Engineering Life-Boeing's CEO in Front of the Senate

Or Dave Calhouns most Excellent Adventures. Note that I have never worked for Boeing, I just despise the path that C-Suite parasites are taking down great engineering companies.

I sat in front of CSPAN yesterday, watching Dave Calhoun getting a new unnatural orifice forcefully drilled into his lower body by the Senators investigating Boeing. He gave a performance that was expected of the C-Suite parasites: he was a little bit condescending: “senator, you don’t understand the complexity of it all”; he was apologetic when it paid to be apologetic: “I am so sorry,” as the crocodile tears welled up on demand; he was doing his CYA routine, “Senator, I wasn’t on the job at that time, so I am not responsible”; he was trying to bamboozle the lawmakers with his talk of process and procedures; he deferred to his Chief of Engineering after he got slammed enough times for not knowing answers; and he was ambiguous when asked about whistleblowers, the compensation for the workers, and his own salary.

What happened to the Buck stops here? What happened to taking responsibility? I suppose they don’t teach that in CEO school anymore, or that the bean counters that they put up as CEOs don’t have the intestinal fortitude to do what they are paid to do: be the face of the company, to be leaders, to at least show some semblance of courage and integrity.

It was the exact performance I would expect from what passes as business C-Suite leadership today: hot air, CYAs, mansplaining, and obfuscations. This is what happens when you take bean counters into areas of their incompetence, which does not take much. To quote Freddie Prinz: it’s not my job.

Senator Blumenthal went after Calhoun about accountability, but Calhoun saw it coming, he parried by talking about all the paperwork they created which gives the appearance of doing something while doing nothing, even after Blumenthal saw through his subterfuge and went after his non-answer.

On Accountability. Richard Blumenthal.

Senator Maggie Hassan asked Calhoun about where does the buck stop? Who is taking responsibility? He parried again. She asked him about the company’s treatment of the whistleblower, he said he was sad and shocked, but he admitted he did nothing. There is considerable difference between listening and doing. One is passive and the other is active. Calhoun errs on the side of passive, as expected. No tiene cojones.

A whistleblower testified, sitting two seats away from Calhoun. I empathize with him even though I had never been in his seat, I hope that I can demonstrate the same ability to take responsibility and doing what is right under the considerable pressures that Boeing had put on him, because Boeing’s treatment of all the whistleblowers were unacceptable if not cruel and unusual.

As much as I despise Josh Hawley’s politics, he was the most aggressive and vociferous about the present state of Boeing. Ironically, it was because of the Missouri based McDonnell Douglas purchase of Boeing with Boeing’s money that brought about the downfall of the greatest American technical culture at Boeing, which Hawley addressed. He referenced the article from The Atlantic which lifted the curtains from what went on during the consolidation. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/boeing-corporate-america-manufacturing/678137/)  

Hawley asked Calhoun about the dismantling of the vertically integrated Boeing, the decision made for profitability to spin off Spirit Aero. Calhoun now promises to reintegrate Aero back into the Boeing corporation because of all the problems with Aero’s manufacturing. All of this risk could have been avoided if they had not been spun off, another decision made by non-technical C-Suite parasites. The lawyers and C-Suite parasites are the only ones to benefit from the result of the sale and buying back.

Time and again, Calhoun pled that he was not on the job when all those decisions were made, demonstrating his inability to take responsibility.  The decision to outsource manufacturing and everything else for that matter gave the C-Suite parasites a direction to point their finger at the  supplier spun off the company rather than taking the responsibility for the problems themselves. The outsourcing did more than that: it gave the C-Suite parasites deniability; it watered down their culpability if anything happened, which it did; it offloaded a significant amount of labor cost to the spun off supplier to make Boeing’s bottom line look a lot better; but of course the potential death of passengers was never considered.  

Something that came out of this Hawley grandstanding was the fact that the Boeing machinists were in contract negotiations with Boeing, the last contract negotiations was 16 years ago, they received a 1% raise over 8 years, that is paltry by any standards. In the contract that Calhoun received last year, he received a 45% raise as CEO last year, 33 million for this year, his lame duck year as he took the golden parachute and decided to retire. Hawley sarcastically told Calhoun that the machinists should be receiving a significant raise. Calhoun agreed, although he had significantly devalued the product that the machinist work on through his hubris and arrogance which makes the financial viability of the company a major question.

Hawley point blank told Calhoun: You’re the problem. While it was good that someone said it, it means nothing as Calhoun is going off into his golden sunset with a fat bank account while what was one of the best companies with the greatest engineering culture may end up in the scrapheaps.

I am not naïve enough to say that Calhoun was the only problem The problem started with Phil Condit and Harry Stonecipher when this Satan’s spawn arising from combining McDonnell Douglas and Boeing came into being. Every single CEO, board member, and senior management are responsible for the dismantling of Boeing, as I had written before. (https://thecuriouspolymath.substack.com/p/engineering-life-opinion-on-the-bloomberg)

Another interesting video from the hearing, which was probably not as well circulated, came from Senator Roger Marshall’s questioning of Boeing’s Chief of Engineering. The question was: what happened to the great Boeing safety culture? The rote answers from the Chief of Engineering both astounded and dismayed me. An effective culture comes from the people, it comes from their belief and trust they have in what they do and how they do it. The culture is not in the system, no matter how robust and seemingly complete and fool-proof. Culture is not about technology or the emails or the written processes; while processes are important and critical to creating the culture, it is the people believing in what they do and taking responsibility for their work that creates the culture. In contrast to the Chief of Engineering’s defense which focused on the effectiveness of the bureaucracy — they documented every step they took, but did they what was necessary — it was the whistle blower’s testimony that demonstrated the true safety culture and responsibility taking, and yet their bosses sought to silence them in the most callous and ignominious ways. What the Chief of Engineering’s testimony demonstrated was a prime example of the tail wagging the dog.

Chief of Engineering’s also testified about how the C-Suite parasites treated the two most recent significant failures. The design errors in 777Max navigation system and the manufacturing errors in door plugs. Boeing took great pains to define the two issues as being separate, that it was not a systemic flaw in the corporate culture. If there was a true safety culture existing in the present-day Boeing, both problems would be resolved differently, but they are reflective of a lack of a safety culture, indeed of an engineering culture.

The blood letting in public was both terrifying and cathartic, but it did nothing to resolve the problem with Boeing. It demonstrated to me just how far out of touch with reality the C-Suite parasites are and how the engineering culture, while still strong with the workers and engineers at Boeing, is completely non-existent with the people who make the decisions, the C-Suite parasites,

No doubt Calhoun and his minions walked away from the hearings slapping each other on the back, regaling in their ability to pile up non-answers and celebrating the fact they had survived. I expect all the C-Suite parasites are taking notes and celebrating today as well.

As Calhoun and his cabal make their exit to enjoy their golden parachutes at the end of the year, all eyes should be focused on what the board does in selecting a new CEO and a new leadership team. A team that should be engineering centric and stripped of anyone who had a part in creating the shortcutting culture of greed and avarice for the last 20 years. I am, of course, pessimistic as the present board is packed with people who are of the same mind as Calhoun and his cabal.

This is how you take down greatness.