Boeing needs to change its insular culture, CEO says in company-wide meeting

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees on Wednesday the company needs a more open culture where employees are encouraged to speak up and communicate across divisions, according to a partial transcript of a company-wide meeting seen by Reuters. "We're very insular" and "we don't communicate across boundaries," he said during the all-hands meeting webcast from St. Louis, Missouri, the headquarters of its defense and space division. Teams within the sprawling company, which also includes commercial airplanes and global services divisions, "don't work with each other as well as we could," he said. "And the power of the Boeing Company is in us all kind of rowing the boat together." Ortberg said a cultural change would boost morale for the company, which has more than 160,000 employees globally, and "the results will show in the marketplace." Boeing declined to comment on his remarks. The company lost nearly $12b in 2024, and it has struggled to stabilize production of its best-selling 737 MAX, its 787 and several fixed-price defense programs, including two replacements for the U.S. presidential jet, Air Force One. Previously, Ortberg, who came on as CEO in August, has said the company has lost its "iconic" status and that resolving its safety and quality problems requires changing Boeing's culture. Ortberg said on Wednesday his diagnosis of Boeing's issues was informed in part by a culture working group composed of employees from across the company that was looking at its values and "probably more importantly" the company's behaviors. He said he planned to put together an action plan based in part on an employee survey conducted in February that received responses from 82% of staff. Of the results, he said: "I think they're going to be brutal to leadership, quite frankly."<br/>