Ah the exuberance of youth, I do not envy this person's impending descent into pure cynicism.
That being said, these problems are not new. These specific things don't really matter. What matters is culture.
Admiral Rickover, responsible for the nuclear navy, wrote a speech called "Doing a Job". It is worth reading in it's entirety and it speaks almost directly and presciently to what is happening at Boeing right now:
> Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done. For this reason, subordinates must be given authority and responsibility early in their careers.
> When doing a job—any job—one must feel that he owns it, and act as though he will remain in the job forever. ... If he feels he is only a temporary custodian, or that the job is just a stepping stone to a higher position, his actions will not take into account the long-term interests of the organization.
> In accepting responsibility for a job, a person must get directly involved. Every manager has a personal responsibility not only to find problems but to correct them. This responsibility comes before all other obligations, before personal ambition or comfort.
> The man in charge must concern himself with details. If he does not consider them important, neither will his subordinates. Yet “the devil is in the details.” It is hard and monotonous to pay attention to seemingly minor matters. In my work, I probably spend about ninety-nine percent of my time on what others may call petty details. Most managers would rather focus on lofty policy matters. But when the details are ignored, the project fails. No infusion of policy or lofty ideals can then correct the situation.
> It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this temptation.
I love this whole speech. I'm curious how people put some of these efforts into practice, particularly holding people to high standards while still giving them autonomy and ownership.
Holding someone to a high standard seems like it requires frequently telling them that their work isn't good enough and they need to refine or redo it in some major way. How can people feel ownership while they're being frequently told their output isn't satisfactory? How do you balance firing people who can't perform without creating a culture of fear?
Disclaimer: I am not a historian, my knowledge of Rickover is probably wrong and probably low quality.
I guess you're kind of asking how did Rickover maintain people's intrinsic motivation (sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose), despite asking a lot from workers particularly in a frequently hostile way?
I think if I had to guess it comes down to two words: "Mission driven."
I think Rickover went all in on purpose. I think every single subordinate had explicit responsibility that mattered. Not only that, but there was the greater context of the cold war. It didn't just matter, it mattered.
My potentially wrong understanding is that Rickover assigned responsibilities, not tasks.
I think Rickover was a pioneer of the technical interview. His interviews were intense and existed to filter out people willing to BS or play games. I think he wanted people who were willing to speak truth to power. I think his interview process, while unconventional, was probably central to his management.
Rickover was a major proponent of (liberal) education (as opposed to technical). He strongly believed in molding quality clay and making experts, rather than hiring experts. That means investment. Investing in a person is validation that they are worth investing in. A person who is invested in probably feels a sense of debt.
> How can people feel ownership while they're being frequently told their output isn't satisfactory?
I think when communicating to someone that their output is unsatisfactory, it can be done in different ways. I think you could tell someone their output is unsatisfactory in a technical way they might even agree with, or you could communicate to someone that they are producing unsatisfactory output. I think that is a night and day distinction. I guess the right question is does the person feel that it is "us vs the problem" or "them vs the manager?" Rickover seemed like a very "us vs the problem" kind of person.
I think some workers also don't get told why their work is unsatisfactory, which is very damaging. Knowing the consequences of unsatisfactory work is centering.
What is clear is that I think Rickover would have debugged the unsatisfactory output, probably himself. Unrealistic time pressure is a failure of management, not a failure of an employee, so I think Rickover would have been upset if a timeline shifted, but only if he was not told early and told why.
My understanding is that it was frequently contractors and people who would fleece the government that would draw his greatest ire.
I think the context of getting yelled at matters, too. Getting a verbal shakedown, especially by a CEO, communicates that what you are working on is important and there are real consequences and that you have the power over them. Yelling means you care. When other people care, you care.
Things like burnout are often thought of as stress issues, when they have very little to do with stress and a lot to do with progress. Feeling stress but not making progress is what creates burnout. Stress with progress is accomplishment and boosts future stress tolerance because the progress ends up justifying the stress.
I don't know if you've heard Gordon Ramsey speak about his abuse, but he makes a distinction between the abuse he experienced from his dad, and the abuse he experienced under Guy Savoy. Guy's abuse was something he valued because it had a purpose, the purpose was to get better food.
> How do you balance firing people who can't perform without creating a culture of fear?
I think if you have a clear ethos about firing vs training this isn't practically a problem. I had co-workers that I wished were fired. Firing those people would have made me respect management as competent. If you fire someone who should be fired I don't think that creates fear. Not firing dangerous co workers might be an even larger crisis.
Arbitrary firing creates fear. A manager firing an employee for what are the managers failures, not the employees, creates fear.
If you read about the NTSB investigation of an ATC issue resulting in a runway plane collision that was posted several weeks ago. I think that's relevant. The mistake the ATC made could have been made by anyone. So firing that ATC would have created a culture of fear because any other ATC could have seen themselves in her position. Boeing has a culture of fear, not because people are fired, but because if you speak up, you suddenly become a person fingers can be pointed at, and therefore a target for legal discovery and firing. The fear comes from the people in power not taking responsibility, not the firing.
