This is spot on,
It's a big problem, with many aspects. I trace a lot of it to MBAs. Companies began to be run by people who did not understand the business. They knew spreadsheets. They knew financing. They could squeeze profit by putting little numbers in little boxes. For awhile, they seemed OK. Shareholders liked it, but the core business competence began to decrease.
If the people at the top really knew their business, they would have been in a position to say that the Woke stuff was bad for business. But that ship had already sailed. The people at the top are just about the perception. If you check certain boxes, you look good, and that is enough.
Sports Illustrated was famous for their annual swimsuit edition. Then they put a transgender on the cover. Didn't go well. The people in charge actually didn't see that coming.
Bud Light is another good example. If the people running the beer company understood the business of beer -- and specifically the demographics of the Bud Light consumer base -- they would not have chosen a transgender as the face of Bud Light. But they did. Because they didn't understand their business.
Once upon a time, a worker would start at the bottom and work their way up. They knew the business inside and out because they had worked the business at many levels. True, you wouldn't find many CEOs who really started in the mail room. But a lot of Managers had started at the ground level.
I think that has largely disappeared. These days, you start at the bottom, and you will stay at the bottom. There are just fewer "careers" now. Just jobs. Just dead-end jobs. And middle management was seen as wasteful and got hollowed out. There is no where for people to move up to. And the people at the top start at the top (They got that Harvard degree, and they know people). They run the beer company until they transition over to the airplane company and then they transition to the computer company. They don't understand any of it.
True dat.
I believe that you are spot on. My advisor in college was chief engineer for Allison Division of General Motors when he retired and became an engineering professor. He always emphasized that you need to really love the industry you are working in to succeed and for the company to prosper. GM was a very successful company when it was managed by people from the engineering ranks. GM’s demise started when the bean counters took over management of the company.
The “Woke stuff” is all government imposed.
Half of Boeing business is government. If you don’t act the way they want, you lose business. So it’s go along to get along. The Cult Marx gangsters rule everyone.
Doesn’t absolve Calhoun and his GE Finance gangbangers. They’re the bane of the aviation world. And it doesn’t negate your comment about the soulless MBA’s. But the big Kahuna is the weight of the rabid anti-White federal government.
You don’t get flyweight “engineer” Howard McKenzie as Chief Engineer or equally flyweight “COO” Stephanie Pope in charge of BCA for God’s sake without pandering. But that pandering is all about appeasing the Obama gangster state.
If and when that crap were to stop they might recover, but they seem to have doubled down. Most likely they were blackmailed by OBiden: fall on your sword, promote the DEI gang, and we will pull back on the penalties, maybe even add some contracts on the MIL side. So they did.
Won’t save them in the commercial market. The insurers will see to that.
Very well said.