kiwi grey
If I was the
PR agency asked to help Boeing out in this situation, the advice I would give would include:
- Make some very public sacrifices, and I don't mean at the 'program manager' level, I mean right at the top of BCA - possibly the whole BCA executive team. That might be enough to save the Boeing Corp CEO & board
- Ignore your lawyers' advice, admit liability and offer each victim's family enough money to make them not take Boeing to court. Openly cancel the share repurchase scheme to pay for it.
- Walk away from the MAX, it is irretrievably tarnished. Resume NG production.
- Make a big splash of starting the NSA program, and expedite it.
Boeing wouldn't take my advice, and probably wouldn't pay my bill either.
Agreed - a fine place to start BUT masculine default is to say, "It wasn't me!" The masculine is usually the corporate default. We see this start in very small children when caught out. Once that line has been taken it takes very large cohones to walk it back. In corporate life? The only retraction tends to happen in court or by 'out of court settlement with no admission of guilt'.
It is a problem that has bevilled corporate, political and family life for (I suspect) as long as
homo sapiens has been around. In recent times - VW had this problem as they took a short cut on testing and had to be hauled through court. They were very lucky as no direct deaths could be pinned on them. Look back to the 1970s Ford Pinto and check if the corporate behaviour was the same.
As many have pointed out, the biggest single change is the Internet. An example is that, I was not sure which American car was famous for catching fire in the 1970s but it only took a minute for a search and Wikipedia to confirm which it was. I agree that many do not know what a/c they are flying on (Mrs PAXboy among them) but there will be younger generations, children of, or friends of - who
will know.
Lastly, what the boys at B's top table forgot was that - currently - the USA is not liked so much around the world as it was 25 years ago. The reasons do not matter but 'American' is no longer desirable to so many and the sheer arrogance and effrontery of the Board confirms that. I say 'not liked' but 'loathed' is probably closer to the mark.
Tragically, The Tombstone Imperative (book by Andrew Weir) still rules .