If you fire someone, and people can imagine that being them, that's the culture of fear.
Rickover was probably an influence for navy seal leadership which is analyzed in more detail in the very good book Extreme Ownership, which explicitly addresses unsatisfactory workers and firing. If you like Rickover, you'd probably like that book. It is much much better than it looks or sounds.
Thank you for the thoughtful response! I have actually read Extreme Ownership. I agreed with most of it, although one thing I started noticing is what I'd call "fake ownership". Once people realize the value of ownership, they try to game the system and use those tools to manipulate. Boeing CEO's response to the latest disaster comes to mind. He claims "this is our fault, we'll fix it". But it's hard to take it at face value when you know the story. I guess like most aspects of human behavior, there's an element of earnesty that needs to be present.
Have you read any of the books on rickover? I can find three:
1. Rickover and the Nuclear Navy
2. The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference
3. Nuclear Navy, 1946-1962
Would love to know if you have a recommendation or anything else on rickover you'd recommend reading. This guy seems worth studying
Google is surprisingly sparse on him, so combing over his Wikipedia references was my plan. I've also found it hard to find a list of his congressional testimonies, but I am pretty interested in that.
You can also watch some interviews on YouTube. Rickover was a person who successfully spoke truth to power, which made him enemies. I have a hard time telling how much influence the power he spoke truth to has had over his legacy. Watching some of his interviews that can be found on youtube are a very "never meet your heroes" kind of experience.
The greatest criticism of Rickover is that he did not create a system that produced more Rickover's, which created a sort of "succession" problem and "bus factor" problem. On the flip side it is very hard to argue with his results and legacy.
That is exactly the opposite of Rickover's idea of ownership. This is "our" fault means that everyone is responsible, which paradoxically means no one is responsible. In tech "this is owned by everyone" means it is completely neglected except by "heroes" who are on the path to burning out because they have leadership that has no idea what is going on because if they did, then someone would be directly responsible for the state of whatever is communally "owned".
Rickover's philosophy (from what I gather) is as simple as the difference between "our" and "my." Rickover would have definitely said "my" fault. "This is my fault, I am responsible, I will fix it." A CEO has the most power and therefore the most responsibility, so a CEO who diffuses responsibility will find that no one else wants responsibility either. It is debatable whether Rickvoer was properly responsible since there is rumor that during the USS thresher incident he distanced himself from responsibility, but I think his philosophy is very very clear about the distinction between "our fault" and "my fault" and how important that difference is.
You've given the typical MBA answer - that link included - and dismissed OP as being "youtfully naive".
And perhaps he is, but more naive is you notion of we just need to change our beliefs with an article about what "real" leadership looks like.
Incentives drive everything! And our financial short term focus squeezing every last drop out of every quarter does not produce long term good quality.
Rickover is about as far from an MBA as you can get, truly. Here is another quote from his speech which agrees with your central point.
> One must create the ability in his staff to generate clear, forceful arguments for opposing viewpoints as well as for their own. Open discussions and disagreements must be encouraged, so that all sides of an issue will be fully explored. Further, important issues should be presented in writing. Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one’s arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.
You are violently agreeing with me and Rickover's speech. You should read it. You will like it.
Here is another:
> A major flaw in our system of government, and even in industry, is the latitude allowed to do less than is necessary. Too often officials are willing to accept and adapt to situations they know to be wrong. The tendency is to downplay problems instead of actively trying to correct them. Recognizing this, many subordinates give up, contain their views within themselves, and wait for others to take action. When this happens, the manager is deprived of the experience and ideas of subordinates who generally are more knowledgeable than he in their particular areas.
> A preoccupation with the so-called bottom line of profit and loss statements, coupled with a lust for expansion, is creating an environment in which fewer businessmen honor traditional values; where responsibility is increasingly disassociated from the the exercise of power; where skill in financial manipulation is valued more than actual knowledge and experience in the business; where attention and effort is directed mostly to short-term considerations, regardless of longer-range consequences.
I’m from Seattle. I’ve worked at Boeing before and so have many people I know. It’s not just suits. The company is rotten to the core—from the factory floor to the CEO office. It’s a toxic company culture that pushes out high performers because the high performers makes everyone else look bad. As a result, it only retains low performers. The job can be done in one hour, but the company requires you to be in the office/factory for a full 8 hours. There are a lot of over employed people with second jobs.
Wouldn't low performers hurt production output and piss off upper management? What's the "ideal" employee who succeeds in that environment look like in their day to day work?
While I'm sure there's other toxic factors this 1 hour job requiring you to spend 8 hours is kinda an aviation thing... chances are that guy was on a DoD contract.
