With all the restructurings, layoffs, people leaving on their own, we've lost all the knowledgeable managers who cared about both their people and the company (and yes, it's possible). The ones we have left should be shown the door immediately and 3M should try really hard to bring some of those we lost back if this place is to improve in any way.
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There was a lab manager who was told that her people were afraid of her. She replied "good".
Fortunately, in my experience, that was an anomaly. I had several cr-ppy managers in by 36 years at 3M, and quite a few decent ones, and a good number of excellent ones. I retired 3 years ago and can see that things have crashed and burned since.
3M Leadership is activity failing its employees. It is a textbook toxic workplace
@dy I have encountered this in R&D. My manager who made me cry became a vp and retired. There is still one in ASD left, although stripped of direct reports
@bg years ago, I had a manager who boasted to me that he made a former female employee cry. He was proud of that! Eventually that manager was promoted to SVP.
Clean house in the IT Business Management team within strategy & services. Focus on the “leaders” and directors….bad rat pack running wild.
What is interesting is that they keep bringing "consultants" with no real operational experience in charge and no people skills. They keep behaving like McK consultants - focused on delivering a number and managing optics without understanding that their job is to run the business for the long term and to look after their people. Yet... 3M continues to appoint SVPs to major transformations who simply do not have the operational background required.
The pattern is obvious: late to all meetings, last-minute cancellations, no operating rhythm, no KPIs, and constant effort to pretend everything is fine. And the worst partis that raising these issues goes nowhere. HR does nothing, her manager does nothing, and it leaves you hesitant to even report it to E&C because the system clearly doesn't act on it. It's a straightforward leadership failure that creates unnecessary disruption across the organization! Welcome to the new 3M!
The way my manager spoke to me today was completely different from how my manager spoke to me 15 years ago—the tone, attitude, and overall vibe were all completely different. I used to think I had the worst manager ever, until one day I saw my friend’s manager yelling at him.
This is spot on, it’s so bad!
@OP First 3M leadership should clean house and get rid of the useless mid level managers and VPs with bloated salaries who contributed nothing to the growth of the company. Maybe hire a consulting company to rank the value of each manager/VP then eliminate the bottom 50%. Once the useless highly paid management is out, the gap can be filled by promoting good leaders from within.
This is very true for R&D. Both divisions and CRL
The problem is that everyone who was able to leave did, and now they're happier for it.
The managers we have left are the toxic a--holes who don't actually do anything, and they can't leave because nobody wants them.