How One CEO Learned to Fly

Boeing chief James McNerney has now made his mark at three major companies. How? "Help others get better," he says.

By Geoffrey Colvin

November 22, 2006

It's tough to find an executive who has delivered top performance across as wide a swath of business as Boeing CEO W. James McNerney. In a 19-year career at General Electric, he ran GE's Asian operations, its light bulb business, and its jet engine business, among others—performing so well that he was a finalist to succeed CEO Jack Welch in late 2000. When he didn't get that job, 3M recruited him almost instantly to be CEO; the stock rose 34% on his watch. He left 3M to become Boeing's chief in mid-2005, and since then the stock is up 30%. McNerney, 57, spoke recently with FORTUNE's Geoffrey Colvin about the importance of his father and Jack Welch, how he helps people who work for him grow, why he admires Steve Jobs, and much else.

Most people in business and other fields develop for a while and then stop, but a small minority keep getting better for years. Are you conscious of continually trying to develop and improve?

I start with people's growth, my own growth included. I don't start with the company's strategy or products. I start with people's growth because I believe that if the people who are running and participating in a company grow, then the company's growth will in many respects take care of itself. I have this idea in my mind—all of us get 15 percent better every year. Usually that means your ability to lead, and that's all about your ability to chart the course for [your employees], to inspire them to reach for performance—the values you bring to the job, with a focus on the courage to do the right thing. I tend to think about this in terms of helping others get better. I view myself as a value-added facilitator here more than as someone who's crashing through the waves on the bridge of a frigate..

What have you observed about those who grow and those who don't? Can you tell in advance who they'll be?

No, you can't always tell in advance. It generally gets down to a very personal level—openness to change, courage to change, hard work, teamwork. What I do is figure out how to unlock that in people, because most people have that inside them. But they [often] get trapped in a bureaucratic environment where they've been beaten about the head and shoulders. That makes their job narrower and narrower, so they're no longer connected to the company's mission—they're a cog in some manager's machine.

Do you come across people who think there are some abilities they just don't have in them—think they're simply not constituted to do certain things?

That's a question I think about a lot. Where I've finally landed on that issue is this: The things you expect of people have to be so fundamental that they're independent of people's style, culture ... their function. So when we talk about the ability to chart the course for yourself and the people you work with, to expect a lot and inspire people, to have the right values, to find a way and deliver results—these are pretty fundamental things. Whether you're an individual contributor in a lab in a far-off place or leading thousands of people in a major services organization, they all apply. And they're compatible with an individual's personality and background.

Before 3M and Boeing, you worked at three of the most famous management-development organizations in the world—Procter & Gamble, McKinsey, and GE. Were you trying to put together experiences that would complement one another and make you a more complete business person?

I was conscious of it. I was fortunate to grow up at GE, where that automatically happens to people who are doing well. But if it had not happened to me, I would have raised my hand—because you do need to see more than one thing. It increases your ability to analogize when you see different situations, increases your self-confidence, your situational awareness.

What experiences from your past were most important in your development?

Being GE's Asia leader. I saw the company from the outside in. Jack [Welch] gave me no blueprint, just said, "Asia is the biggest opportunity we've got, and we're not doing much—go figure it out." Tremendously valuable. Another thing I would cite is just working for Welch. He was a hell of a leader—both tough and inspirational. The 3M experience was also a great experience—a group of great people who needed a rejuvenation. A pure leadership challenge.

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