3M's Rising Star

Jim McNerney was one of those boys: up early in the morning climbing trees while everybody else in the family was in bed, rousing his three younger brothers to play two-on-two hockey in their basement, running his high school's boys club, and pitching on the varsity baseball team. And he grew up to be one of those men: For three decades, Walter James McNerney Jr. has climbed the corporate ladder without a pause, uprooting his family every two to three years since earning his master's degree from Harvard Business School in 1975. He job-hopped from Procter & Gamble (PG ) to McKinsey & Co. and then up through General Electric (GE ). On Jan. 1, 2001, after losing a three-way race to succeed John F. Welch as chief executive, he moved on yet again to become chairman and CEO of 3M (MMM ), the first outsider to head the Saint Paul (Minn.) company in its century-long history.

It has been a remarkably seamless transition. In many ways, 3M is a mini General Electric Co. Both are industrial conglomerates that seek to balance slowdowns in one industry with upturns elsewhere, and both have strong traditions of discipline, quality, and an intense focus on measuring and rewarding performance. While both companies have a few world-famous brand names -- who doesn't know GE light bulbs or 3M's Scotch tape -- at heart they are bound up with producing the nuts and bolts -- as well as the duct tape, turbines, and electronic gear -- that keep the industrial world humming.