Case Study

Growing Leaders

How important are excellent leaders to organizations? If you were to ask 3M CEO

George Buckley, he'd say extremely important. But he'd also say that excellent

leaders don't just pop up out of nowhere. A company has to cultivate leaders who

have the skills and abilities to help it survive and thrive. And like a successful

baseball team with strong performance statistics that has a player development plan

in place, 3M has its own farm system. Except its farm system is designed to develop

company leaders. 3M's leadership development program is so effective that in 2010

it was number three on the list of BusinessWeek's "Top 20 Companies for

1

INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY, ISLAMABAD

FACULTY OF IIIE

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Leadership" and in 2009, Chief Executive magazine and Hay Consulting Group

named the company the best at developing future leaders. What is 3M's leadership

program all about? About 8 years ago, the company's former CEO (Jim McNerney,

who is now Boeing's CEO) and his top team spent 18 months developing a new

leadership model for the company. After numerous brainstorming sessions and

much heated debate, the group finally agreed on six "leadership attributes" that they

believed were essential for the company to become skilled at executing strategy and

being accountable. Those six attributes included the ability to "chart the course;

energize and inspire others; demonstrate ethics, integrity, and compliance; deliver

results; raise the bar; and innovate resourcefully." And now under Buckley's

guidance, the company is continuing and reinforcing its pursuit of leadership

excellence with these six attributes.

When asked about his views on leadership, Buckley said that he believes leaders

differ from managers. "A leader is as much about inspiration as anything else. A

manager is more about process." He believes that the key to developing leaders is to

focus on those things that can be developedlike strategic thinking. Buckley also

believes that leaders should not be promoted up and through the organization too

quickly. They need time to experience failures and what it takes to rebuild.

Finally, when asked about his own leadership style. Buckley responded, "The

absolutely best way for me to be successful is to have people working for me who

are better. Having that kind of emotional self-confidence is vital to leaders. You build

respect in those people because you admire what they do. Having built respect, you

build trust. However hokey it sounds, it works." And it must be working as the

company was named the number one most admired company in the medical and

other precision equipment division of Fortune's most admired ranking for 2009.

Discussion Questions

1. What do you think about Buckley's statement that leaders and managers differ?

Do you agree? Why or why not?

2. What leadership models/theories/issues do you see in this case? List and

describe.

3. Take each of the six leadership attributes that the company feels is important.

Explain what you think each one involves. Then discuss how those attributes might

be developed and measured.

4. What did this case teach you about leadership?