The first domino at Boeing, or is it?

Boeing announced Ed Clark, Vice President of the 737 MAX program and general manager of the Renton facility, will step down. The separation marks the first executive change following the fuselage door panel blow-out at Alaska Airlines. Boeing also announced that Elizabeth Lund was named senior vice president of BCA Quality. So there goes the first domino. Clark spent 18 years at Boeing and is being replaced by Katie Ringgold, who joined Boeing in 2011 with her current role as Vice President of 737 Delivery Operations. There is also some other shuffling of senior management. But the question analysts are asking is: is this enough? Will this solve the quality crisis on the MAX? The general assessment is uncertain at best, which means probably nobody thinks this is sufficient. Mr. Clark's head was expected to roll as he was head of the MAX program. While he was the first and obvious domino, he can't be the only one. By a general external consensus, there is a culture problem at Boeing. Mr. Clark would have been a part of that culture. But he would not have been one of its creators. That happens much higher up in the company. Consequently, there should be other dominos. Clark's domino was way down from the first domino. If Clark's domino is tipped, who gets tipped on the 787 program with numerous problems? How about the KC-46 program and, for that matter, the 777X program? Does Boeing plan to lay off its program managers across the board? After all, these programs all have had problems. The implication is that one has to look higher up in the company to get to the cultural source that brought Boeing to this place. The problems are at the program level. However, the solutions to these problems cannot be overcome with changing leadership at the program level. The program leaders are operating under guidance and leadership from higher up. When do those higher-up leaders take responsibility? Boeing's senior leaders have been doing odd things for a while, far too long in fact. Mr Clark may be an inevitable domino to fall. But he is surely not the last one. Clark was the fifth MAX program manager in four years. That alone tells us the problem is bigger than Mr. Clark. Crucially, we need to see dominos far higher up in the Boeing Company tipped before anyone can say the cultural problems are truly being addressed. This isn't just our view. “Firing the head of the MAX program was likely a matter of time, but I don’t think it means very much,” Richard Aboulafia, managing director of aerospace consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, told Reuters. “The company’s problems are cultural, with the tone being set from the top.” The only way anyone can be sure that Boeing is addressing its core culture problems is by seeing more dominos fall and whose dominos they are.

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