It’s no secret Boeing faces major challenges. Each day seems to bring more negative headlines about the company’s commercial aircraft, civilian spacecraft, or its defense business. 

Since 2019, Boeing has lost $32 billion, paid a $2.5 billion settlement related to two 737Max crashes that killed 346 people, and has drawn scrutiny from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Justice Department, and Congress. The company’s stock is down about 60% from its all-time high of $424 a share five years ago.

As of this writing, the Justice Department is reportedly pushing the company to plead guilty to fraud, the FAA is limiting production of Boeing’s 737Max aircraft until quality improves, and two astronauts are stuck at the International Space Station because of issues with Boeing’s Starliner. 

It’s against this backdrop that Boeing’s board seeks to replace CEO David Calhoun, who said in March he’d step down by year-end. And the stakes could not be higher for the company and the world. 

“Boeing’s next CEO needs to make very difficult decisions that will get push back,” says Bill George, executive fellow at Harvard Business School, former CEO of Medtronic, and author of several leadership books, including True North and 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis. “It takes courage to go against the grain. You aren’t going to transform a company with 20-plus years of issues in 20 days or 20 months, but they’ll need to show signs of progress.” 

Boeing, with its commercial jets, satellites, spacecraft, rockets, and military systems, plays a truly unique role in global economy and commerce, public safety, and international security. Millions of people and packages travel on its aircraft annually, thousands of its bombs are supporting the wars in Israel and Ukraine, and every U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt has flown on Boeing-made Air Force One planes.

“This next leadership team has a lot of hearts and minds it needs to win,” said Ron Epstein, senior aerospace & defense analyst at Bank of America in a recent CNBC interview, noting that list includes multiple government agencies and regulators, airline customers, labor forces, and the overall flying public. “This is a five-to-seven-year turnaround. It’s a very complicated company with very complicated processes with a very complicated problem.”

Companies doing well generally promote their next leader from within while those seeking change typically hire from the outside. (There are a few exceptions, of course, such as Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, who’d been with the company 18 years before leading the company’s dramatic turnaround over the past decade.) Yet nearly all the people reportedly being considered for the top job at Boeing are current or former Boeing or GE executives often with finance backgrounds. In other words, the very influences most to blame for the generational breakdown in Boeing’s culture of safety and innovation. 

Among those reportedly under consideration is Pat Shanahan, a 30-year Boeing veteran, who is CEO of Boeing’s biggest supplier Spirit Aerosystems, which Boeing just announced plans to acquire for $4.7 billion. Shanahan served as deputy and acting defense secretary during the Trump Administration. Then there’s Stephanie Pope, a 30-year veteran who is Boeing’s chief operating officer and recently named CEO of Boeing Commercial Aircraft division. There’s also Greg Smith, the chairman of American Airlines and a 30-year Boeing veteran who left the company in 2021 after serving as chief financial officer for a decade. 

Some of the other names that have been bandied about for the top spot at Boeing have been Larry Culp, the CEO of General Electric, who has reportedly declined to be considered for the role; Kathy Warden, CEO of defense contractor Northrop Grumman and former GE executive; as well as the man leading this executive search, Steve Mollenkopf, Boeing’s independent board chairman and former CEO of Qualcomm. 

“This is in many ways an unprecedented situation,” says Hubert Joly, former CEO of Best Buy who led the retailer’s turnaround. Joly is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and author of The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism. “It’s been 25 years and their issues run deep. That’s an entire generation of leaders who’ve been experiencing toxicity over that period of time. It would be extraordinary if someone who survived that long inside could take this role.” 

One big question is whether the next CEO needs to have aerospace experience. Many suggest the complexity of building airplanes demands such a background. Yet the company’s last five CEOs who’ve presided over its decline all had aerospace experience and a focus on finances.  

Interestingly, the company’s best and longest-running CEO wasn’t an engineer or a business person. Bill Allen, who led the company from 1945 to 1968 and served as chairman from 1968 to 1973, was a lawyer, who initially turned down the role because he didn’t think he had the expertise needed. 

Allen navigated Boeing through the post-WWII drawdown on the military side while ushering in the commercial jet age ahead of competitors. The company developed the 707, 727, 737, and even the 747 during his tenure, as well as the B-47 and B-52 bombers and the KC-35 aerial refueling tanker for the U.S. Air Force. 

And while leadership experts Joly and George caution that the risk of failure increases the farther you stray from someone proven in the role or industry, neither had experience in their respective industries before they successfully took CEO jobs at Best Buy and Medtronic, respectively. 

In fact, most new CEOs in the S&P 1500 haven’t previously held the role, according to executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart’s 2023 CEO Transitions study released earlier this year. Their research found most came from so-called “last mile” roles, with 57% promoted from chief operating officer and 24% from divisional CEO or president posts. 

Beyond the business pool, possible candidates for Boeing CEO could include retired generals and admirals, accustomed to leading in high-pressure situations involving large numbers of people and multiple constituencies while knowing some of Boeing’s technology as a consumer. 

“It’s going to take a lot of courage to get done what needs to be done at Boeing, and you need the leader modeling this at the top with both humility and courage,” says Stephen M.R. Covey, author of leadership books The Speed of Trust and Trust & Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others. “Biggest task here is leadership. They need a great leader who knows how to build a strong engineering and manufacturing company with a culture of safety.”

Leadership experts also point out that executive changes at Boeing should extend beyond the top job to the rest of the leadership team and even Boeing’s board. “If you’ve had five successive CEOs that failed, you need to look yourself in the mirror and ask, ‘Are we choosing the wrong people here?’” says George. 

Whoever gets the job will certainly have their work cut out for them. Not only does the company need to rebuild trust with commercial and military customers, thousands of suppliers, and more than 170,000 employees, it also needs to launch a new airplane to fend off competition from Airbus and others looking to take advantage of its weakness—a bet Boeing can’t afford to get wrong given the years it takes to get from designing an aircraft to delivering finished planes to airlines for service. 

Unlike recent Boeing CEOs who have focused on making Wall Street happy, the company’s next leader needs to prioritize safety and innovation, even if that depresses the stock in the interim. 

“If you fix the company and satisfy customers with safe products, the stock price takes care of itself,” said Phil Anderson, president and CEO of Apex Engineering International, a KKR portfolio company, and a former Boeing executive. 

Anne Marie Squeo is the founder and CEO of Proof Point Communications,?a boutique marketing and communications firm,?and a Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist.?She covered Boeing and other aerospace and defense companies while at the Wall Street Journal.