Value Narrative
This story demonstrates the power of Boeing processes
and a great example of employee loyalty and trust in company values. The value
in question here is ethics. This is something that is taken very seriously at
Boeing and nobody is immune to it. If the employee decides to take action and
feels that ethics is being violated, then it can be against anybody, even the
CEO. Boeing has a separate ethics department where all kinds of ethics
questions are promptly answered so that the employee can take the right
decision. Ethics committee is headed by senior Boeing people who are very conversant
with the Boeing processes and procedures. They also have special powers to take
action against anybody and everybody. No messing around with ethics and all
employees are encouraged to contact ethics in case of any doubt and before they
take any decision that might go against company values. This can save them from
a lot of trouble in future.
The protagonist in the story is an employee who
thought it was unethical to release the incorrect drawing and fix it later just
because of pressure of the schedule. A manager, his boss, asked him to go ahead
and sign the drawing and get it released. When he asked that the drawing needs
to be fixed, the manager replied that the drawing can be fixed later but at
that moment adherence to schedule was the only important thing. The employee
decided that it was an ethics issue but was also afraid not to make the manager
angry as the manager had the power to stop his raise and promotion. Still he
decided to do the right thing and contacted ethics through the ethics hotline. Hearing
the whole story the ethics department decided that the manager was wrong and
promptly took action against the manager. The unnecessary details about the
drawing and the release process have been omitted. The manager was demoted
right away.
The story is a characteristic of Boeing's strong
processes and employee belief in company vales. Boeing trains employees to do the
right thing and not compromise any company values. The story was broadcast all
over the Boeing intranet with concealed employee names as an example of courage
and loyalty. There are more stories that we read at the Boeing internal website
where some employees have violated company values. These stories encourage
employees to do the right thing as well as set an example of violation and the
consequences.
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