Posted on 04/14/2024 10:05:35 PM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
John Barnett had one of those bosses who seemed to spend most of his waking hours scheming to inflict humiliation upon him. He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed.
“John is very knowledgeable almost to a fault, as it gets in the way at times when issues arise,” the boss wrote in one of his withering performance reviews, downgrading Barnett’s rating from a 40 all the way to a 15 in an assessment that cast the 26-year quality manager, who was known as “Swampy” for his easy Louisiana drawl, as an anal-retentive prick whose pedantry was antagonizing his colleagues. The truth, by contrast, was self-evident to anyone who spent five minutes in his presence: John Barnett, who raced cars in his spare time and seemed “high on life” according to one former colleague, was a “great, fun boss that loved Boeing and was willing to share his knowledge with everyone,” as one of his former quality technicians would later recall. But Swampy was mired in an institution that was in a perpetual state of unlearning all the lessons it had absorbed over a 90-year ascent to the pinnacle of global manufacturing. Like most neoliberal institutions, Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at prospect.org ...
>> all I know is I trust the guys with work boots on and some brain cells ....you know,the guys who can figure out problems....
TRUTH. (Mostly)
I’ll add in closing after reading the entire article: I worked for a company whose CEO thought that experienced engineers were a dime a dozen. Just another commodity that could be bought on a street corner when the time came and fired when the time of need passed. He also thought that an MBA could manage anything. Anything at all. He was eventually proven very very wrong.
It seems to be par for the course around here to kill the messenger based on the color of his sneakers without ever listening to the message.
That may be, but I recommend the article be read. There’s nothing progressive about the article or the conclusions it presents.
I used to say that I never knew an accountant, auditor, analyst or management conslutant that ever drilled and completed an oil or gas well, built a gas plant, pipeline, platform or other facility. I offered to take some of them with me on some of my week long all nighters but never got any takers.
Bttt
>> That may be, but I recommend the article be read.
I agree, and I read the article.
>> There’s nothing progressive about the article or the conclusions it presents.
Other than the agenda-driven decision on what to include and what to exclude... and the one-sided biased presentation...
>> It seems to be par for the course around here to kill the messenger based on the color of his sneakers without ever listening to the message.
I listened to the message. I’m sympathetic — who doesn’t love to hate Boeing today?? — but I’m still skeptical.
And on the subject of Ukraine, Chad... pot, kettle, black.
When they moved corporate to Chicago, they were doomed.
Actually, it was probably when an accountant became CEO.
Did Swampy kill himself? I dunno for certain of course, but I do remember a Boeing Whistle-blower “suicided” recently and it must have been Swampy.
Sad how a once great company that built the planes that won WW2 has decided that knowledge is not needed...The old guys know things—feell thinkgs—smell things when its wrong...and one only gets that experience by experience. Its passed along to the up and coming through the years...
I read both “Swampy” articles and maybe there is a third. Very insightful; revealing. I did attend the UW business school where there was a lot of interplay with Boeing but I was more engineering oriented myself.
I read the whole article and it was pretty straight forward—perhaps its “progressiveness” was that it favored the little guy—the union guy with years of experience after building planes for decades versus the Corporate Profit types.
There was no “solution” posited that I read. If I missed it, please let me know. But it seemed to knock profits over product reliability—which is not a left or right issue—or shouldn’t be anyway.
Hate....is that what turns you on?
This one is somewhat new and novel.
But the “fault” of our system according to the world for decades has been everything incentivizes the short term outcome.
It’s a very familiar refrain and won’t be changing in our system ever. It is also the case for a very high percentage of our corporations.
A lot of Boeing’s issues predate the Biden era of wokeness.
As a future shareholder, the culture that brought us the Max is the peril. As folks posted above, the bean counters chose to frankenstein it instead of redesigning it when they had the chance. That is the scary part.
Sounds like they basically released Chainsaw Al on the company so the executives could makes even more $. Dave Calhoun got almost 33 million in 2023. In 2013 McNerney got 29 million.
The one they fired, Dennis Mullenburg got 62 million for his trashing of Boeing.
I’ve seen it in my own industry. Senior, experienced people run out by incompetent bean counters, only to see their divisions collapse as clients leave.
In one of my prior companies, I had doubled our client base in 4 years. Then, I had to take a step back because my middle child was battling an incurable condition. The next leader blew the division apart in a year. Staff churn, clients running for the door, because they were a condescending jerk to my team members.
I took a job at a high rise and spent the first year cleaning the place up. When I left a few years later for an executive level position, the next crew ran the place into the ground in just 8 months before they were fired. The building tracked me down and came to my new company.
Thankfully, I am with a company that values exceptionalism, invests heavily in training our people to be the best, and appreciates experience. After substantially increasing their bottom line, they give me broad latitude to train newbies. My original training program was 26 weeks (expanded to 30 as I added more modules) and I run it year round. The people that started with me have gone on to become directors and senior leaders in other organizations and won awards in our industry.
It almost happened to my present company. When the founder decided to retire, the company that bought his company brought in ivy league people that didn’t understand our business model at all. They ran off the knowledgeable folks, demanded a new software platform with a massive conversion during the busiest season of the year, stretched staff to the breaking point, and more. I came aboard after the dust had settled and the Ivys were replaced by leaders from within the industry. There was still a lot of clean up to do.
MacNamara’s whiz kids all over again.
Reminds me of Sears when they got rid of all those old folks who knew every product the store sold. people like that went to work for Home Depot.
It does work in the short run, by the time the SHTF these people move on with tremendous riches.
The reason they use a short term management style is because, it’s all they know, it’s all they’ve been taught, it’s similar in many other industries.
A long-time successful company starts elevating people to management positions that do not know anything about the products the company makes, they strictly manage by the textbook and short-term profits.
A prime example is Apple Computer, at one time they fired one of the founders of the company and brought in a guy who was selling Pepsi to run a computer company, he proceeded to nearly bankrupt the company, to their credit Apple brought back the founder and he led a miraculous turn around, which is still going on.
The question with Boeing is how bad it will get, could they end up getting broken up and sold off because they are in for a world of trouble, if a couple more planes have structural issues and kill a bunch of people, Boeing will be forced to take some drastic actions.
(The guy who is now fish food thought the same thing about actual, real, experienced engineers when it came to building his little submarine coffin.)
Being arrogant at 11,500 feet deep is a very bad idea.
Demonstrably so.
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