"I Honestly Don’t Trust Many People at Boeing’: A Broken Culture Exposed

Organizational culture:  “The very culture at Boeing appears to be broken, with some
senior employees having little regard for regulators, customers and even co-workers.”
How does organizational culture get to this point? What signs might one look for?
Consider Mr. Sullenberger’s statement: “We’ve all seen this movie before, in places like
Enron. It’s not surprising that before a crisis, there are indications of real deep problems
that have their roots in leadership.” What opportunities do those in senior leadership
positions have in setting, maintaining, or correcting organizational culture? How might
the policies and practices at all levels of an organization support or detract from
individuals and groups exercising leadership?

Organizational culture reaches the point that it has at Boeing through a slow and
gradual decline. I suspect that with Muilenberg’s slow creep into leadership roles within
Boeing starting with his presidency in 2013, his election into CEO in 2015, and chairman
of the board of directors in 2016 mirrors the decline in organizational leadership closely.
(Link (Links to an external site.)) I gathered from the NYT article that Muilenberg was
participating in the dark side of leadership and using his power to both make and exploit
money with Boeing, regardless of the repercussions and what is “right”. Boeing seems
to have attained the three conditions conducive to dark leadership which are: a
destructive leader, susceptible followers, and a conducive environment (ch.1, pg 9).
These conditions are identifiable through overall work performance and employee
satisfaction with the company.  In order for the new CEO and senior leadership to
correct Boeing’s organizational culture they are going to have to be honest and clear
about their goals and desires with the future of Boeing. It is paramount to vet what
cultures are currently in use and analyze if these remains can be shifted to be more in
line with what Boeing truly stands for or if there needs to be a total remodel to salvage
what remains of the company. There needs to be a true open door policy within the
company that allows all whistleblowers to come forward and bring the corruption to
light in order to address all broken wheels within Boeing and allow everyone to hold one
another accountable. The policies and practices of a great leader empower their
employees to make educated and safe decisions with a humanitarian point of view. It is
very important that David Calhoun is able to accomplish this with his employees in order
to attempt to patch up the lack of trust that most of the world has now for this aviation
giant.

 
Communicating culture: Consider Mr. Smith’s statement: “These documents do not
represent the best of Boeing. The tone and language of the messages are inappropriate,
particularly when used in discussion of such important matters, and they do not reflect
who we are as a company or the culture we’ve created.” How might the documents
reflect the culture Boeing created rather than its previous culture, or one it might aspire
to have? In what other ways do organizations communicate culture? What other
evidence might Mr. Smith call upon to support his statement?

The documents encourage the reader to believe that the employees no longer care
about what they're doing, as if they do not have a say either way on the matter of what
goes. This shows a leader who does not empower their employees through trust and
accountability and mimics a dictator more than a leader. The employees no longer trust
the aircraft that they are making and freely share that amongst one another. They are
not proud of their work and I imagine have been performing unsatisfactorily as a result.
In order for organizations to communicate culture they must first define it. It seems that
the culture that was occurring at Boeing while Muilenberg was still in charge was both
deconstructive and not defined, allowing for an “anything goes” mentality and poor
employee engagement. Mr. Smith could call upon documents from the safety
department to analyze safety from all angles at Boeing. Addressing this may bring many
discrepancies to light and allow a new system of checks and balances to be
implemented to prevent a situation like the 737 MAX from reoccurring.

Ethical drift: What concerns you most regarding the ethical conduct represented in the
article? Consider the competing and shifting priorities of Boeing executives as
presented: “Once relentlessly focused on safety and engineering, Boeing employees are
shown obsessing over the bottom line”; “priorities had shifted over the past two
decades, with profits mattering more than quality.” How might leaders keep two
legitimate and compelling commitments, in this case safety and profit, in appropriate
balance? What is the expectation of leadership to set and enforce priorities? What tools
do organizational leaders have to do so?

The lack of ethics and ethic promotion from supervisors is what concerns me the most
about the conduct represented in the article. The employees seem to have lost total
trust in the company, the aircraft they are building, and the ability to speak their truths.
There is no room for honesty, trustworthiness or integrity. Safety is the utmost
important thing for Boeing to nail down at this time. Being an established keystone in
the aviation community it is proven that they are capable of making huge profits on their
products. With lack of safety precautions, this ability fails. I believe upon fixing their
culture in all areas, including safety, Boeing will be able to bounce back and begin
seeing exceptional profits once again. Leadership will need to outline and enforce
priorities diligently. The board of directors and all leadership will need to be on board
and diligent in enforcing these priorities. They will also need to be willing and able to
accept the blame when things go wrong and work to fix things immediately.
Organizational leaders have the tools of delegation, decision making, team building,
mentorship and conflict resolution that can be employed to ensure the effective
implementation of new safety measures.

Scale of failure: “Sometimes you have to let big things fail so that everyone can identify
a problem … maybe that’s what needs to happen rather than continuing to scrape by.”
What wisdom do you find in that statement? What limitations? Consider the scale of this
organizational crisis: “Boeing is the largest manufacturing exporter in the United States,
and its fate can sway the national economy. It employs more than 130,000 people, in all
50 states, and supports a network of thousands of suppliers (Links to an external site.).”
How might this crisis have been prevented? How might organizations create structures
and cultures that catch and correct smaller issues early to prevent ethical failure at this
scale? What are examples of organizations that do this well?

There is wisdom in the statement because in order for massive action to happen
regarding the CEO of Boeing, tragedy had to ensue. However, I think the statement is
highly limiting. I believe that if the right system of checks and balances were in place
before Muilenberg was put into high leadership positions, there may have been more
room for open discussion on the “rights” and “wrongs”. He may have not been elected
into those positions whatsoever if this were the case. Someone or something is always
there in the midst of a problem and can see that something is wrong… it is simply a
matter of creating an environment that is conducive to honesty without punishment.
This crisis may have been prevented if safety was more important to leadership at the
time and there was a communication network both allowing and encouraging
employees to speak up in the event of a safety hazard or lack of confidence in the
product. Alcoa, the world’s eighth largest producer of aluminum, has an outstanding
safety record that has been manifested through creating keystone habits regarding
proper safety habits as well as exceptional leadership. Paul O’neill took full
responsibility and ownership of Alcoa’s faults with safety measures and transformed
them completely through a full change of vision. He wanted to create a culture that
treated every possible safety hazard as equally  important by encouraging an
organizational habit of suggesting safety improvements which quickly snowballed into
the employees suggesting many edits within the company and unintentionally creating
more productive patterns of communication. Boeing could learn a lot from Alcoa and I
hope they do for the sake of their many employees and the position they hold in the
aviation industry.