Growing Leaders

How important are excellent leaders to organizations? If you were to ask the recently-retired 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 it has been one of the "Top 20 Companies for
Leadership" in three of the last four years and ranks as one of the top 25 companies for grooming
leadership talent according to Hay Consulting Group and Fortune magazine. What is 3M's leadership
program all about? About 10 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" 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 under Buckley's guidance and continued under the leadership of newly appointed
CEO Inge Thulin, the company is continuing and reinforcing its pursuit of leadership excellence with
these six attributes.

When asked about his views on leadership, Buckley said he believes leaders differ from managers. He
believes the key to developing leaders is to focus on those things that can be developed-like strategic
thinking. Buckley also believes 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 said he believed the best way for him to
succeed as a leader was to surround himself with people who were better than him. But doing that takes
a great deal of emotional self-confidence, an attribute that is vital to being a great leader. When you
have people working for you who are excellent at what they do, you respect them. When you respect
them, you build trust. That type of leadership approach worked well for Buckley, as illustrated by 3M's
number 18 ranking on Fortune 's most admired global companies list for 2012.

1. What do you think about Buckley’s statement that leaders and managers differ? Do you agree?
Why or why not?

I agree fully agree with Buckley’s Statement. He stated that a leader is the inspiration behind the
scenes. The leader needs to show proper ethics and work attitude for the employees to follow.
When a leader is not fulfilling his or her role and only commanding instructions, it shows poor
leadership skills and will only affect the rest of the team poorly. Managers, Buckley stated, “is
more about process.” Managers are there to make sure the employees are trained to do their
work and make sure the business is running smoothly. The managers, I believe, are the ones
who run the show in a business. While leaders implement rules and guide, managers are there
to make sure everything is organized and going as planned, while also making sure the leaders
idea are making profit for the business
 2. What leadership models/theories/issues do you see in this case? List and describe.*

The leadership model that I personally see in place is the visionary leadership model. This model
represents a person’s ability to create and articulate a realistic simulation that would allow a
company a “vision” on the future, something realistic and tangible that is better than what is
happening in the present. The leadership theory that is within this case is the Fiedler
contingency model. Basically, the Fiedler contingency model is properly using a manager’s skill
and leadership style to create the best results possible based on the current situation. The only
issue that I see in this case is that by using those six attributes that the company is training its
leaders to follow, it makes them follow a fairly narrow path to success when there are many
more possibilities that will lead to success. To put it plainly, it pigeon-holes the leaders into
thinking that those six attributes that the company is looking for are the only things that really
matter at the end of the day.

Best Practices at Best Buy

Do traditional workplaces reward long hours instead of efficient hours? Wouldn't it make more sense to
have a workplace in which employees could work however and whenever they wanted to as long as
they did their work? Well, that's the approach Best Buy tried. And this radical workplace experiment,
which obviously has many implications for employee motivation, was an interesting and enlightening
journey for the company.

In 2002, then-CEO Brad Anderson introduced a carefully crafted program called ROWE Results-Only
Work Environment. ROWE was the inspiration of two HRM managers at Best Buy, Cali Ressler and Jody
Thompson. These two had been asked to take a flexible work program in effect at corporate
headquarters in Minnesota and develop it for implementation throughout the company. Although that
flexible work pro- gram had had some stunning successes, including high levels of employee
engagement and productivity, there was one significant issue. Those involved in the program were
perceived to be "not working." And that was a common reaction from managers who didn't really view
flexible work employees as actually doing work because they didn't show up at work during the
"traditional" hours. The two women set about to change that impression by creating a program in which
employees would be evaluated on what they accomplished their "results only" not on the amount of
hours they spent working.
The first thing to understand about ROWE was that it wasn't about schedules. Instead, it was about
changing the work culture of an organization, which is infinitely more difficult than changing schedules.
With Anderson's blessing and support, they embarked on this journey to overhaul the company's
corporate workplace

The first step in implementing ROWE was a culture audit at company headquarters, which helped them
establish a baseline for how employees perceived their work environment. After four months, the audit
was repeated. During this time, Best Buy executives were being educated about ROWE and what it was
all about. Obviously, it was important to have their commitment to the program. The second phase
involved explaining the ROWE philosophy to all the corporate employees and training managers on how
to maintain control in a ROWE workplace. In the third phase, work unit teams were free to figure out
how to implement the changes. Each team found a different way to keep the flexibility from spiralling
into chaos. For instance, the public relations team got pagers to make sure someone was always
available in an emergency. Some employees in the finance department used software that turns voice
mail into e-mail files accessible from anywhere, making it easier for them to work at home. Four months
after ROWE was implemented, Ressler and Thompson followed up with an- other culture check to see
how everyone was doing.

So what results did Best Buy see with this experiment? Productivity jumped 41 percent, and voluntary
turnover fell to 8 percent from 12 percent. They also discovered that when employees' engagement
with their jobs increased, average annual sales increased 2 percent. And employees said the freedom
changed their lives. ROWE reduced work-family conflict and increased employees' control over their
schedules. ROWE employees didn't "count" how many hours they were at work but instead focused on
getting their work done, however many or few hours that took. For them, work becarpe "something you
do not a place you go."

Despite the positive aspects of the program, Best Buy's current CEO, Hubert Joly, decided to eliminate
the flexible work environment associated with ROWE. Now instead of being able to work whenever and
wherever they choose, most corporate staff will be required to work traditional 40-hour weeks in the
office. And Ressler and Thompson? Well, they now own their own HR consultancy practice, which
promotes the ROWE idea to other companies.