The B players are the autocratic strongmen who threaten the world with nuclear war, brag about violating women, seek emoluments, build personal mansions with government money, pal around with dictators, and browbeat C players into shipping unsafe airplanes faster to increase profits.
Quality metrics are easy to fudge. Too few defects? Find some or make some. Too many? Cover them up. If you need honesty, don't link it to executive pay.
An aircraft is a life critical system. For such systems 'formal verification' (verify 100% quality / correctness) is the metric, not 'lack of failure'.
>Many of the parts that make up our planes are built by suppliers from all over the world and we just assemble the final product.
This part sounds very naive.
Where does this stop? Are they going to build the instruments, the sensors, the rivets, the aluminium, the carpets, the entertainment machine, the coffee machine... A coffee machine once caused a depressurization of a cabin after all.
Suppliers have been doing this to Boeing for a long time, and intentionally so as it forces Boeing to give them more money or buy them out. Al Jazeera did an expose on this practice with whistleblowers from Boeing around 10 years ago.
It’s basic math, make quality products and make average returns on investments or skimp on quality and make above average returns then get bought out and make even more money. There is already talk of Beoing being forced to buy Spirit AeroSystem rewarding them for their mistakes.
Boeing used to control much more of its production, until factories were sold off and outsourced. Long-term damage to quality, but a quarter looks black on paper because there is an influx in revenue.
In lieu of "do all of the shit Boeing did in 1996 before the MBA bros from MD 'The trouble with mergers' ungulate copulation magazine awards ruined everything", how about having some damn integrity, pride, and excellence rather than shipping shit. It requires effort, time, and expense to do things right the first time, while getting safety-critical processes, designs, and manufacturing wrong is immoral, unethical, probably illegal, and likely costlier in the long run.
Boeing is like most big companies part of the capitalist system where shareholders expect an annual rate of return of 5 to 8%. Every company that does not deliver this rate will fall out of the game.
Some of the shareholders are completely innocent people like some family who's saving for retirement via an ETF. It means that if Boeing is not growing at the rate of other companies, it will fall out of some stock market index and hence the ETF. Before that, it will probably be removed from many other portfolios that are managed by people directly.
Both sides of the game are people trying to do the best. If the managers decided to invest heavily in the next years and make losses, they'd be kicked out of that position and replaced by some who continue running this game.
I think politics is the only way out of this. It won't change until people can convince politics to regulate some areas more strictly or putting higher penalties on some mistakes.
I don't know if this comment is satire or not, but I thought the company existed to provide a fast and (relatively) safe means of travel over long distances to people. I guess the old engineering adage applies here too: fast, cheap, safe, pick any two.
> Boeing is like most big companies part of the capitalist system where shareholders expect an annual rate of return of 5 to 8%.
Boeing is the most governmental company there is. They are heavily subsidized, for example to “create jobs” in poor areas where social peace is needed (and I’m only talking about massive incentives they pocket from local governments, not even starting on defense contracts).
That frankly means they hire factory workers going in and out of prison. As you may imagine, those are not the best employees. If an airframe is cut at the wrong place, they still put it in the plane, leaving gaping holes representing more than 50% of the extruded structure (it had happened in 2013 on …80 planes).
> I think politics is the only way out of this.
Boeing keeps receiving subsidies from politicians. It’s the exact opposite of a private company, it’s the symbol of why meddling politicians with USA jewels ends up as an eagle’s fest. The FAA seems to be bribed all the time. At the same time, it’s a giant geopolitical asset to project the power of USA onto the world, which is why it’s protected from any inquiry upon its corruption.
Partisans are always prompt to blame it on the stock exchange and speculation and claim it should have more ties to the political powers that brought it there. American politics will not do anything about it. If anything, I can only see the EU forbidding Boeing planes from EU soil that would begin to solve the situation.
Heck, USA should forbid Boeing planes from USA soil.
That being said, these problems are not new. These specific things don't really matter. What matters is culture.
Admiral Rickover, responsible for the nuclear navy, wrote a speech called "Doing a Job". It is worth reading in it's entirety and it speaks almost directly and presciently to what is happening at Boeing right now:
https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm
> Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done. For this reason, subordinates must be given authority and responsibility early in their careers.
> When doing a job—any job—one must feel that he owns it, and act as though he will remain in the job forever. ... If he feels he is only a temporary custodian, or that the job is just a stepping stone to a higher position, his actions will not take into account the long-term interests of the organization.
> In accepting responsibility for a job, a person must get directly involved. Every manager has a personal responsibility not only to find problems but to correct them. This responsibility comes before all other obligations, before personal ambition or comfort.
> The man in charge must concern himself with details. If he does not consider them important, neither will his subordinates. Yet “the devil is in the details.” It is hard and monotonous to pay attention to seemingly minor matters. In my work, I probably spend about ninety-nine percent of my time on what others may call petty details. Most managers would rather focus on lofty policy matters. But when the details are ignored, the project fails. No infusion of policy or lofty ideals can then correct the situation.
> It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this temptation.