Compass Drift - Kirk & Blackbeard

"When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it is run like a business rather than a great engineering firm." Harry Stonecipher said that in 2004. He was Boeing's president, imported from McDonnell Douglas after the 1997 merger. No one on the board objected. When Boeing was founded in 1916, executives held patents and designed wings. The last plane built under that culture was the 777 — on time, on budget, one of the safest aircraft ever made.

Then the small steps. Headquarters moved from the Seattle factory floor to a Chicago skyscraper, 2700 kilometers away. The engineer who built the 777 was passed over for CEO. When the aging 737 needed replacing, leadership killed the new aircraft — too expensive at seven billion dollars — and bolted bigger engines onto the fifty-year-old airframe. Between 2013 and 2019, Boeing spent seven billion a year on stock buybacks. The exact cost of the plane they didn't build.

Two 737 MAXs crashed within five months. A door plug blew off a third mid-flight, bolts missing from the factory. No one at Boeing ever decided to build unsafe aircraft. They just stopped deciding not to.

"When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it is run like a business rather than a great engineering firm." Harry Stonecipher said that in 2004. He was Boeing's president, imported from McDonnell Douglas after the 1997 merger. No one on the board objected. When Boeing was founded in 1916, executives held patents and designed wings. The last plane built under that culture was the 777 — on time, on budget, one of the safest aircraft ever made.

Then the small steps. Headquarters moved from the Seattle factory floor to a Chicago skyscraper, 2700 kilometers away. The engineer who built the 777 was passed over for CEO. When the aging 737 needed replacing, leadership killed the new aircraft — too expensive at seven billion dollars — and bolted bigger engines onto the fifty-year-old airframe. Between 2013 and 2019, Boeing spent seven billion a year on stock buybacks. The exact cost of the plane they didn't build.

Two 737 MAXs crashed within five months. A door plug blew off a third mid-flight, bolts missing from the factory. No one at Boeing ever decided to build unsafe aircraft. They just stopped deciding not to.

What is it?

Most organisations start with a clear purpose. And a clear course to get there. But then reality kicks in: "We can't miss this opportunity," someone says. Or: "We need to accommodate this client." Each choice is defensible on its own. But together, they quietly change the course. Strategy becomes something you reconstruct after the fact: teams focus on their own targets, the bigger picture fades. The dot on the horizon? You infer it from whatever was decided last month.

Why does it matter?

For leadership, this is a painful irony: the strategy you spent months building, the one your stakeholders bought into, slowly stops being executed. Not because anyone disagreed. Because it's not part of the daily conversation.

Strategy is discussed once a year, decisions are made every day. Guess which one wins. By the time you sit down again to talk about direction, practice has already determined where you're going. Course correction becomes something for the next offsite. And the next. And the next.

Language drifts along with it. What was once a deviation is now "just how we do things here." When strategic intent stops being named, you can no longer see you're drifting from it. And what you can't see, you can't fix.

What causes it?

Micro-change. Compass Drift happens in small steps, so it's rarely challenged. Each deviation is small enough to ignore. By the time it becomes visible, it's called market change, poor execution, or a culture problem. Not: ten years of small choices no one tested.

Lack of accountability. No one truly loses sleep over direction. The CFO guards the numbers, the executive team guards the portfolio, the teams guard their targets. But who guards the course? That's everyone's job, which means it's no one's.

How to recognise it:

When no one can explain how you got here, but everyone has a defensible explanation for their own piece.
When new initiatives become harder and harder to connect to a larger story.
When the strategy is in a drawer and decisions are based on whatever was discussed in the last meeting.
When "that's just how we do things" is the answer to why.

What you can do:

Test decisions against direction, not just feasibility. "Can we do this?" is a different question from "Does this take us where we want to go?".
Make direction part of everyday work. Not once a year at the offsite, but when choices are being made.
Watch the language. When deviation is no longer named as deviation, your compass is already drifting.
Start with small corrections. You don't have to overhaul the entire course. One decision that is tested against direction breaks the pattern.

What is it?

Most organisations start with a clear purpose. And a clear course to get there. But then reality kicks in: "We can't miss this opportunity," someone says. Or: "We need to accommodate this client." Each choice is defensible on its own. But together, they quietly change the course. Strategy becomes something you reconstruct after the fact: teams focus on their own targets, the bigger picture fades. The dot on the horizon? You infer it from whatever was decided last month.

Why does it matter?

For leadership, this is a painful irony: the strategy you spent months building, the one your stakeholders bought into, slowly stops being executed. Not because anyone disagreed. Because it's not part of the daily conversation.

Strategy is discussed once a year, decisions are made every day. Guess which one wins. By the time you sit down again to talk about direction, practice has already determined where you're going. Course correction becomes something for the next offsite. And the next. And the next.

Language drifts along with it. What was once a deviation is now "just how we do things here." When strategic intent stops being named, you can no longer see you're drifting from it. And what you can't see, you can't fix.

What causes it?

Micro-change. Compass Drift happens in small steps, so it's rarely challenged. Each deviation is small enough to ignore. By the time it becomes visible, it's called market change, poor execution, or a culture problem. Not: ten years of small choices no one tested.

Lack of accountability. No one truly loses sleep over direction. The CFO guards the numbers, the executive team guards the portfolio, the teams guard their targets. But who guards the course? That's everyone's job, which means it's no one's.

How to recognise it:

When no one can explain how you got here, but everyone has a defensible explanation for their own piece.
When new initiatives become harder and harder to connect to a larger story.
When the strategy is in a drawer and decisions are based on whatever was discussed in the last meeting.
When "that's just how we do things" is the answer to why.

What you can do:

Test decisions against direction, not just feasibility. "Can we do this?" is a different question from "Does this take us where we want to go?".
Make direction part of everyday work. Not once a year at the offsite, but when choices are being made.
Watch the language. When deviation is no longer named as deviation, your compass is already drifting.
Start with small corrections. You don't have to overhaul the entire course. One decision that is tested against direction breaks the pattern.

What is it?

Why does it matter?

What causes it?

How to recognise it:

What you can do:

What is it?

Why does it matter?

What causes it?

How to recognise it:

What you can do:

Let's talk.

Let's talk.

Let's talk.