W. James McNerney, Jr., Chairman, The Boeing Company

our special guest today is the chairman of the Boeing Company he has an extraordinary background in philanthropy and in business and let me just describe it briefly he served for 10 years as the CEO and chairman of Boeing he just stepped down on July 1 after 10 years as the chairman and CEO during that ten-year period of time the market capitalization of the Boeing Company the earnings of the Boeing Company and the revenue of the Boeing Company just about doubled today Boeing is a company with about a hundred billion dollar market capitalization at 91 billion dollars of revenue and about six billion dollars in net income has about a hundred and sixty-five thousand employees and is our nation's largest exporter Jim came to that position in 2005 from a position where he previously served as the CEO of 3m he was a CEO 3m from 2001 to 2005 he came to the position as the CEO of 3m from his position at GE he was a GE for 19 years 1982 to 1991 and served in a number of positions at GE as the head of their electrical distribution business as the head of their asia-pacific business as a header GE lighting business and as the head of their aircraft engines business in that capacity he had a reputation as a very very strong business leader and he showed that obviously at 3m and at and at Boeing prior to joining the GE he was a employee of the McKinsey and he worked before that at Procter & Gamble he is a graduate of the Harvard Business School graduate of Yale and at Yale he was a player on the baseball team as well as in the hockey team he's a graduate of New Trier High in Chicago he has a very extensive career outside of his corporate CEO positions in the corporate where out he has served as the chairman of the Business Roundtable as the chairman of the Business Council and as the chairman of the President's Export Council in the he's also a member of the IBM board and the Procter & Gamble board in a non profit air also has an extensive career he is the chairman of a number of organizations on the outside but let me just member mention a few that he's involved with he's a member of CSIS sent the Center for Strategic and International Studies he is a member of the Northwestern University Board and a member of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital System Health System he's also I'm glad glad to say a member of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center which the president just recently appointed them to in all of his capacities as a philanthropist as a business person and as a leader of large companies who's done an extraordinary job widely recognized by his peers as one of the leading CEOs in the United States and it received that title as leading CEO or CEO of the year from many different publications in fact this year CEO magazine named him as CEO of the year so we're very pleased to have Jim McNerney here as our special guest today Jim David thank you for that very gracious introduction and before you go anywhere I want to have a little fun with David David I'd like to make a small or maybe not so small announcement we'll we'll see how it goes but you all know David and his role as a pillar in our nation's capital in many respects as a business leader the largest and most successful private equity capital company in the world philanthropy in the leadership and many not-for-profit and other kinds of organizations but look we we at Boeing have supported the Kennedy Center who and we've been very proud to do it David and your leadership there has made a huge difference and I think beyond bringing Deborah Rutter here as the new executive director the huge expansion plans you now have underway what I'd like to do is just hijack this moment and perhaps soften up the interview a little bit in so doing we'd like to announce a 20 million dollar gift from the Boeing Company to the Kennedy Center Deborah would you please come up here and join us thank you very much thank you thank you Oh Jim obviously I want to thank you for this extraordinary example of patriotic philanthropy giving to the Kennedy Center we have a building program as people know we're going to make some additions to the Kennedy Center and this will be a great help in doing that and I want to thank you for agreeing to serve as a member of the board and for your work in helping to underwrite our most well known program which is our Kennedy Center Honors Program so I had some very tough questions but I think here David I've got some others okay I for all the people whose names I mentioned who are going to be future guests I hope this is a precedent but thank you okay so I don't think I can top that thank you very much for that I wish all of our board members were quite as generous but thank you so let me ask you one question I've always wondered about bowing at the beginning when you have all these planes are 707 737 747 why is everything have a 7 in it where's that come from well you know you have to understand the mind of an engineer okay and the mind of an engineer puts everything in categories and they stay in categories forever and back in the late 40s and early 50s when Boeing was diversifying into all kinds of different aerospace technology there was threes and fours for prop airplanes five and six category was for rockets and and satellites and seven which is lucky in