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Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

reuters.com

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Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#401

Post by bkor »

philwelch wrote: post #239
panarky wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet working from the outside, the NYT can figure out this shit even faster.

The NYT didn’t have to be right, they only had to sell newspapers and clicks. The burden of evidence for publishing a hit piece is much lower than that for making an actual business decision. I’m no fan of Boeing but the truth is, betting your entire business requires a much higher burden of proof than journalism does.

> The burden of evidence for publishing a hit piece is much lower than that for making an actual business decision.

That's not reflecting reality at all. In a big enough company you don't really decide, you do both. Alternatively, you choose all three of the options. There's often no reason to fully go for one thing. This as in a big enough company there's enough resources that someone somewhere else does something else, likely the opposite of some other decision.

Eventually something will fail, or it'll succeed. The things which succeed will hopefully be implemented everywhere.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#402

Post by wpietri »

papito wrote: post #260

Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it. The executives lie and BS through all of it, and the soldiers on the ground kill themselves to get things done.

I've lately been reading about the notion of "managerialism". The book Confronting Managerialism defines it as "What occurs when a special group, called management, ensconces itself systemically in an organization and deprives owners and employees of their decision-making power (including distribution of emoluments) and justifies that takeover on the grounds of the managing group's education and exclusive possession of the codified bodies of knowledge and know-how necessary to the efficient running of the organization."

It's a really interesting concept to me, because it's been the dominant business culture my whole life in the US, so it's sort of like a fish discovering water. But once I started looking at business philosophy and history, I realized that there are a lot of other ways to do things. Toyota's example, of course: the managerialism of the big 3 let Toyota go from Japan's post-war decimation to the biggest carmaker on the planet.

I still don't feel like I have a great grip on the alternatives, and especially how to practice those alternatives when managerialism is the norm. But I definitely aim to find out. At least once, I want work at a place that really has its shit together. That gets things done well on purpose.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#404

Post by cowmoo728 »

munk-a wrote: post #233
pizlonator wrote: post #215

So I read somewhere than Muilenburg was the only engineer in the Boeing C suite. There were no pilots in the C suite. And this was part of the problem. The new CEO has a degree in accounting. I bet he’ll do great.

At some point we (society at large) are going to realize these fluffy c-level people are toxic and remove value from companies - then, ideally, we'll move back to a default of promoting internally.

Skilled leaders make a big difference in organizations, and they have skills that engineers don't (always) have. A leader that discounts the advice of his engineers is doomed to failure, but an engineer promoted to leadership that doesn't know how to people manage and steer the ship will also fail.

It seems that some of these fluffy C-level people are actually good at their jobs, but we haven't found how to reliably distinguish them from the fluffy C-level people that slash and burn everything and juice the stock price with buybacks and financial engineering, then ride it out until a catastrophe happens.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#405

Post by fjp »

panarky wrote: post #95
solatic wrote: post #4

After both The Economist[1] and The New York Times [2] publicly undermined faith in Dennis Muilenberg. No question at this point that he needed to be replaced. The question is - why didn't the board act sooner? [1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/12/18/boeings-misplac... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/22/business/boeing-dennis-mu...

The NYT story in particular was hard-hitting and well sourced. Gotta wonder if these stories influenced the board to act now. It's a bad look, because Boeing is consistently way too late to recognize what is obvious to those of us watching from home. I continue to be astounded that our most senior leaders will not act in the long-term best interest of the organizations they lead. It's been 37 years since the Tylenol…

Johnson & Johnson has known its baby powder caused cancer since the 70s, so what did they do? Focus on marketing it to minorities.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/johnson-johnson-baby-powder...

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#406

Post by Litmus2336 »

panarky wrote: post #386
SkyMarshal wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". This is not necessarily a given. In the Tylenol case an external saboteur was to blame, so little or no internal CYA was necessary. Easy and correct for everyone to just blame it on the saboteur and then do the right thing to fix…

Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident. If J&J had behaved like Boeing, they would have blamed the saboteur, blamed law enforcement, and blamed retailers while gradually and secretly fixing the packaging problem before regulators could force them to do it. If Boeing had behaved like J&J, they would have taken immediate responsibility, voluntarily grounded…

>Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident.

Do you have a citation for that? I don't doubt it's possible but I've never heard it. As far as I know no major pain medications had tamper resistant seals at that point in history.

I've read a lot about this (being from Chicago myself) and do not believe you're representing it correctly. J&J took responsibility insomuch as they pioneered tamper resistant packaging, but they very clearly blamed a saboteur. The initial allegation was that Tylenol was unsafe. J&J successfully re-spun it, correctly, as an external terrorist poisoning their medication. And, to their credit, they did a great job making future Tylenol very safe.

But the bottom line is that these two incidents are very different. In J&J's case they were not at fault. In Boeing's case they were.

Info taken from https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/02C2/Johnson%20&%2...

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#407

Post by AdrianB1 »

rosybox wrote: post #394
AdrianB1 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no normal height. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

> There is no normal height. There more certainly is a statistically average height. > Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all 10 dimensions. This article is comparing 10 dimensions of variability and we're talking about just one here, the one you yourself mentioned, height.

Statistically or mathematically average height does not equal normal height, it has no relevance in this discussion. If you read the article, the average does not fit most people even if you take a single dimension, height.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#408

Post by api »

wpietri wrote: post #402
papito wrote: post #260

Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it. The executives lie and BS through all of it, and the soldiers on the ground kill themselves to get things done.

I've lately been reading about the notion of "managerialism". The book Confronting Managerialism defines it as "What occurs when a special group, called management, ensconces itself systemically in an organization and deprives owners and employees of their decision-making power (including distribution of emoluments) and justifies that takeover on the grounds of the managing group's education and exclusive possession…

An interesting thing about managetialism is that it's basically what made the USSR fail. The MBA is our exact equivalent of the Soviet "apparatchik." We postured ourselves as the opposite of the USSR but in reality US business culture aped a lot of its bureaucratic structure. I've called it Soviet capitalism for some time now.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#409

Post by AmericanChopper »

fooster wrote: post #200
doublement wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...single-aisle monoculture makes flying miserable. What is it that people expect when they say flying is miserable? I expect safety, which is why I'll never get on a 737 MAX. Other than that, I just put sandwiches and snacks in my pocket, fill my water bottle, and in X hours I'm thousands of miles away. Air travel is actually pretty amazing.

I expect to be able to sit in my seat without having my knees crushed? How about that for a start?

You could always buy a business class seat then. Economy is supposed to be uncomfortable because all the things that would make it comfortable have been removed to make it cheaper.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#410

Post by inferiorhuman »

na85 wrote: post #367
petilon wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet only the 737 Max needed a software fix

That's because the pitch-up behavior isn't actually the problem.

That's because the pitch-up behavior isn't actually the problem.

The pitch-power coupling has been problematic on the 737 since Boeing went with GE engines. Thomsonfly almost got a classic to stall in Bournemouth ages ago and flyDubai managed to wreck an NG in Russia a couple years ago. It's possible, but unlikely, the 737 MAX is better behaved in this regard.

If there weren't significant aerodynamic problems with the 737 MAX it would be flying by now. This whole type cert / training thing is a red herring. The cost of slow and shuttering production both in financial and diplomatic terms far outstrips the cost of a separate type. Beyond that Boeing has a captive market. The only 737 MAX alternatives out there are made by Airbus, and Airbus has a healthy backlog for both the A220 and A320. While some airlines may be able to take the range / consumption hit with an NG other airlines, like Norwegian, were counting on the increased range of the MAX for certain routes.

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