Its sad.
Having followed this story for the past months, it does seem like Boeing started their troubles when appointing non-engineering business and accounting types like Calhoun as their leader.
Boeing had CEOs with an engineering degree recently and the result was the same or even worse.
The problem is much more deep than the CEO or the people immediately around him, by this point the whole house is rot. But there is an entire generation of managers who made most of their career feasting on Boeing, so not everything was lost... I guess.
> clash of corporate cultures, where Boeing's engineers and McDonnell Douglas's bean-counters went head-to-head
I do believe that leadership plays a role in the top and can have a general negative or positive sway on the culture in an org. Im rooting for Boeing to fix their problems. And appointing a person at the top to lead that change is going to speak louder than any press release/marketing effort to improve their image.
On the other foot, you have the 144,999 Boeing employees that are not the CEO. Their skills, attitudes, and day to day responsibilities will go largely unchanged.
I agree that the right CEO can have a huge impact, but there is so much inertia against change. It's more likely the board is establishing the next fall guy for the next major scandal in 3-7 years.
Why not replace the entire board if the CEO is a direct reflection of the board?
[0] https://www.boeing.com/content/dam/boeing/boeingdotcom/compa...
Also, it limits drama and backstabbing, as representatives should be accountable to other employees, and have to lead general assembly to talk about huge future changes, like a change of CEO. If a third of the board cannot backstab, and have to talk to literally everybody before making huge decisions, it limits drama _a lot_.
The workers have their own incentives, but in general, going against the leader’s perspectives is counterproductive. They could all start caring, but it’s in their better interest to care about what the boss cares about.