Growing Businesses
To Protect and
Connect the World |
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| For many people, 2001 brought a new paradigm.
They are saying, it’s not about
growth, but survival. It’s not about taking risks, but
avoiding them. It’s not about
making your destiny, but making excuses. |
| Does this describe today’s Boeing? Absolutely
not. We totally reject that viewpoint. |
| This is a very different company. Today’s
Boeing is tough, competent, disciplined
and well-managed. Above all, this company is strongly focused
on increasing shareholder
value. The way to do that is to provide exceptionally high returns,
and do so
consistently — through good times and bad, on the downside
of a cycle as well as
the upside and in the face of sudden adversity. |
| That is the test in front of us today. We do
not shrink from it. In a real sense, we have been getting ready
for this challenge since 1996. That is when, as a new CEO, I
set out a 20-year vision for Boeing that would define the company
when it reached its 100th anniversary in 2016. That vision led
us to build a broader, more balanced portfolio of aerospace
businesses. A portfolio of businesses that could connect
and protect the world. |
| Some things changed and some didn’t on September
11. It shocked and angered
us to see products we had built to connect people for peaceful
purposes used for
acts of terror and destruction. Many nations joined the United
States in waging war
against terrorism. Boeing products — fighter aircraft,
smart bombs, missiles, helicopters,
heavy airlift, in-flight refueling tankers and satellites —
were deployed to protect
the peace. |
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