When Boeing fired CEO Dennis Mullenberg late last year, the markets, investors, regulators, and other interested parties likely all breathed a sigh of relief. The man at the helm during two high-profile 737 MAX plane crashes was gone.
When performing their post-mortems on Mullenberg’s tenure at Boeing, sources have blamed his insensitivity to victims’ families, his cavalier attitude toward customers like Southwest Airlines, and Boeing’s overall culture of secrecy, among other issues. For me, however, the most significant issues are Boeing’s refusal to consider divergent opinions when developing the 737 MAX and when addressing the safety/performance issues that caused the crashes, and simultaneously, the corporate culture that places profit over safety.