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> Recently read The Man Who Broke Capitalism by David Gelles which is an excellent review of the Welch years, how he worked, and how he sent his minions out acr
by tonyarkles 1y ago
> Recently read The Man Who Broke Capitalism by David Gelles which is an excellent review of the Welch years, how he worked, and how he sent his minions out across the corporate world to wreak havoc.
The parts about Boeing in that book are... rough. Not rough as in "poorly-written" but rough as in "holy hell is that ever a brutal way to ruin a good company". Excellent book but lol it's not a feel-good read :)
- Barbing 1y agoMaybe a decade ago I read from critics concerned a shift to an aggressively globalized supply chain was certain to wreak havoc on Boeing’s quality control. e.g. safety-critical nuts and bolts used to be produced down the street, now you get a few nuts from say Thailand and a few bolts from Malaysia… the critics complained it was certain to lead to problems. Was that a part of what you read about in that book?
- tonyarkles 1y agoNot significantly no, it was much more focused on the McDonnell-Douglas reverse acquisition. To summarize: McDonnell-Douglas was failing and bought Boeing with Boeing’s own stock (technically Boeing bought McDonnell-Douglas with Boeing stock but in practice McDonnell management assumed control). MD’s executives were Jack Welch protégés and did the same thing to Boeing that happened to GE.
- p_l 1y agoThe part that story always stays silent is that Boeing then-CEO was big fan of Welch-ism apparently and oversaw major changes that caused long-term issues ... while new people (albeit not execs) from McDonnell-Douglas were publishing internal memos about how MD has experience on why the actions taken by Boeing (not MD!) CEO will cause problems.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoSo, if MD was failing, who thought it would be a good idea to let the MD execs take over Boeing? Was the board asleep?
- kelseydh 1y agoCorporate boards in practice have a long history of being controlled more by management, than the other way around.
- Barbing 1y agoThat’s too bad. Very interesting—thank you!