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Does the CEO need to know these things? I would argue no. What needs to happen is the CEO needs to listen and trust the technical people that report to him. Th

by AaronM 3y ago

Does the CEO need to know these things? I would argue no. What needs to happen is the CEO needs to listen and trust the technical people that report to him. There is a misalignment of priorities that will never be fixed as long as the primary incentive for the CEO is to maximize shareholder value. If you remove that, and force the primary incentiven to be safety over profits, the rest of the business will follow.

AdrianB1 3y ago
A CEO of an aircraft manufacturer that does not know anything about flying and engineering is too disconnected from their core business (which is engineering planes, not managing techies), it does not trust and understand engineers and it is not trusted and followed by their technical reports. I saw that in technical fields, when you have a bozo as a manager (search for Steve Jobs interview on this matter) things go wrong, very wrong.
pixl97 3y ago
> needs to listen and trust the technical people that report to him. If the CEO has no clue what the company does, those people could be blowing smoke up his/her ass There has to be assurance of technical competency somewhere, and someone that has ultimate authority to get rid of the incompetent. This doesn't disagree with your second sentence. The pursuit of profit seems to turn everything into a bank or gacha machine. Both safety and competency fall by the wayside.
- AaronM 3y ago
  That goes back to the trust of his people. He has to trust his CTO (whatever that title is at boeing for their top engineer manager) to be the judge of that. The incentives have to align wrt quality engineering for there to be trust all the way down to the junior most engineer.
dv_dt 3y ago
For products/services tied to real engineering, that idea that you can maximize profits without leadership that understands it at a deep level is wrong. If you want to maximize profits in that kind of company, you'd better be able to build and sustain a culture to systematically knock out catastrophic risks stemming from real world physical constraints. A management accounting guy is great at hedging financial risks, but that is what they'll always focus on, not the real world. What we are seeing with Boeing now is what happens if leadership is adrift without a good intuition about real world physical risks and what it takes to address them. You can't maximize profits while regularly causing catastrophic events.
sonicanatidae 3y ago
Meaningful penalties would address this nicely, but since CU legalized clear, over-the-table bribery, I suspect it'll never happen.
- smcin 3y ago
  ('CU' = Citizens United ruling (2010) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC)
  - sonicanatidae 3y ago
    Thanks. I forget to post that when I mention CU and I appreciate you not only addressing it, but reminding me.
tivert 3y ago
> Does the CEO need to know these things? I would argue no. What needs to happen is the CEO needs to listen and trust the technical people that report to him. He should probably know enough to sense if the people who report to him are talking nonsense or not, and to properly weigh what they say. I mean, what's going to happen if two technical leaders have a disagreement, and all he knows is how to count beans? How could someone with that background make an effective decision in that context? People also tend to fall back on what they know in unfamiliar circumstances, and I don't think you want an aircraft-manufacturer CEO falling back on picking the "cheapest option" and accepting am unappreciated safety risk in the process.
genocidicbunny 3y ago
> Does the CEO need to know these things? In every case? No. Not every business, not every industry needs that. In cases where the company builds machines that millions of people every day depend on to not die, yeah, the leadership should probably know some of this, if only to be able to realize when someone is trying to blow smoke up their ass. Yeah, he should probably trust the people below him, but the cost of having that trust be violated is way too high. The consequences aren't just a bunch of people losing their jobs, maybe local business being depressed because the nearby widget factory closed. The consequences are airplanes falling out of the sky and lots of people dying. So he needs to be able to verify that the information being given to him, that he's trusting, is actually trustworthy. And nevermind the economic effects here. If people stop trusting certain aircraft as being safe, they're not going to care whose name is painted on the fuselage.

by AaronM 3y ago

AdrianB1 3y ago

A CEO of an aircraft manufacturer that does not know anything about flying and engineering is too disconnected from their core business (which is engineering planes, not managing techies), it does not trust and understand engineers and it is not trusted and followed by their technical reports. I saw that in technical fields, when you have a bozo as a manager (search for Steve Jobs interview on this matter) things go wrong, very wrong.

pixl97 3y ago

> needs to listen and trust the technical people that report to him. If the CEO has no clue what the company does, those people could be blowing smoke up his/her ass There has to be assurance of technical competency somewhere, and someone that has ultimate authority to get rid of the incompetent. This doesn't disagree with your second sentence. The pursuit of profit seems to turn everything into a bank or gacha machine. Both safety and competency fall by the wayside.

AaronM 3y ago
That goes back to the trust of his people. He has to trust his CTO (whatever that title is at boeing for their top engineer manager) to be the judge of that. The incentives have to align wrt quality engineering for there to be trust all the way down to the junior most engineer.

dv_dt 3y ago

For products/services tied to real engineering, that idea that you can maximize profits without leadership that understands it at a deep level is wrong. If you want to maximize profits in that kind of company, you'd better be able to build and sustain a culture to systematically knock out catastrophic risks stemming from real world physical constraints. A management accounting guy is great at hedging financial risks, but that is what they'll always focus on, not the real world. What we are seeing with Boeing now is what happens if leadership is adrift without a good intuition about real world physical risks and what it takes to address them. You can't maximize profits while regularly causing catastrophic events.

sonicanatidae 3y ago

Meaningful penalties would address this nicely, but since CU legalized clear, over-the-table bribery, I suspect it'll never happen.

smcin 3y ago
('CU' = Citizens United ruling (2010) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC)
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  Thanks. I forget to post that when I mention CU and I appreciate you not only addressing it, but reminding me.

tivert 3y ago

> Does the CEO need to know these things? I would argue no. What needs to happen is the CEO needs to listen and trust the technical people that report to him. He should probably know enough to sense if the people who report to him are talking nonsense or not, and to properly weigh what they say. I mean, what's going to happen if two technical leaders have a disagreement, and all he knows is how to count beans? How could someone with that background make an effective decision in that context? People also tend to fall back on what they know in unfamiliar circumstances, and I don't think you want an aircraft-manufacturer CEO falling back on picking the "cheapest option" and accepting am unappreciated safety risk in the process.

genocidicbunny 3y ago

> Does the CEO need to know these things? In every case? No. Not every business, not every industry needs that. In cases where the company builds machines that millions of people every day depend on to not die, yeah, the leadership should probably know some of this, if only to be able to realize when someone is trying to blow smoke up their ass. Yeah, he should probably trust the people below him, but the cost of having that trust be violated is way too high. The consequences aren't just a bunch of people losing their jobs, maybe local business being depressed because the nearby widget factory closed. The consequences are airplanes falling out of the sky and lots of people dying. So he needs to be able to verify that the information being given to him, that he's trusting, is actually trustworthy. And nevermind the economic effects here. If people stop trusting certain aircraft as being safe, they're not going to care whose name is painted on the fuselage.