some cultures and unlucky in others which is why we used three digits seven something seven to sort of mitigate capture but mitigate the the jinx factor and so all jet airplanes were sevens now at you know we're at the 787 now so we you know we're you know it's going to be a challenge but those same engineers are going to come up with some of the category I guarantee you okay well let me talk about something that I know you're interested in because you spent a lot of time in Washington I've seen you in Washington and in recent months the export-import bank hmm Boeing is I think said to be the biggest beneficiary of the export-import bank first why do you think we should reauthorize the export-import bank well this this is a very important subject for this this country to get right I mean just as background and I hope I don't bore everybody to tears here but the it is a very critical issue you know the export-import bank really is part of a treaty that's 80 years old between us and the developed world I think there's about 60 other countries and what we all agree to do is we agree that sort of have a level playing field for sovereign credit so countries that don't have the same values that we do who might otherwise subsidize and create an unlevel playing field have agreed on how we're gonna price credit and how we're going to pray and the philosophy there is its backstop credit for the developing world to help create jobs and support jobs and in the developed world and it has been a wildly successful program because what it does is it isolates the quality of the technology being sold and gets off the table all the shenanigans that people could do financially and and this has supported tremendous growth in the developing world as well as growth and all matter of fact Boeing depends on us and you know we've been a country a company I should say over the last decade while our competitor has set up shop in lots of different countries in the world we have kept our jobs and our technology here in part because of this arrangement here but right now as as the politicians have fun with this thing and the facts are that two-thirds of both the house of the Senate if the vote was today veto-proof vote in favor but all the politics associated with the extremes of both parties particularly the Republican Party is preventing this thing from getting to a vote which and so I'm beginning to question the strategy of making and designing everything in the United States I mean if there's not an export-import bank where we're actively considering now moving key pieces of our company to other countries and we never would have considered that before this craziness on Exim so when you talk to members of Congress and explain the benefits of it to our country what do they say well they the conversations are always cordial they always say they understand but what what this is David is a triumph of ideology over any any description of pragmatism I mean this this Bank has been authorized by every Republican and every Democrat for the better part of the last century and why because it levels the playing field on a global basis it supports American jobs and technology and people won one part of the political spectrum calls it you know cronyism for big companies only every time a triple 7 lands in Beijing it takes seven or eight thousand small businesses to Beijing that are part of this big system with four million parts that we put together that otherwise would not be able to export well some some of the opponents say that Boeing is the biggest beneficiary when you look at who gets the most benefits you're number one so and they say Boeing is a big wealthy company so is that in fact true that you are the biggest beneficiary I think by dollars yes but I think in terms of deals there are more deals for small and medium sized companies than big companies and not even making the point that 70% of the value-added of our airplanes are made up by small companies who are making things for us giving them to us and trusting us to integrate them and then exporting none of those would have a chance to export without us so if the legislation doesn't pay us yeah you are thinking of moving jobs although we before you we love making and designing airplanes in the United States it's the best work force has the best educational system to underpin a very highly qualified workforce as you could imagine it has compared to many countries a very business-friendly environment doesn't always appear that way but we are now forced to think about doing it differently and and I'm you know I'm a little bit wrong sort of wrong-footed by this whole thing because my strategy has been a building us engaged the American worker export that's why we're the the country's largest exporter and I'm beginning to think maybe I made the wrong decision so okay what do you think will happen with this legislation I think this I am more worried about it today than I ever have been David to be frank with you I have always had a view that sanity would prevail on an issue of pragmatism it's a sign of the dysfunctionality in this town now where a literally a veto-proof majority in both sides of the hill clear I mean the Senate has voted twice on procedural votes that are essentially votes on axiom 63 to 2767 to 22 we think there's at least 300 votes in the house I mean it's silliness and and