At Boeing and Starbucks, different problems but similar CEO messages

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Boeing’s new boss wants to return the manufacturer to its engineering roots. Starbucks’s new chief executive says the chain must embrace its own origins as a coffeehouse.

Both executives are aiming to solve a tricky problem: how best to revive a flagging company? The dual turnaround attempts playing out at the same time and in the same place—Seattle—are drawing the attention of management gurus and CEOs, along with employees, investors, coffee drinkers and fliers, all looking to decipher how the executives will change their organizations. The leaders took their jobs within weeks of each other. Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg started on Aug.

8, while Brian Niccol’s first day at Starbucks was Sept. 9. They are confronting wildly different problems.

(Only Boeing, for instance, has a union on strike and is burning through its cash reserves.) But the playbook for fixing the companies is proving to be remarkably similar so far. As the two CEOs addressed investors and employees in recent days, they used some of the same language and emphasized familiar concerns. “First, we need a fundamental culture change in the company," Ortberg wrote to Boeing staff on Wednesday.

A day earlier, as Starbucks suspended its financial guidance and disclosed weak results for its fourth quarter, Niccol said in a video message: “We need to fundamentally change our recent strategy." Boeing has been hobbled by quality problems, aircraft delays and a machinist strike that has halted most production. Starbucks is contending with long waits at its cafes, a persistent sales slump in the U.S., and competition in once-promising markets such as China. The executives have repeatedly invoked the legacies of their brands and how the