• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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How Boeing Should Have Responded to the 737 Max Safety Crisis

How Boeing Should Have Responded to the 737 Max Safety Crisis

As all of us watch, shocked by the human consequences of two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jets in just five months, it’s hard not to wonder: Why did Boeing resist efforts to ground the jets?

The second jet, an Ethiopian Airlines flight, crashed on March 10. Politicians weighed in, and Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing, called President Donald Trump to reassure him about the safety of the company’s planes following Trump’s tweet complaining that airplanes were becoming too complex. By March 13, more than 40 countries had grounded the jets.

We could have avoided much of the turmoil had the company’s leaders done a better job of framing the situation. Frames shape the way we think about problems (and also opportunities). They tell us what category of problem we are dealing with, and because they identify a type of problem, they also contain the seeds of action and response.

Boeing CEO Muilenburg is reported to have insisted that the aircraft are safe. We heard about the training that is designed to help pilots identify and override the automatic controls on the plane if those controls are mistakenly guiding its nose down. So Muilenburg’s frame appears to be: “This is a technical problem that we can correct with pilot training.”

It’s a common enough frame for a product malfunction, but we still don’t know if the similarity in the two crashes is a coincidence or the sign of a systematic problem that needs to be corrected. Moreover, the frame seems to miss the point that hundreds of human lives have been lost, that more may be at risk and that regulators in many countries have grounded the planes.

So what could Boeing have said? A better frame would be: “This is a technical problem that we do not fully understand. In light of that uncertainty, we recommend grounding the 737 Max 8s and 9s until we can be sure we know what is causing these crashes, and can satisfy ourselves and all the global regulators that the plane is safe to fly again.”

Framing is a tool to be used consciously. Done well, it can make an enormous difference in inspiring responsible action and trust in the judgment and values of the company, even if the problem turns out to not be totally solved, and needs to be addressed again.