right now the leadership of both parties are walking around on eggshells and it's it's harming the country and not passing this legislation not reauthorizing the import-export Bank which should be a free throw this should not be this is not a 3-point shot this is a layup in terms of what's right for the country and what's right for the well-being of the work force keeping technology on shore retaining our leadership in aerospace it's and I'm speaking and I can speak I think I could speak for my friend Jeff ml to GE he's he's having the same business reviews that I'm having right now which is okay prior plan build everything in the US and export what's the new plan guys we got to think about this I mean maybe there's export credits somewhere else okay let me ask you about Boeing specifically is mr. Boeing is there a mr. Boeing and yeah this his family still having involvement or well you know it's interesting his his son just recently died and I spent some time with him he was 93 we had a picture of Boeing's first airplane next to a Dreamliner with the two of us standing there we both signed it but but Bill Boeing his father founded the company in 1960 we're on our hundredth year right now and it it's and and and the first engineer was a Chinese citizen as it which is very interesting I had the I had the young Jiang see the the John Kerry of China at my office the other day and we were reminiscing about hands across the sea and but it's the he was based in Seattle is that why it was envisioned yes yeah he was the chief engineer yeah Bill Boeing was based on CIA who was a timber man went to Yale came back went to an airshow and there were very many air shows back in 1915 came back all excited and had all this money because it came from a successful family he decided let's get into this this exciting thing and so we started delivering the mail for the US government and and off to the races so let's go back to how you came to Boeing you were famously at GE and Jack Welsh who was then the CEO set up a system that maybe others haven't emulated which is to have three people publicly identified as a potential next CEO you have picked a new CEO yourself recently did you consider a method like that and what do you think of that method of picking a CEO well every situation is different and you have to adapt I think in the case of the way Jack did it highly decentralized company none of us were ever in the same room because we're running running out all the places you named I ran were in Hartford Connecticut Cincinnati Ohio you know Hong Kong and so we and so he he had a very Darwinian approach to this thing which is hey guys let's see how good you are go for it you know and that's one way and with a management rich company like GE you can do that and he said to the other you said to you guys aren't going to be here so you know and so we all bumped into each other interviewing for jobs because it was all uncertain so it was hysterical and so I took a very different approach and I think and as you pointed out I've just appointed that the board is just the point of the new CEO I remain chairman for a period of time the we had a different approach we had an early identification and then a work with me side by side with me for a year and a half not under me at more of a deputy because I I think the the difficult thing about being the chairman of a big net CEO of a big company like Boeing is not all this stuff you read about in the business school you know not picking people and allocating resources and and the like segmenting markets it's sort of the emotional dimension of working the gray area working outside inside sort of trying to figure out this town which clearly I haven't yet based on my earlier discussion and so you know it's and so he lived with me for a year and a half and quite frankly that worked for us very different kind of place so when Jeff Immelt was selected you all the headhunters called you up yeah and you had a lot of different jobs I know you took the 3m job how come you took that job as opposed to some of the others I know you working I think I think I I like the Midwest I'm a Midwestern or but I think what I like most about three am was highly diversified even more diversified than GE even though it was a smaller company thirty five different divisions each one with a different set of customers and technologies and factories and global position and so I like the intellectual challenge of managing all these things and of course you had to find centralized centralizing principles and decentralizing so when you were announced as the new CEO the stock went up 16% just on the announcement so it's hard to live up to that yeah I mean you you always get more credit than you deserve and that's a perfect case and you always get more blame than you deserve so just accept that so you joined the Boeing Board while you were at 3m and then one day Boeing needed a CEO and you're running at 3m and so was it awkward to leave 3m and go to Boeing yeah I mean I think listen I think I don't think it's a secret of Boeing approached me a couple of times I felt that I had an obligation at 3m for at least five years and so I got to the end of that obligation and at the same time it was very clear that if I didn't say yes this time to Boeing that it wasn't going to come around again and so it was balancing an obligation to a company