Boeing’s first woman CEO would need to do more than break the glass ceiling

In choosing Stephanie Pope to become chief operating officer, Boeing has the opportunity to make a milestone for the 107-year-old company.

If Pope succeeds Dave Calhoun as chief executive officer, she’d become Boeing’s first woman CEO.

In 1972, Katherine Graham became the first woman to run a Fortune 500 company, when she took the helm of The Washington Post Co., which included the newspaper now owned by Jeff Bezos along with Newsweek magazine and other properties.

She was soon followed by Marion Sandler of Golden West Financial (co-CEO with her husband Herbert) and, in 1986, by Linda Wachner of Warnaco Group. Jill Barad entered the proverbial corner office of Mattel in 1997.

Fewer than 6% of the Fortune Global 500 companies are run by women. Karen Lynch of CVS Health and Mary Barra of General Motors are the top women chief executives of companies headquartered in the United States.

According to a study by the management consulting group Korn Ferry, women CEOs “are slightly older than their male counterparts, in part because it takes them 30% longer than men to reach the corner office. But those who reached the top were often committed to making profound changes at their organizations.”

Another study from Stanford researchers asserted that “bringing female leaders into a company may lead to more women being hired, setting off a ‘virtuous cycle’ that can have a positive impact on the entire organization’s culture.”

More important than shattering Boeing’s glass ceiling are Pope’s background, record and issues she would face should she take over the company (which is not a certainty — chief financial officer Brian West and commercial airplanes boss Stan Deal are also said to be in the running).

With more than 60,000 Boeing employees in Washington state as of December 2022, primarily in the Puget Sound region, our area has much riding on the outcome of the leadership transition.

As my colleague Dominic Gates reported, Pope leads the department that provides services for customers who have bought airplanes from Boeing. This includes airplane spare parts, support for a grounded aircraft, maintenance manuals, conversion of a passenger jet to a freighter, engineering support for interior upgrades and much more.

That department, Boeing Global Services, has been Boeing’s only consistently profitable unit in recent years.

Pope, 51, began her career at McDonnell Douglas in 1994 and three years later worked for Boeing thanks to the merger of the companies. She comes from a background in accounting, too.

This plays into two prejudices. First, the mordant joke that “McDonnell Douglas used Boeing’s money to buy Boeing.” Second, that the bean-counters triumphed over Boeing’s traditional culture of engineering excellence.

Sometimes prejudices have their grounding in reality. As in my prejudice against touching a hot stovetop.

Still, Pope has held several positions at Boeing, including serving as vice president of finance and controller for Boeing Commercial Airplanes and in the same position at Boeing Defense, Space and Security, with responsibility for the regulatory compliance and ensuring the accuracy, transparency and timeliness of its financial disclosures and other senior leadership positions.

She can break the cult of chief executives spawned by the late General Electric CEO Jack Welch.

Harry Stonecipher, Boeing CEO from 2003 to 2005, was heavily influenced by “Neutron Jack,” working at GE from 1960 to 1984. He was also a McDonnell Douglas product, taking over after scandals forced the resignation of Phil Condit, who was the top executive from 1996-2003.

Jim McNerney, who led Boeing from 2005 to 2015 and presided over the much-delayed 787 Dreamliner and the troubled 737 MAX, was another Welch acolyte, coming from GE before taking the top job at Boeing.

McNerney was infamous for using Welch’s union-busting tactics, setting up a nonunion assembly at North Charleston, S.C., and saying he could retire because, “the heart will still be beating, the employees will still be cowering.” (A remark he later apologized for.)

McNerney held the titles of both chair and CEO, a conflict of interest. The chair looks out for shareholders and oversees management while the chief executive runs the company, serving at the pleasure of the board of directors.

The early Dreamliner delays in the late 2000s had myriad causes, especially complicated subassemblies of parts from many countries — a historic first and risk. No wonder corporate governance expert Nell Minow told me that “Boeing has a weak board.”

McNerney’s successor was Dennis Muilenburg. Although not a GE alumnus, he continued many of McNerney’s destructive ways, including holding both the chair and chief executive positions and laying off hundreds of engineers in 2017. He was forced out in the aftermath of two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX. He left with compensation of more than $62 million.

According to Financial Times, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was among many who criticized the payment to Muilenburg. In a tweet, she wrote: “346 people died. And yet, Dennis Muilenburg pressured regulators and put profits ahead of the safety of passengers, pilots, and flight attendants. He’ll walk away with an additional $62.2 million. This is corruption, plain and simple.”

If Pope becomes chief executive, she can learn from the past. Like Calhoun, she can resist the temptation to become chair of the board as well as CEO. She can get on the factory floors and listen to workers. She can understand that Boeing’s strength is in its engineering culture, not the bean counters. One can hope.

Boeing finally seems on the upswing, based on the most recent 737 MAX deliveries and orders for the new 777X airliner. Yet many challenges remain, such as delays of the new tanker for the Air Force and fighter jets, along with continued Dreamliner troubles.

Pope’s credo shouldn’t come from accountants but physicians: First, do no harm. That’s not enough, true. She must address the troubles listed above, and quickly.