Our last group meeting was taken over by a "values acceleration workshop," where leaders walked us through a deck of Solventum values, shared stories related to these values, and wanted (half-forced) those in the room to do the same. Is this happening in your team meetings?
It's top-down forced, and our managers learned about it only a few days beforehand, so super thoughtful on the roll-out :eyeroll: You can search "values" on Sharepoint and find the presentation: "Culture & Values Acceleration Workshop"
To me it was giving Walmart brainwash hype-chant vibes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B1v6cqDcXQ
The wording has some icky, anti-trusting connotations. Like each slide has a column of "what this value is" and "what this value isn't." Some examples from the "isn't" definitions:
- Put People First: Repeatedly forgiving mistakes without driving improvement
- Put People First: Avoiding feedback to prevent upsetting others
- Advancing Together: Avoiding accountability in the name of harmony, allowing issues to go unaddressed
- Live with Heart: Confusing empathy with letting poor performance or harmful behavior slide
I could think of way more examples of not seeing these values than seeing them. The ironic bit about the wording above is that like 3M, dysfunctional managers aren't addressed, just shuffled or ignored. I'm aware of bad manager behavior and feuds that caused an employee to leave after just 2mos. The managers are still there. I've heard of a VP level yelling at someone in a meeting, blaming them for what amounted to their own misunderstanding. Still there. Probably an "oh, my bad" situation even though screaming up the chain wouldn't be tolerated.
Look at Yammer posts about Eagan, asking about better food options or a workout space or dedicated desks. Every answer is like emailing a politician, getting back this tone-deaf robot answer: "Thanks for your question! I'm so glad to share that we have an incredibly thoughtful, design-forward office space, featuring [stuff that isn't what was asked about]. For any more questions, please talk to your manager. Thanks again for your engagement and support, we're so excited for our new home!"
I heard there's no workout space at Eagan because the 275 gym badge records show it's "underutilized." I wonder if all of Bryan Hanson's $40M will be utilized this year? If not, maybe he didn't need them all. He could have been paid only as much as the 3M CEO and given a ~$1k bonus to every global Solventum employee. Or how about more than 2.25% for our first annual increase as a new company? But hey, way to go "founders" for achieving this incredible, once in a lifetime milestone of launching a new company.
Do you know what the 1, 3, and 5yr innovation plans are for MedSurg? What customer pain points will be our focus to "solve what matters?" Or as we deepen our corporate identify as a "maniacal serial acquirers," what markets/products/solutions do they have in mind? Is there any plan other than "let's hope what 3M Healthcare was already doing gets the stock up enough to make the C-suite rich?"
They've upped the ante on midyear reviews (again with the anti-trust wording), but is this applied higher up? Read Wayde's recent bullets on Yammer titled "Highlights from the 2025 Bank of America Securities Health Care Conference" and "Solventum at the Goldman Sachs Global Healthcare Conference." Corporate blather that says absolutely nothing! Citing becoming a new company despite this being a year ago, and ERP deployment which is just carrying on 3M's 15yr old failure? Is our C-Suite held to SMARTS goals? What's the minimum salary they'd walk away with in a given year? Could Bryan or Wayde or Tammy get a 2 rating?
We have a VP and Chief Inclusion Officer who's first move was to ask the employees what Solventum should do on this front. If you're going to crowd-source answers from the masses, why do you need to pay someone so much to do it? Shouldn't they have, I don't know, the expertise and qualifications to set a direction based on research and best practices?
This is the sort of stuff that would make me feel more confident in the "parents" driving the ship, rather than wasting time asking the kids how they'll commit to "our" values.