and 70,000 people that I committed to and and getting that company going so when you joined Boeing everything was working smoothly there were no problems right now it was very interesting no we'd hit a rough spot both on a business basis and and we had some ethical challenges that we were dealing with and so we really had to create a new culture and and I would say that was the biggest challenge and the most fun at bone which is and we it was complicated by the fact that was Boeing McDonnell Douglas Rockwell Hughes and we were trying to put this all together and we made a lot of acquisitions so the choice was one of those cultures or a new one I chose new one so let's all define a new place and all the things attended so the decision to move from Seattle was that before you came or just before before so they did before why did they decide the Seattle wasn't good enough for Boeing at that well it's kind of like why is Canberra the capital of Australia because it can't be Sydney or Melbourne okay so it was kind of the same deal couldn't be saint-louis McDonnell Douglas couldn't be Southern California who's in Rockwell couldn't be Seattle because we weren't being ecumenical so we had to find neutrals and what were the other cities that I think they I think about Denver and I think DC was was thought about and Atlanta yeah and you're right you have memory than I do and that's because we had two major that was sort of customer driven so you wanted a place that began with the D Dallas Denver DC but you picked chosen the C okay CKO or D so so speaking of DS somebody named playing the Dreamliner yeah so I don't who came up with that name was that somebody in your organization yes it was it was the team out in Seattle it's actually it was a great it was a great name we had never never done that we'd never sort of branded with a name one of our airplanes it was a great move before we get to that all right the 707 that was the first in the seven series in that one there's no more 707s that are being made but you haven't they're still they're still flying but no don't stop making them a couple decades okay then the 727 yes and they are not being made anymore nope all right 737 she still make till being made the most most prolific airplane of all time and then the 747 and as I understand it when that plane was so big that they was designed by engineers when it went down the runway for the first time for test flights they weren't sure it was actually going to take off well let's put it this way the when they lined up all the test pilots and asked for volunteers they'd already they'd figured out the ten guys that were going to step back and the two that weren't gonna know about it so but that plane became the most profitable plane up until the Dreamliner of all time because you met you sold I don't know still about a fifteen hundred fifty nine thousand five hundred seven 476 and how many people buy them for just their own personal use a lot of those David we can help you turn right ya know we got I'd say I'd say there's probably 37 four sevens that are what we call VIP concentrated in the Middle East and there's probably as many Dreamliners really yeah so and then the 757 and the 767 events and then we backfilled when we bought McDonnell Douglas there was something called the md-95 that we rebranded the seven one second we felt horrible we'd left the seven-one-seven category behind that's so when people go on a plane it's a Boeing plane and they say the seats might not be wide enough that's not your fault because you don't design the seats necessarily that the airline that decides how big people's rear ends yes yes yeah and it's a combination of our customers deciding how big their rear ends are and the air and the airlines deciding how many people that career ends have gotten wider over the slightly so this welcome back to 787 so what was so novel about it that it required you to do all the kinds of things you did that you had never done before - well I think the story of the seven the 787 the Dreamliner is you know over the last two decades I'd say you could sell a new airplane with a five six or seven percent improvement in economics it would pay out over a long period of time but that was enough the Dreamliner made a huge jump to 20 percent fuel efficiency and 30 percent maintenance cost which are the two biggest costs that an airline has so it was a huge jump and it was driven by a composite fuselage which is stronger but much lighter you can carry a bigger pressure differential between the inside of the cabin and the outside so you're flying at an effective lower altitude the dings that you get on aluminum you don't get on composite that relates to the maintenance cost it's an all-electric kind of control surface you're using electricity to move the control surfaces around so you don't have heavy pneumatics and the redundancy is cheaper and so there's but the basic driver is is composite their choice of composite but it's longer to build than you thought yes and so you were under some pressure I guess to get it built and yeah it was we spent twice as much as we'd originally thought we would fortunately it was it was a wildly successful airplane from a marketing standpoint if this had not been a popular airplane we sold three times as many as we budgeted even though the budget went up two times that's the story so