The Long-Forgotten Flight That Sent Boeing Off Course

[edhopper]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/?fbclid=IwAR2b7YjQnOeyQjXpuwetmZXhRxHQoYJBdipyZE4McyD46AJ0XkQACHzCPF0

On the tarmac, Condit stepped out of the jet, made a brief speech, then boarded a helicopter for an aerial tour of Boeing’s new corporate home: the Morton Salt building, a skyscraper sitting just out of the Loop in downtown Chicago. Boeing’s top management plus staff—roughly 500 people in all—would work here. They could see the boats plying the Chicago River and the trains rumbling over it. Condit, an opera lover, would have an easy walk to the Lyric Opera building. But the nearest Boeing commercial-airplane assembly facility would be 1,700 miles away.

The isolation was deliberate. “When the headquarters is located in proximity to a principal business—as ours was in Seattle—the corporate center is inevitably drawn into day-to-day business operations,” Condit explained at the time. And that statement, more than anything, captures a cardinal truth about the aerospace giant. The present 737 Max disaster can be traced back two decades—to the moment Boeing’s leadership decided to divorce itself from the firm’s own culture.

We are paying for our country's businesses being run by "investors".

[Turbineguy]

1. It's financial, but

engineering is involved.

Unless it's a hospital in which case it's financial, but medicine is involved.

[malthaussen]

2. Heavens forfend that the Headquarters...

... should be drawn into business operations!

-- Mal

[cwydro]

3. My mother is the only person I've ever heard use the word "forfend."

She’s gone now, and your post made me smile!

[rzemanfl]

4. When I saw "forfend" I thought you were someone else for a moment. n/t

[edhopper]

7. Perhaps if building planes and not financial operations were a priority

the 737 Max disaster would nothave happened.

[SonofDonald]

5. Two of my long time friends are leaving Boeing

On December 1st, they don't want to work for the company it's become

They both have decades with Boeing

[CentralMass]

6. We are paying for greed and lack of ethics and integrity.