CEO Mike Roman looks back at an extraordinary year.
Good morning.
One year ago this week, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, and we went into lockdown. My last in-person meeting before closing the Fortune offices was with 3M CEO Mike Roman. 3M’s most famous product before last year was the Post-it note. But by the time we met, Roman was already dealing with a global scramble for N95 masks. The company increased its mask production four-fold during the year, producing a total of 2 billion for health care workers around the world.
Ellen McGirt and I caught up with Roman again recently, for our podcast Leadership Next, and asked how the pandemic had changed his business. “It was an awakening for us as a company,” he said. “When you are in the face of a pandemic, there are increased expectations of leadership.” Roman was one of the CEOs who signed the Business Roundtable’s 2019 statement on the purpose of the corporation, and says the stakeholder capitalism trend accelerated after the pandemic hit. “We did a lot in 2020 in response to the killing of George Floyd. It hit our 3M employees hard. We put our focus on the Twin Cities and what we could do to help.” The company also committed to eliminating carbon emissions by 2050. “Importantly, we are bending the curve early in that time frame, reducing emissions 50% by 2030, 60% by 2035, and 80% by 2040.”
Roman sees no problem asking business to address social problems. “Part of the reason I think it is important companies step up is that we do know how to solve things. We do know how to deliver on our goals. My advice is: use the same lessons and abilities you have built in business success and apply them more broadly to whatever is most important to your stakeholders—and that includes your employees. Often they are the best guideposts for those priorities.”
You can listen to the full interview on Apple or Spotify.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
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Apple complaint
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Double down
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Texas power
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Cool it
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Biden hopes
U.S. businesses in China are counting on the Biden administration to stabilize relations between the two countries. The American Chamber of Commerce in China released its latest business climate survey today, and the proportion of its membership that expects improving U.S.-China relations in the coming year was up to 45% from 30% last year. Fortune
PPE scandal
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This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.
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