Becoming Lost

I just read an article I came across in Business Insider. The article was titled Airbus just beat Boeing to be the first to complete a wholly automated air-to-air refueling operation. There was a photo of an A310 refueling another jet. The successful test means that the next step—implementing the technology on the A330 MRTT—can now proceed.

And I thought, “What is wrong with Boeing? They used to be so good at this kind of thing and now Airbus is beating them.” The last passenger jet Boeing developed, the 737 MAX, was fatally flawed and two of them crashed within six months, killing all passengers and crew. Then reports surfaced that Boeing’s employees had been disgruntled for some time. Internal documents were damning. One employee described the 737 MAX as a plane “designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys.” Another employee called the plane “such a shitshow.” Still another agreed and said, “I’ll be shocked if the FAA passes this turd.” This kind of discourse peppered the internal documents.

I decided to write a blog post with the topic, “What is wrong with Boeing?” But it was such an obvious question that I knew if I asked Google, the search engine would find a number of already-published articles. So I did, and it did.

I’m sure those articles go into great detail about the flaws of the design of the 737 MAX. But it’s my opinion that Boeing simply lost its way, and all its problems stem from that. Boeing used to concentrate on building great airplanes. But at some point, it decided to concentrate on building great balance sheets and cash flow statements. To show the financial world its commitment to grow beyond building great airplanes, in 2001 Boeing moved its headquarters from Seattle, where the company was founded, to Chicago, the home of banks and deal-makers.

As internal documents would eventually reveal, safety took a backseat to maximizing shareholder value. An article in Yahoo Finance put it this way, “A company that had long been run by engineers for engineers was now a company run by corporate bureaucrats whose primary goal was to please Wall Street.” I couldn’t say it more concisely than that. I don’t know if Boeing will be able to find its north star again. I’d like to think they will, but big changes will have to take place for that to happen. Companies have an ethos—a spirit, a character, a culture. When they lose that ethos, they’re no longer the same company, and that is usually a bad thing.