The Road to Success of American 3M Company

The Success of 3M —— Four Seasons Management

Minnesota Mining Manufacturing Company (3M) is an aircraft carrier enterprise with a history of 100 years, with an annual income of 654.38+05 billion dollars and a total of 70,000 employees. Its success lies in its four seasons management method.

The key point of the four seasons management system is that any enterprise must focus on the appropriate strategy if it wants to succeed in the rapidly changing environment. Enterprises that can master the above four management stages skillfully can operate enterprises in a more culturally sustainable and environmentally sustainable way, and can better cope with and adapt to the entire stakeholder market and economic, social and environmental needs.

Management innovation stage In the innovation stage, an enterprise is like a laboratory. Power usually belongs to those who conceive promising ideas and visions and can turn them into products, processes or services. Therefore, the leaders of enterprises are self-determined and self-selected.

The most valuable form of capital in the innovation stage is creativity! Personal achievements are usually inspired by their own vision, or they are devoted to the vision put forward by others. Status comes from the individual's understanding and commitment to the vision and his efforts to successfully turn the vision into reality.

3M Group successfully manages the innovation stage by relying on its core values. 3M company makes everything sticky, and its core competitiveness lies in the research and development of glue and adhesive, which can be applied almost anywhere. The product development of 3M Group has been carried out in an orderly manner under the guidance of the company's four core values: "Respect our social environment and natural environment, satisfy customers with excellent quality and value, provide attractive returns to investors through sustained high-quality growth, and become an excellent enterprise that employees are proud of and willing to be a part of."

Facts speak louder than words! Many enterprises have such a historical figure, who introduced corporate vision into the company and became a constant source of inspiration for enterprises. 3M Company is no exception, William. Mcknight is such a historical figure! During the period from 1946 to 1966 as the chairman of the company, mcknight did the opposite, and implemented a decentralized system within the company, rewarding innovators and adventurous people, even if they challenged the priorities within the company. He even encouraged employees to engage in innovative activities that might devour the company's own products: rather than let others eat them, it is better to swallow them themselves-that's what mcknight thought. His management thought is still one of the guiding principles for the operation of 3M company!

3M company is a big community, and trust is widely spread inside and outside the organization! What employees do fully reflects the personal qualities encouraged by the company: intelligence, resourcefulness, courage to challenge authority and dedication to society and environment.

Management growth stage During the growth season, plans and mental activities are usually made by the highest level in the enterprise hierarchy. Power is usually enjoyed by designated authorities, who are responsible for implementing the rules made. Generally speaking, the most valuable form of capital in the growth stage is material capital: facilities, equipment and inventory. Relatively speaking, the labor force is interchangeable, so if the labor force can't work together, then they can't enjoy the leverage effect at all.

In this machine-like organization, employees' achievements are usually achieved through the motivation of goals and interests. Product development usually revolves around the original basic product line, developing and manufacturing new products with more quantity, larger capacity, faster speed or stronger functions.

One of the factors that promote a smooth transition to the growth stage is to choose the "right seeds"-ideas that have the ability to succeed, and pay full attention to these ideas.

In order to screen the seeds with growth potential, 3M Group looks for "killer applications". By listening carefully to customers' opinions, 3M Company has been making profits. By paying attention to how customers treat their products, 3M Group found that as long as they constantly improve their products, they can fill a brand-new profit base. The following products are realized with the help of customers' eyes: waterproof sandpaper, various adhesive tapes, audio-visual tapes, carbonless copy paper, overhead projection system, and a series of medical and tooth protection products. Every new product seems to create more profit space, which creates a development path that 3M company only needs to follow.

With the passage of time, this path gradually promoted the realization of "3M system": product development and improvement, and was finally recorded as a model for cultivating entrepreneurs within enterprises. The first component of this system is the individual. Mcknight publicly declared that 3M Company is an enterprise that encourages "productive disobedience". He carried out such a policy that once an employee shows the courage to despise authority on the basis of his beliefs, such an employee will be promoted to a management position. "When mistakes occur, if our management ideas are narrow and blindly critical, then this will stifle the initiative. And if we want to continue to grow, this initiative is indispensable and crucial! " Mcknight said.

In order to formalize this concept, 3M Company established the "15% rule": employees can spend 15% of their working time testing ideas that they think may be useful, without having to prove whether their decisions are justified or not, and without obtaining the consent of their superiors. Compared with the consistency imposed in the past in order to obtain the maximum growth of the machine, this freedom is quite progressive. It provides such an opportunity to help improve the process of specialization and differentiation.

