Candid talk from Boeing’s leader

The second of a two-part series on Boeing president and CEO Harry Stonecipher.

By Dave Carpenter

Associated Press

CHICAGO – Called back from retirement after just 18 months, Harry Stonecipher returned to a Boeing Co. facing ethics problems, a worst-ever aviation-industry downturn and a decision whether to go ahead with the new 7E7 airplane.

Characteristically, the hard-nosed Stonecipher has wasted no time making decisions involving all of them.

The company’s president and CEO shared his views in a recent interview. Here are excerpts:

Question: Boeing’s stock price is up about 30 percent and its business outlook is improved in the seven-plus months since you took over. What do you attribute that to?

Answer: Clear expectations and being willing to tackle any problem that our people identify. We’ve also had a (continuing) turnaround in the commercial airplane business, in terms of lower operating costs. (Commercial airplanes chief) Alan Mulally and his gang have done an outstanding job. … And the IDS (Integrated Defense Systems, Boeing’s military and space unit) people, who booked $51 billion in orders last year, continue to expand the vision and expand the participation in areas where we haven’t been before.

Question: What are the major differences between your leadership and Phil Condit’s approach?

Answer: I think Phil was more deliberate, more patient, more thoughtful. He’s one of the smartest people that I’ve ever known, and tends to be very deliberate – a consensus-builder, I would say. I tend to be pushier, more decisive.

I touch a lot of (Boeing managers) and I constantly tell them that we have 155,000 people that are waiting on us to make up our mind where we’re going and what we’re going to do. So don’t wait on all the lights to turn green – they rarely all turn green. Get the data that you think you need to make a good decision because the only reason you are a leader and a manager … is you are paid for your judgment. So use it.

Question: What’s your latest best estimate of when the Pentagon will decide on the tanker deal? (A $23 billion contract for the Air Force to purchase or lease 100 Boeing 767s for use as refueling tankers is stalled amid Pentagon investigations into its merits and the circumstances under which it was obtained.)

Answer: I think next spring.

Question: Are you still confident you’ll get it?

Answer: Yes. Through all of this thing – the stress and the press and everything else – the Air Force have not changed their mind one iota. … As I tell our people who are worried about it, (Defense) Secretary Rumsfeld or (Air Force) Secretary Roche could have canceled this any time they wanted to. But they didn’t. And the reason they didn’t: Everybody knows the need is there. It’s a big need.

Question: Boeing’s reputation has obviously suffered in the past year or so because of ethics violations. Would you characterize those events as making up the darkest chapter in the company’s history?

Answer: No, the darkest chapter was clearly 1969 when they almost ceased to exist. That’s when the big sign went up, ‘Would the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights.’ It was grim days. … When you talk about dark days of a corporation, it’s financial viability, it’s the ability to survive, it’s the ability to be in control of what’s going on.

Question: What went wrong? What could have been done better?

Answer: I think the thing that could have been done better certainly was the (company’s) investigation into having Lockheed Martin’s documents. We should have gotten to the bottom of that faster. (The Air Force indefinitely banned Boeing from future satellite launches last year to punish it for stealing documents from Lockheed Martin during a 1998 competition for a rocket launch contract) … It absolutely broke my heart when I got that call about Mike Sears and Darleen Druyun. (Boeing fired chief financial officer Sears and Druyun for negotiating to bring Druyun to Boeing even while she was overseeing the tanker deal negotiations for the Pentagon.) Two people thought they could skirt the rules. … The only thing you can do is have a process. We’ve had occasions of people who have those kinds of lapses. There’s just not a place for them at Boeing.

Question: Is there anything at this point that would keep the 7E7 from being built?

Answer: Nothing whatsoever. Everybody’s euphoric about some of the technology that’s been developed. … It took a while, but the response has been such that says we picked the right size, we picked the right technology.

Question: How are your relations with the unions now?

Answer: Very good. A lot better than before. … People talk about me being anti-union and so forth, (but) I used to have breakfast every morning with a guy who had one of those little contracts in his pocket, whether it was United Mine Workers or United Auto Workers. My father was a member of the unions. I loved him very much. I’m not anti-anything. I tell people sometimes, the only thing I’m anti- is stupidity and dishonesty.