{"id":50016,"date":"2019-03-04T22:37:14","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T22:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/?p=50016"},"modified":"2023-02-14T20:14:17","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T20:14:17","slug":"3ms-cfo-nick-gangestad-86-shares-sound-advice-for-augsburg-business-and-accounting-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/2019\/03\/04\/3ms-cfo-nick-gangestad-86-shares-sound-advice-for-augsburg-business-and-accounting-students\/","title":{"rendered":"3M\u2019s CFO Nick Gangestad \u201886 Shares Sound Advice for Augsburg Business and Accounting Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nick<\/a>Early in his career, 3M\u2019s CFO Nick Gangestad \u201886 created an excel spreadsheet to map out his professional development and possible future jobs. As a planner and an accountant, Gangestad jokes that excel seemed like the only application to use.<\/p>\n

Augsburg\u2019s Business Administration Department recently welcomed Gangestad to campus to share with students his advice as they begin their careers. The room was eager to hear about Gangestad\u2019s vocational journey and the steps he found most valuable during his impressive career at 3M. Gangestad encouraged the students to have goals and a plan in mind and to share those goals with their future supervisors. He said there were a number of times in his career when sharing his future hopes opened doors to new and fruitful experiences.<\/p>\n

Among the key takeaways from Gangestad\u2019s talk were to establish a personal brand. Gangestad said there were more than 1000 accountants working at 3M back when he was just starting out at the company. He worked to establish a brand that was true to him but also differentiated him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a brand around being a teacher,\u201d Gangestad said, \u201cand that I could explain concepts to people that most other people couldn\u2019t and I could do it in a way that people could understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Gangestad<\/a>He told students that it\u2019s important to try to be the first to do something and to think about what you want to be known for. He also encouraged them to take risks. Gangestad has enjoyed the times in his career when he has worked abroad and found value in the challenges and opportunities that made him uncomfortable allowing him to grow as a person.<\/p>\n

Gangestad also mentioned the ways in which he has chosen to get involved and give back to his community which includes serving on the Board of Regents at Augsburg.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Business Administration Department is very grateful that a man as busy as Nick Gangestad would take so much time to share his extremely impressive vocational journey with our students,\u201d Professor of Economics Jeanne Boeh said after the talk. \u201cOur students left with so many good ideas and strategies for their career moving forward in addition to the important meta message of giving back to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

About Nick Gangestad (from 3M\u2019s Corporate Officer\u2019s page)<\/h2>\n

Nick Gangestad, 3M\u2019s chief financial officer, grew up on a farm in Iowa intending to pursue a traditional accounting practice. That\u2019s certainly the path he started down, earning a bachelor\u2019s degree in accounting followed by an MBA. But when he was in college, Nick participated in a corporate student program at 3M that started him down a different path. That was almost three decades ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree aspects of 3M changed my mind,\u201d Nick recalls. \u201cThis place operates like a family. I saw opportunities to do it all while working for one company. And I liked how 3M developed people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s such a big believer in the company that he has a framed copy of the McKnight Principles hanging on his wall at 3M headquarters. William L. McKnight was a longtime 3M CEO whose management philosophy \u2013 of allowing room for the kind of experimentation that leads to breakthrough innovations \u2013 has shaped the company.<\/p>\n

Innovation is clearly appealing to Nick, who was the first student in his high school to buy a computer. He was almost certainly the first student to start his own business, when he began programming videogames and selling them to his classmates. But he also hasn\u2019t wandered too far afield from his first love of accounting.<\/p>\n

Nick began at 3M in 1987 as a systems analyst in the company\u2019s finance office. He became a plant accountant a few years later, followed by financial analyst and financial manager roles in various divisions in the U.S., Latin America, and the Asia Pacific regions. In 2003, Nick was named vice president of Finance and Information Technology for 3M Canada. In 2007, Nick returned to Minnesota to direct corporate accounting for the company, followed in 2011 by a new role as corporate controller and chief accounting officer. In 2014, he was named 3M\u2019s chief financial officer.<\/p>\n

Outside of work, Nick and his family enjoy sailing, supporting the arts, home renovation, traveling and hosting travelers and \u2013 of course \u2013 cheering on the Minnesota Twins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early in his career, 3M\u2019s CFO Nick Gangestad \u201886 created an excel spreadsheet to map out his professional development and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":386,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,737],"tags":[196,224,53,884,883],"class_list":["post-50016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlights","category-on-campus","tag-3m","tag-augsburg-alumni","tag-board-of-regents","tag-business-administration","tag-nick-gangestad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/386"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50016"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51545,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50016\/revisions\/51545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}