The second component of the innovation transformation formula of 3M Company is the team. Mcknight's idea has realized the idea that new product development must be audited by a self-organized team including technical experts, marketing experts and manufacturing experts. In order to put good ideas into practice, a prospective entrepreneur with good ideas must also recruit at least two like-minded people from the above three fields-1. By putting these ideas together, 3M Group has accomplished a feat that other companies have failed to accomplish: carefully selecting seeds with growth ability and making them thrive!

It's all theoretical questions. Practically speaking, the promotion of new product development ideas is usually completed by the cooperation of various discipline teams or multiple business development units. 3M Company has a variety of product invention and development methods, which are completed by 45 branches. It is true that new products must go through marketing and manufacturing stages, but from the perspective of products, investors or development teams and branches, their processes are different. Sometimes, even the most promising idea, 3M takes several years to sprout and thrive, and it also needs the cooperation of internal advocates and change forces.

The management improvement stage is in the continuous improvement stage, and the enterprise is like a learning community. Employees are keen on learning and eager to use their wisdom and skills in practice. Decentralized power, people work together in the form of teams or networks; The organizational structure of the enterprise is relatively flat, and the leadership is held by people who can promote the functional relationship between the formal expert team and the informal expert team.

At this stage, the most valuable form of capital is information. Employees create information and apply it to production activities to continuously improve and improve products and processes. The achievements of employees come from the recognition of colleagues, and their status is based on their contribution to the success of the team.

In order to maintain the vitality of the organization, learning organizations must formulate their own fundamental mission and core values, and must clarify their long-term goals in order to provide guidance for enterprises in the period of fundamental change.

In the improvement season, 3M strives to achieve zero waste. At this stage, the company's most powerful commercial tool is what they call "3P", that is, "pollution prevention fee". The idea is to make employees realize that savings can be achieved by eliminating pollution. Only in the first year of implementation, 19 projects eliminated 654.38+500,000 pounds of pollutants, resulting in savings of 1 1 10,000 dollars.

The success of 3P not only inspired 3M company, but also inspired other companies around the world. Since 1975, 4,650 employee projects have prevented the generation of 654,380.6 billion pounds of pollutants, saving about 8 10/00000 USD.

With the passage of time, the concept of 3P has been further expanded, which means sustainable development. Sustainable development is a mechanism through which 3M Company strives to achieve an ideal quality of life not only for itself, but also for future generations. In order to improve the sustainability, 3M Company became one of the first companies to adopt life cycle management (LCM), which is a process that is more and more widely used in new product development to reduce design and production. In 200 1 year, 3M company issued a system, which clearly stipulated that life cycle management became one of the guiding ideology of new product development, and required all departments to make plans as soon as possible and apply this method to existing product management.

Since 1990, 3M company has found many effective ways to reduce pollutant emissions in production. For example, pollutants discharged into water decreased by 82%, volatile organic gas emissions decreased by 88%, solid waste decreased by 24%, and waste generation rate decreased by 35%.

Management recession In a recession, an enterprise is like a burning forest or a platform that is about to collapse. The organizational structure began to decompose and power tended to be decentralized. Leadership shifts from designated authority to charismatic individuals. In a state of disorder, people's behavior is clear, definite and certain.

At this stage, the most valuable form of capital is the core values of the enterprise and the perception of the company's mission and goals. The above elements are like a structure, which can effectively help the company and employees to help each other in times of crisis!

The product and process development at this stage starts with the company's mission and objectives, and explores the external creativity that can reflect and promote the above viewpoints. Through extensive restructuring, cost reduction and capital activation are realized, and at the same time, the marketing efforts implemented by the company focus on the remaining part of the declining market.

In order to successfully guide the company from recession to a new round of innovation and growth cycle, we must fully understand the company's mission and goals. In addition, leaders must regain the trust of destroyed employees.

In the process of recession management, 3M Company has continuously introduced new core products. After a company develops a brand-new product, imitators often follow suit. As time goes by, experience simplifies production, and competition also lowers commodity prices, eventually turning high-profit innovation into low-profit commodities. By creating brand-new products and diversifying existing products, 3M successfully avoided the blind pursuit of commercialization. The "15% rule" and the system that can continuously drive innovation across the production line and become a growing machine have contributed to the reason why 3M Company has maintained its youthful vitality for a century!

The four seasons management system is simple and has far-reaching revolutionary significance. Every enterprise is a living body: birth, growth, maturity and decline. Each stage is different, and each stage also needs different management strategies. In order to make the enterprise perform well in the whole life cycle and still make profits in the change, the enterprise must master the above four seasons skillfully.