From Sept/Oct 1989: “We don’t need the questioners and the checkers, the nitpickers who bog down the process, people whose only role is to second-guess and kibitz, the people who clog communication inside the company. …Ten years from now, we want magazines to write about GE as a place where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody.”
https://hbr.org/1989/09/speed-simplicity-self-confidence-an-interview-with-jack-welch
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From April 2, 2024: “But that merger contained the seeds of Boeing’s current problems. McDonnell Douglas was run by a man named Harry Stonecipher, who was an acolyte of Jack Welch, the longtime head of General Electric who was viewed at the time as “the Manager of the Century.”…The downturn hit Boeing hard, and it shed much of its experienced workforce. It saved money in the short-term, but it drained the deep pool of experience and know-how that was the core of Boeing’s competitive advantage.”
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“To save itself, Boeing could look to the past — returning to centering engineers, committing to training and retaining a skilled and experienced workforce, and investing in building new aircraft with the latest technology. “
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/boeing-planes-problems-stock-price-shareholders.html
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More from April 7, 2024:
“Another mistake belatedly recognized: With annual bonuses for Boeing’s factory managers based largely on meeting cost and schedule targets, it was long a cardinal sin to stop the assembly line…Engineers who raised technical doubts were told: “Follow the plan. If you can’t do your job, I’ll fire you and get someone who can.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-long-fall-and-how-it-might-recover/
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Culture eats knowledge for breakfast: “Recall that a context management failure was the root cause of the Hubble mirror failure. Hubble attracted first-rate technical minds. We, the management, created a social context that put these good people in bad places…
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..NASA managers at headquarters and Marshall Space Flight Center, the managing field center for Hubble, including me, relentlessly criticized and pressured our contractors. The contractors, operating from a place of relative powerlessness, engaged in guerilla tactics by withholding troubling information.”
https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/-/9780470502952/pell_9780470502952_oeb_c02_r1.html