Susan Christoffersen: Both of you work for large multinational companies, on the Canadian side. Given today’s challenging environment, how would you describe the mindset shifts happening within big corporations?
Penny Wise: Over the 20-plus years that I’ve worked for 3M, the operating model has shifted from more autonomous, local entities to centrally driven approaches — and I see the same shift happening at other multinational companies. When you have operations in 50+ countries, there has to be a focus on simplification and standardization to be efficient and effective. More and more, I’m finding companies are building a global, more centralized model, where strategy is developed from the centre. Insights and requirements are gathered from all countries and the diverse needs of markets are accounted for, but there is a lot more centralized leadership versus individual country decisions.
Today, of the employees at 3M Canada outside of our manufacturing facilities, more than half are either in global roles or in roles that support the U.S. and Canada — which is fantastic for career development. It’s just a different model. Multinationals are thinking about things like, what does our global cost structure look like? Where can we find efficiencies? How can we drive scale and margin? That’s how I see the mindset shift. It’s an evolving model — and it has accelerated as we’ve come out of the pandemic.
SC: Meanwhile, at GE, the organization has been split into three separate businesses. Heather, tell us about that.
Historically, when GE first expanded, Canada was the first country it entered. Here’s a fun story from our history: , our founding father, travelled to the Kawarthas and fell in love with the area. He wanted to have a cottage there, and hence our first Canadian GE Motors facility was built in Peterborough. We’ve been in this country for 132 years, and our portfolio has changed dramatically. Over the years, we’ve owned transportation for a long time. But the portfolio has changed. For a number of years now, our focus has been on three things: healthcare, energy and aerospace.
