I was going to fold this into my last post on Boeing but as I considered how to add it to that post, I realized that I had too much to say. As I noted in the last post, I’ve become obsessed with the Boeing story. I finally realize why: I, too, have worked for companies where finance guys with no knowledge or interest in engineering where in charge.
I once had a CFO tell me that, “all programmers are fungible so I don’t have to worry about getting rid of them. I can always just hire more.” This attitude, writ large, is what’s been going at Boeing for much too long. Upper management—all of them finance people—felt free to not just consume but squander the corporation’s seed corn: the institutional knowledge, expertise, and experience of their workforce and vendors. To them, the only thing that mattered was the stock price and the only thing they were interested in was finance and how to manipulate it to raise the stock price.
Now, finally, the past has come due. As described in this Seatlle Times article, the last incident of the blown-out door plug resulted in a customer/regulatory/criminal-investigatory backlash that has shaken the company. CEO Dave Calhoun has acknowledged the inevitable and will leave by the end of the year.
What happened? As I’ve mentioned before, the company management was captured by finance suits as a result of the Clinton Administration’s forced merger with McDonald Douglas. These people were all acolytes of Jack Walsh whose leadership of GE was the stuff of legends. Until it wasn’t. GE fell apart and Walsh’s ideas began to fall in disrepute. Apparently, Boeing management didn’t get the memo and continued to burn their seed corn.
The question now is whether they can recover. I’m not optimistic but I certainly hope they can. Boeing is not just a national treasure but a worldwide one. Their planes fly all over the globe and serve airlines from every country. It would be a shame to see their demise.