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The Tylenol crisis is basically the case study for how to handle a corporate crisis. If you get an MBA without having come across it, you should ask for your mo

The Tylenol crisis is basically the case study for how to handle a corporate crisis. If you get an MBA without having come across it, you should ask for your money back. > Why can't today's leaders think a little bigger, and optimize for the long term even if that has an immediate cost? I'm not sure it's so simple. At the head of the Boeing bureaucracy, Dennis Muilenberg likely was being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs. He was ineffective because he accepted it and pushed it outward - to the board and the wider public - rather than challenging it and getting to the bottom of the crisis. Internally challenging the members of your organization during a crisis is incredibly politically difficult to pull off and has little to do with short-term vs. long-term perspectives. Of course, someone with his experience and compensation, working at his level, should be able to pull it off. He didn't.

panarky 7y ago
No, it's not simple, and it's not easy. Doing the right thing when it involves immediate cost and disruption takes courage. I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". That's how big organizations work. But in 1982, J&J leadership could see beyond that, cut through the noise, push back on short-sighted recommendations, and do the right thing for the company in the long term. My question is why we rarely see "enlightened self-interest" like this today. From Boeing to Facebook, Wells Fargo to Uber, it's hard to think of companies that do the right thing in difficult situations, even when that would be in the company's own long-term best interest.
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  > I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". This is not necessarily a given. In the Tylenol case an external saboteur was to blame, so little or no internal CYA was necessary. Easy and correct for everyone to just blame it on the saboteur and then do the right thing to fix the problem. In the Boeing case the culprit was internal, which likely resulted in a tangled web of CYA, leading to a diet of wrong and horrible information. Not excusing Boeing, they acted wrongly. But it’s clear how and why the odds of bad corporate behavior were much higher in Boeing’s case than in J&J’s case.
  - panarky 7y ago
    Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident. If J&J had behaved like Boeing, they would have blamed the saboteur, blamed law enforcement, and blamed retailers while gradually and secretly fixing the packaging problem before regulators could force them to do it. If Boeing had behaved like J&J, they would have taken immediate responsibility, voluntarily grounded the entire fleet even before all the causes were known, and put passenger safety first.
    - Litmus2336 7y ago
      >Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident. Do you have a citation for that? I don't doubt it's possible but I've never heard it. As far as I know no major pain medications had tamper resistant seals at that point in history. I've read a lot about this (being from Chicago myself) and do not believe you're representing it correctly. J&J took responsibility insomuch as they pioneered tamper resistant packaging, but they very clearly blamed a saboteur. The initial allegation was that Tylenol was unsafe. J&J successfully re-spun it, correctly, as an external terrorist poisoning their medication. And, to their credit, they did a great job making future Tylenol very safe. But the bottom line is that these two incidents are very different. In J&J's case they were not at fault. In Boeing's case they were. Info taken from https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/02C2/Johnson%20&%20Johnson.htm https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/02C2/Johnson%20&%2...
remarkEon 7y ago
>Dennis Muilenberg likely was being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs. Your job as CEO, or any leader of a large organization civilian or military, is to ferret out when you're being fed loads of BS. It's frustrating because Muilenberg was a engineer and started there as an intern in the 80s, so he at least should have some domain expertise in what the problems were. Perhaps him being a "company man" in this case was a hindrance, or conflicted with the new culture at Boeing that is, apparently, run by MBAs concerned with quarterly profits. In either case, he needed to go as this failure happened on his watch.
- madengr 7y ago
  Plenty of engineering graduates can’t engineer, and go into management after a couple of years. Likely he fell into that category.
- sgt101 7y ago
  >Your job as CEO, or any leader of a large organization civilian or military, is to ferret out when you're being fed loads of BS. I get where you are coming from, but I would reframe it as "Your job as a CEO is to create a culture with integrity and transparency" It is also pretty clear that a time of crisis is the time that your true corporate culture manifests, it seems that the culture at Boeing is not long on integrity or transparency.

panarky 7y ago

No, it's not simple, and it's not easy. Doing the right thing when it involves immediate cost and disruption takes courage. I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". That's how big organizations work. But in 1982, J&J leadership could see beyond that, cut through the noise, push back on short-sighted recommendations, and do the right thing for the company in the long term. My question is why we rarely see "enlightened self-interest" like this today. From Boeing to Facebook, Wells Fargo to Uber, it's hard to think of companies that do the right thing in difficult situations, even when that would be in the company's own long-term best interest.

SkyMarshal 7y ago
> I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". This is not necessarily a given. In the Tylenol case an external saboteur was to blame, so little or no internal CYA was necessary. Easy and correct for everyone to just blame it on the saboteur and then do the right thing to fix the problem. In the Boeing case the culprit was internal, which likely resulted in a tangled web of CYA, leading to a diet of wrong and horrible information. Not excusing Boeing, they acted wrongly. But it’s clear how and why the odds of bad corporate behavior were much higher in Boeing’s case than in J&J’s case.
- panarky 7y ago
  Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident. If J&J had behaved like Boeing, they would have blamed the saboteur, blamed law enforcement, and blamed retailers while gradually and secretly fixing the packaging problem before regulators could force them to do it. If Boeing had behaved like J&J, they would have taken immediate responsibility, voluntarily grounded the entire fleet even before all the causes were known, and put passenger safety first.
  - Litmus2336 7y ago
    >Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident. Do you have a citation for that? I don't doubt it's possible but I've never heard it. As far as I know no major pain medications had tamper resistant seals at that point in history. I've read a lot about this (being from Chicago myself) and do not believe you're representing it correctly. J&J took responsibility insomuch as they pioneered tamper resistant packaging, but they very clearly blamed a saboteur. The initial allegation was that Tylenol was unsafe. J&J successfully re-spun it, correctly, as an external terrorist poisoning their medication. And, to their credit, they did a great job making future Tylenol very safe. But the bottom line is that these two incidents are very different. In J&J's case they were not at fault. In Boeing's case they were. Info taken from https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/02C2/Johnson%20&%20Johnson.htm https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/02C2/Johnson%20&%2...

remarkEon 7y ago

>Dennis Muilenberg likely was being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs. Your job as CEO, or any leader of a large organization civilian or military, is to ferret out when you're being fed loads of BS. It's frustrating because Muilenberg was a engineer and started there as an intern in the 80s, so he at least should have some domain expertise in what the problems were. Perhaps him being a "company man" in this case was a hindrance, or conflicted with the new culture at Boeing that is, apparently, run by MBAs concerned with quarterly profits. In either case, he needed to go as this failure happened on his watch.

madengr 7y ago
Plenty of engineering graduates can’t engineer, and go into management after a couple of years. Likely he fell into that category.
sgt101 7y ago
>Your job as CEO, or any leader of a large organization civilian or military, is to ferret out when you're being fed loads of BS. I get where you are coming from, but I would reframe it as "Your job as a CEO is to create a culture with integrity and transparency" It is also pretty clear that a time of crisis is the time that your true corporate culture manifests, it seems that the culture at Boeing is not long on integrity or transparency.