you're back order now is you have eight years of back orders for the eight years of back orders which is too long but we got 300 Dreamliner's flying they've flown about 60 million miles total now everything's going great but there was a problem I think for a while you had some electrical I don't remember anything I have some issues I don't like the remember yeah we had a no it's true we had we had a battery issue lithium-ion battery manufacturing control and a bit of a design issue that we had to get under control and it was you know one of the misperceptions was because there was smoke venting that it was a safety of flight issue which it never was a safety of flight issue but it's but it's it was something that the flying public public was very concerned about that the FAA was very concerned about we had to get it fixed and it was a shame it was a shame on us but the good news is we got yeah okay so today you were not just in the commercial aircraft business you make defense aircraft as well and what is your principal activity now in the defense area well I would say it's pretty evenly distributed but fighters transports helicopters for exactly chinook and the Apache helicopters satellites I think we're selling more satellites than anybody right now launch vehicles to get the satellites into orbit working on the rocket that will go to Mars and beyond now we'll be testing in in 2018 so we're working on up and then a lot of what you would call cybersecurity autonomous vehicle and then black programs that support our government so you didn't mention your competitor you mentioned you had a competitor but I don't want to mention their name but it's basically two companies that produce commercial aircraft why do you think there's only two in the world will or like to be a Chinese one at some point well yes I mean I think there are two in the world I think relates to the scale of the infrastructure needed to design and build these things and then support them when you know when we sell someone an airplane 40 percent or 20 percent of the lifecycle cost is the initial 150 million they spend for the airplane the remaining 80 percent is support we provide over the next 20 so there's a big scale and but I think Airbus and I and us will face competition and I if I had to bet it would be China they're a little farther ahead on building a 7:37 a320 competitor the first one may not be perfect but the second one will be there and so I think it'll be at least a three man game in the 1960s a plane was developed called the Concorde and supersonic and people thought it was nice thing I made about 13 of them or so but now we have no supersonic planes why is Boeing not developing one maybe you are well we are but it's mostly for defense in space but for for commercial application which is your question it the business equation just never worked I mean the we could you know the the Concorde carried what was it they 105 passengers or something it costs 3x a first-class ticket and yeah you got there in three and a half hours as opposed to seven that equation just didn't work I mean not enough people were willing to spend that amount of money to save that amount of time and so it's weekend just an interesting aside if I could jump in just before 9/11 happened we were on our way to develop a sonic cruiser as sort of the next airplane and think about it as taking the same technologies I mentioned on the Dreamliner but deploying them toward performance speed and less concerned about fuel less concerned about range less concerned about economics for the airline just a racecar okay 9/11 happened we had to completely change our view because people didn't want to go through security lines anymore and the security lines were getting tough the so you needed a long-range aircraft that flew slower but flew over security lines point to point not point to hub to another hub two point fuel tripled in price so fuel efficiency was more important so using the lightness of the airplane not for performance but for fuel efficiency so we in the course of 18 months completely we are headed toward a supersonic airplane and we changed overnight in 2002 and in 2004 we introduced a completely different everybody so we're always asking that question I guess is the point after 9/11 you had to change I guess the doors for the cockpit so now you have like steel-plated doors or something it's pretty difficult to get in there if you're not a pilot yes and and and it of course which became the source of the issue in Germany right so I mean it's you know it's hard for human beings to plan every eggs engine see but I think I think there's some workarounds there that requiring two people in the cockpit at all times I think there's a combination of the hardened door and two people will get us to where we need to be so on the planes today they're supposed to be fairly automatic and obviously trained pilots but if you're not trained like me I'm not trained if I went into the cockpit and tried to fly something what would happen well yeah it was nice knowing you Damon no I think I think if there was if there was a pilot sitting next to you even without with his his or her hands off the control you could fly the airplane it would be more difficult if you were up there all by yourself listening to someone telling you how to fly the airplane but the flying a plane now is so it's