Dear Boeing: Customer Service Begins With Customers Who Are Alive To Use Your Product

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing needs a clean sweep of its leadership that got the company into this mess; board and management. Bring in aviation people – not just people in the aviation industry, but people passionate about aviation. Tap the likes of Lockheed Martin, or Northrup Grumman.

Tech companies must be driven by engineering excellence, product quality, and innovation, not financial shenanigans designed to manipulate stock prices, so analyst and financial media writes nice things about you. That is what destroyed General Electric.

Intel is an example of a company losing its way when the visionary technical founders were replaced by financial engineers.

Apple has no new products since cofounder Steve Jobs died. Maybe this Apple Vision Pro counts as one, but it’s still too early to tell if it’s anything more than a gimmick. Rather than build a new aircraft, Boeing jerry-rigged its old 737 platform to peddle it as something new, with deadly results.

In Michael Treacy’s “The Discipline of Market Leaders,” he lays out why great companies must be excellent in either operations, innovation, or customer intimacy; and at least competent in all three. Boeing clearly fails in both operations and innovation.

Customer service begins with customers who are alive to use your product.

Books mentioned:

• Flying Blind – The 737 Max Tragedy And The Fall of Boeing – Peter Robison https://amzn.to/3TF1MIX
• The Discipline of Market Leaders – Fred Wiersema & Michael Treacy https://amzn.to/3vmNuDm
• American Icon – Alan Mulally and the fight to save Ford Motor Company – Bryce G. Hoffman, https://amzn.to/3Pqn3DU
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz – https://amzn.to/3wWxetk

Magazine articles cited:

• Simple Flying – John Barnett: What Boeing’s Biggest Whistleblower Claimed About The Company https://simpleflying.com/john-barnett-boeing-biggest-whistleblower-claimed-about-company/
• Wall Street Journal – ‘Everything Hit the Roof’: A Moment of Horror Unfolds on a Latam Boeing 787 https://www.wsj.com/world/everything-hit-the-roof-a-moment-of-horror-unfolds-on-a-boeing-787-528e3b11?st=uz57etp2hyoz84v&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
• The Hill – Boeing whistleblower found dead in apparent suicide https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/4524968-boeing-whistleblower-found-dead-in-apparent-suicide/
• BBC – Alaska Airlines blowout: Passenger describes being on Flight 1282 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68583149

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