Boeing should consider its new CEO a 'bridge' leader

By Beth Kowitt / Bloomberg Opinion

The Boeing Co. has gotten a lot very wrong over the last few years, at times with devastating consequences. But last week, when the board announced its new pick for CEO, the market seemed to think it finally had gotten something right. Investors sent the stock up 2 percent on the news that Kelly Ortberg would become the company’s next chief.

Ortberg seems to check all the boxes: a company outsider untainted by past Boeing scandals, industry experience, a background in mechanical engineering, and, perhaps most important to the board and Wall Street, he’s been a CEO before. He ran Rockwell Collins Inc., a manufacturer of cockpit controls, beginning in 2013 and sold it to what was then United Technologies Inc. in 2018.

The Boeing board’s logic is that Ortberg’s past CEO experience means he can jump into the job without the steep learning curve that first-time big bosses often experience. That’s especially important right now for Boeing, which faces a list of challenges that would be daunting for even the most seasoned executive: cratering sales and profits, a much-needed cultural overhaul, upcoming union negotiations, completing and integrating its acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems and managing an incensed public and Washington.

This particular kind of turmoil is unique to Boeing, but the general chaos of the global economy right now is not. The CEO job has never been more complicated, as companies grapple with everything from geopolitical tensions to an uncertain economic environment to the war on “woke capitalism.” Hiring someone with a realistic grasp of what the job entails seems like it would be a real advantage, and boards are embracing that line of thinking. Last year, 22 percent of incoming S&P 500 CEOs had previously held the job at another public company, up from just 4 percent in 1997, according to executive search firm Spencer Stuart. As it has noted, “For some, prior experience becomes a seemingly logical proxy for future performance.”

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