such an integrated system that relatively simple movements of hands and feet and even your eyes now with heads-up displays it can fly the airplane take a take off and particularly landing is still tough though so for Boeing going forward what do you see is the biggest challenge for the company well I think the immediate challenge over the next decade because we have this huge backlog is successfully and profitably building it out and that centers on the 787 I think the other challenge is whatever the redefinition of the defence and space business will be because we for whatever reason the US government is not in as well chronicled and well described but it has traded off other things right against defense spending less sequestration I don't think the threat environment has changed at all out there so I think at some point that is going to true up and what that all looks like and so we're trying to keep balance getting our costs down in defence in space with still investing enough to be ready for the next turn so that's that's a big challenge to commercial aircraft Arizona but you don't really have corporate you have boeing business jet but you don't have a like a Gulfstream kind of think the reason you chose not to get in that business is I think competitive dynamics I mean our two choices were business jets and regional jets regional jets has have there's a number of government entities that subsidize people that we just don't want to be in that game the business jet it's a pretty competitive world right now over capacity and so well and we have very attractive core markets what we're in right now grows at five and a half percent a year for the next thirty years why would I want and I'm the number one guy I think I want everybody in my team focused on winning they're you're you're one of the other areas you haven't been in I guess is there's a your competitor has an a380 which has yeah I don't know 600 people yes I think you haven't built a competitor that and the reason is well we I think we read the market differently I think I think our competitor read a little more of a hub-and-spoke world where the a380 would go from hub to hub and other planes would go would complete the journey we had a view that more frequency avoiding hubs point-to-point st. Louis the guan's o as opposed to st. Louis to San Francisco to Tokyo to Guangzhou we had a view that and that that was the creation of the Dreamliner so it was a different read of the market so you have a lot of test pilots I presume and what do they tell you about the best way to avoid jet lag the I haven't asked the test pilots because they they actually have a pretty good life you know they they can you know it's the crazy people like you and me right and and the only thing I've learned is just ignore it so you've run a lot of companies what have you learned as a CEO or president of companies what do you do differently today to be a leader of people and how do you lead 165,000 people yeah look I think someone asked me this question the other day and I think when I was younger running divisions at GE you know I thought intellect decision-making it was clear to me so everyone else would get it I today I realized that's about 20% of leading an organization that it's more about what culture you have and how it's defined and how it's clarified that really guide people to what they do in the dark and alignment how people see their role in an enterprise I mean we build these big things and and the missions are exciting and the technology is exciting but there's always a challenge when you have a program with 20,000 people working on it you want every Jack and Cathy and Susan to feel really important and so how that that kind of alignment is communicated and the comp programs that align people and so it's more about alignment and culture I'm much more that way now and any old guy tends to end up there when you say oh I'm actually you are 11 days 11 days younger younger than me and so why as what I regard as a teenage years did you decide to retire well a relatively young person you could have gone on to like Warren Buffett another 20 years yeah why did you decide to retire first two root two reasons one look it's a we have a very long cycle business decisions that people make today will have long tail risk for another 10 or 15 years so I think it's very important that the person that's running the place have a long view of major decisions the person replaced me Dennis Muhlenberg just turned 51 all right so it's him I think he will make slightly different decisions knowing he'll be or he'll be around to catch his okay so there's that that philosophy the other the other is that I've been doing this for 16 years and I think there's other things I'd like to do don't ask me exactly what those are because I don't know I'm one of them be going into government that the president said I'd like you to be a cabinet officer or I have served as the president of the Export Council and some other things and I am very gratified with that experience that's enough okay so you probably are not a candidate I haven't no one's called me okay well I'm sure they might give me your number I'm sure they will call so let me ask you you grow up grew up in Chicago and he went to New Trier High School and I guess Sharon Rockefeller went to New Trier here and so you were a great athlete I guess in high