Division Operations Leader, R&D

Collaborate with Innovative 3

Mers Around the World Choosing where to start and grow your career has a major impact on your professional and personal life, so it’s equally important you know that the company that you choose to work at, and its leaders, will support and guide you. With a wide variety of people, global locations, technologies and products, 3M is a place where you can collaborate with other curious, creative 3

Mers. This position provides an opportunity to transition from other private, public, government or military environments to a 3M career.

As the R&D Division Operations Leader, you will help translate strategy into disciplined execution across the function. Reporting to the Vice President of R&D, you will partner with R&D functional leaders, business leaders, Human Resources, Finance, Communications, and the Division PMO to align priorities, strengthen operating practices, guide organization evolution, and improve visibility to performance, resources, and risks. Here, you will make an impact by:

• Lead R&D strategy deployment:
  Partner with the R&D leader and functional heads to synthesize business and technology priorities, facilitate strategic choices, and translate direction into clear functional objectives, roadmaps, measures, and actions.
• Drive operating discipline:
  Establish and reinforce agreed functional standard work, review adoption with functional leaders, identify gaps, and coordinate corrective actions.
• Strengthen resource planning:
  Maintain current functional resource plans, improve resource-planning practices, and connect R&D resource information to division portfolio and capacity-planning processes.
• Lead the R&D operating rhythm:
  Facilitate leadership and organization meeting cadences, including priorities, agendas, decisions, action ownership, communications, closure, and escalation.
• Develop and execute performance measures:
  Work with functional owners to define KPIs, targets, governance, and review cadences; monitor performance and drive agreed actions to closure or escalation.
• Guide organization evolution:
  Coordinate operating-model, capability, role, and organizational changes with the R&D leader, functional heads, and Human Resources; translate decisions into implementation plans and monitor adoption.
• Improve portfolio insight:
  Develop models and decision-support approaches that improve program and project portfolio performance, scenario planning, and leadership decision‑making.
• Enable leadership effectiveness:
  Surface cross‑functional risks, dependencies, and decisions early; provide clear options and recommendations; and maintain follow‑through on leadership commitments.

To set you up for success in this role from day one, 3M requires (at a minimum) the following qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in science, engineering, business or operations (completed and verified prior to start)
• Five (5) years of commercialization, product development, program management, operations, or related experience, including experience with a stage‑gate development process.
• Three (3) years of leadership or management experience in a cross‑functional environment.

• Demonstrated ability to translate strategy into priorities, operating plans, measures, and sustained execution.
• Strong business acumen and experience working across R&D, commercial, manufacturing, finance, and human resources organizations.
• Experience leading organizational change, operating‑model improvement, or capability‑building initiatives.
• Strong facilitation, communication, analytical, and executive‑influence…