Boeing’s CEO Just Responded to Intense Criticism Over the Alaska Airlines Flight Emergency. It’s a Lesson for Every Leader

It’s been a rough few weeks to be the CEO of Boeing. Only a few years after a pair of fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes, an Alaska Airlines flight was forced into an emergency landing after a door plug blew out while the plane flew at 16,000 feet. In this case, thankfully, no one was injured, but it certainly raises questions about whether the aircraft maker is up to the task.

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun was hired after those crashes when the company’s board (which included Calhoun) pushed out Dennis Muilenburg. The main problem for Muilenburg was that the board lost faith in his ability to overcome the problems the company faced in trying to get the previous version of the MAX back in the air after the FAA grounded the aircraft in 2019. 

As a result, you can imagine that Calhoun has faced intense criticism over the company’s safety problems. Part of that criticism comes because Calhoun is not an engineer by education; he is an accountant. That’s not uncommon–a lot of CEOs have a finance or accounting background. One of their most important jobs is to make sure the company is managing expenses and making a profit. 

The thing is, at a company like Boeing, the stakes seem a little higher since mistakes result in things like plane crashes. To be fair, Calhoun spent a few decades at GE, overseeing divisions that make things like aircraft engines, but that hasn’t stopped the criticism.

Really, if the thing your company does is make airplanes, each of which carries hundreds of people through the air, you might think your responsibility is to make them as efficiently as possible, or as profitably as possible, but no, your main responsibility is to make sure those planes are safe. That’s not just common sense; it’s actually good business as well, because if you don’t do that, no one will buy your planes. If your planes crash or have other safety issues, no one will want to fly on them. 

It’s weird, then, that Boeing hasn’t seemed to be able to fix whatever went wrong in the design and building of the 737-MAX. The company has already admitted it made faulty assumptions and bad decisions about important features of the aircraft, but it doesn’t appear as though it’s fixed any of them.

“We’re going to approach this, number one, acknowledging our mistake,” Calhoun said in a statement to employees. “We’re going to approach it with 100% and complete transparency every step of the way.”

I think there are two lessons here for every leader. The first is that this is definitely the right thing to say. On the other hand, Calhoun doesn’t have a choice. 

We’ve seen plenty of CEOs face criticism and attempt to deflect it or rationalize whatever it is they did to end up in the hot seat. We’ve seen that playbook many times, and it never goes particularly well. Your only move here should be to admit that you’ve made a mistake and commit to fixing whatever went wrong.

The problem for Calhoun is that it’s not enough to say that the company will “ensure every next airplane that moves into the sky is in fact safe.” He can say that to employees, but, right now it’s not clear that people believe that to be true. That’s reasonable, considering that if you’re an airline CEO, the last thing you want to do is spend billions of dollars on aircraft from a company you don’t trust. 

Trust, after all, is your most valuable asset. That’s the second lesson.

It’s not your intellectual property or engineering prowess. It isn’t your company culture or financial position. Sure, those things are important. They matter in terms of designing airplanes and building a company, but without trust, no one is going to give you money for whatever it is you build. All of those things matter only to the extent that they give you credibility and earn you trust.