school recruited to play sports in college well I wouldn't say a great athlete I was a good enough athlete to then go play in college it's when you played baseball on the same team as george w bush yes did you think he was a better baseball player or do you think he was more likely be prezi nighted States well he's he's so it was a hard call to make back then but he obviously had potential for both then but the but he obviously went further in politics than he did in baseball I mean if I if I can be pitching for the Yankees back then I'd be pitching for the Yankees but it's it was fun he was a fun guy to have on the team now you still play ice hockey yeah and is that that safest board yeah well the risk management is important and what I've learned is that I play in a couple old men leagues young men yeah young men is to play with guys that played a lot when they were younger so they don't have anything to prove anymore that's the key you know so now you have five children and they're doing various things but what what advice do you give them about whether to go into business or go into nonprofit or government or well the advice I give them particularly they're starting out in their career is to find someplace that has bright young people on the run okay where people are hustling where there's high standards there's bright people I don't care where it is a couple of them come to this town to get into the staffers and working in the administration raesha and others found business but I think that first ten years to find rat races with good people is the important thing then the standards are set for life then you go off and pursue your interests that's sort of my view so you've seen a lot of great business leaders in your career or their couple that you would say this is a person I really see as a role model as a business leader or as as an investor or as a as a motivator of people I think Welch is the best I mean you know he's even though he didn't pick you he didn't pick me he's he wasn't I said he was the best I didn't say it's perfect the no Jack he's Jack will be turning I believe 80 this November he was an extraordinary guy he truly was I mean he was a people guy who would grab your heart and grab your mind and yet he was tough and things got done and you wanted to be you wanted to be around him and I've never seen anyone quite like that so let me go back to the initial thing you talked about which is the export-import bank yeah are you going to see members while you're in town or you think it's not productive at this point well no no no I I will see members while I'm in town I'd been talking to them on the phone routinely for the last 24 hours I think look the state of play is that the that a overwhelmingly approved amendment I think 67 to 26 roughly on to the highway bill in the Senate sent over to the house I don't think the house is going to act on it which was our hope we thought we had the mechanisms in place for that to happen and evidently we don't right now and so this if nothing happens over the next week we're still going to push we're gonna then we're going to be dealing with it in September and October during that period of time I'm gonna make very clear to anyone who wants to listen whether it's a member or whether it's a friend like you exactly what it means for my company and other companies I mean if you had Jeff Immelt up here he'd tell you exactly the same thing I'm and there are consequences to this decision that that that I think people just playing politics they don't they're not connected to the real world anymore all the money's on the extremes and politics and all the debate is in many case more cases than I'd like to admit is focused more on the money than it is on what's good for the country is you know when when the Constitution was framed and you're the only guy I know is probably got a copy of it the all the states were together and about 67% of the states agreed on the Constitution another third didn't so a pragmatic decision was made let's have a constitution that kind of thinking doesn't happen anymore you know the way our country was founded led to pragmatic decision making and presumably and and the way was stitched together by Madison and and and Alexander Hamilton tended to take tend to guard individual freedoms and perspectives and yet bring them together to move the country forward we don't have that anymore and it's very very frustrating so as you look back on your very distinguished career what would you say has given you the greatest pleasure I think I think the people I think the people involved with whatever I've been doing I tend to be a people person and so my kicks in leading organizations is having the team around me trying to figure it out together and and so it's the dinners afterwards that are probably the most flood of my life so on behalf of the Economic Club of Washington want to thank you and on behalf of the Kennedy Center I particularly want to thank you and I hope you have set a precedent for future speakers without anything but thank you very much for everything you do

Channel: The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.

Views: 22,296

Keywords: W. James McNerney, The Boeing Company, David M. Rubenstein, 2014 - 2015 Speaker Series

Id: Oy_vA37yALM

Length: 41min 14sec (2474 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2015