"Boards are invested in their C.E.O.s until they're not." [Boeing]

https://leehamnews.com/2024/03/12/pontifications-boards-are-invested-in-their-c-e-o-s-until-theyre-not/

by throw7 • 2 years ago

19 11 2 years ago

christkv2• 2 years ago

Replace them with Engineers, preferably from pre-McDonnell Douglas Boeing.

xcv123• 2 years ago

Most of them would be retired already. That was 27 years ago. The mandatory retirement age for executives at Boeing is 65 years old.

bragr• 2 years ago

As has been pointed out extensively in other threads, that merger is nearing 30 years ago. Those people are gone. They've retired, they've left for other jobs, or they've been worn down over the decades. Even if you can find one, just making them the boss isn't going to change everyone else's culture. They need systemic change at this point.

christkv2• 2 years ago

There has to be a long tail of engineers in Seattle though who were juniors or young seniors that lived in both worlds. I imagine the degradation of the company happened over time maybe meaning it was somewhat still Boeing 20 years ago, less so 10 years ago and a complete mess today. I can't believe every single person is rotten in the entire company.

Log_out_• 2 years ago

Those engineers wouldn't get credit lines and investors for a buisness plan that slowly climbs back to excellence. The surrounding system will not stand it.

JohnFen• 2 years ago

Pre-MD Boeing ceased to exist a long time ago. "Boeing" now is just MD with a new name, bringing all that implies.

nolongerthere• 2 years ago

Is anyone else shocked by whats going on here? It’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s been watch corporate America that we can expect more of this, when merit and excellence are seen as black marks we can’t expect good outcomes.

piva002• 2 years ago

What happened to corporate America after Jack Welch, and others with the same ideology, is the epitome of Goodhart's Law to me.

Valuation and stock price used to be a metric effected by how well a company was managed, how good their products were and how well they sold in a market. Since this whole bullshit of shareholder value being the utmost objective of corporations; gamed, and optimised for; when it became the mantra of what defines "good management", not only incentivised but almost religiously followed it simply ceased to be a good metric.

The results are what we see, flailing (and failing) corporations that keep entering into death spirals by pursuing the highest share price possible, not as a side-effect of being a good company but by gaming it in the most absolutely ludicrous ways to pump the stock price, number goes up, it's all good, execs get their bonuses.

Unfortunately I don't see this culture changing without really bad stuff happening, it's so entrenched in corporate executive culture for the past 40 years that only a bloodbath of companies going under after many crisis brought by these same managers will create some will to change this absurd system. The side-effects onto common people would be dire considering that many are also invested in the stock market which these companies carry most of the weight. We're all hostages to this bullshit now.

tithe• 2 years ago

Excuse my ignorance, but what happened to corporate America after Jack Welch (if not what you state in the second and third paragraphs)?

"Boards are invested in their C.E.O.s until they're not." [Boeing]

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