is that they all worked with Bryan in years past. Hanson justifies his decisions by explaining that he needs people who have experienced spin-offs before. This argument, however, begs the question. Are Medtronic and Covidian alums the only people who fit that bill? At what point does this become cronyism masquerading as a meritocracy? And given the huge severance packages (Barry, for whatever personal struggles he is facing, likely earned a two-year severance package when his good old buddy Bryan figured out how to eliminate his position instead of accepting his resignation. No bad for declining a job offer.)
Despite all his flash and polish, it is hard not to wonder if Hanson is simply a pirate, out to pillage as much as he can while throwing some bo--y to his inexhaustible supply of friends. It is hard not to conclude they are feeding off what will eventually become the carcass of 3M's health care business group. And no amount of slide editing at 11 pm can paper that over.