Jim McNerney

The GE- and 3M-trained executive who ran Boeing during the development of the 737 MAX, and one of the central villains of Flying Blind’s account of Boeing’s cultural decline. He joined General Electric in 1982 under Jack Welch, then ran 3M, where he doubled annual profits in just over four years by slashing capital expenditures, holding R&D flat, and cutting roughly 8,000 jobs — many of them older, higher-paid workers (3M later paid $3M to settle an EEOC age-discrimination suit over layoffs under his tenure). The Post-it note’s own inventor said he wouldn’t have invented it under McNerney’s strictures.

At Boeing, Flying Blind argues, McNerney imported the same playbook: tying his and other top executives’ compensation to free cash flow and the net return on assets rather than to operations or customer/employee/safety metrics, and pushing buybacks ($41.5B from 2013–2018, nearly 80% of free cash). His phrase “more for less” became the driving theme of the MAX program — “more performance, lower cost… but also: more work, fewer people. And ultimately: more risk, catastrophic return.” McNerney personally made $231 million from 2001 to 2016. The book notes the continuity even after he left: his old friend and golf partner David Calhoun later became CEO, signaling the playbook had not changed.

Context: W. James McNerney Jr. led 3M (2001–2005) and then Boeing (2005–2015) as chairman and CEO, having been an early contender to succeed Jack Welch at GE.

Where this appears

• Flying Blind — heavily featured as the cost-cutting, financially-engineered CEO whose “more for less” ethos and incentive structure shaped the MAX program and Boeing’s safety culture.