NPR.

This is the indicator from planet money.

I'm Darym Woods.

And I'm Waylon Wong.

Back in October, Kelly Ortberg presided over his first quarterly earnings release as the new CEO of Boeing.

He'd been on the job for just over two months.

And given all of Boeing's troubles, there really wasn't much of a honeymoon period.

Yeah, 33,000 Boeing machinists were on strike.

And Kelly Ortberg had announced plans to lay off about 10% of employees. He told CNBC

in an interview that his short-term priority was stabilizing the company. And looking further ahead,

and we really need to embark on a culture change. That is something more than just a poster on

the wall. I's really good.

I guess those posters of the cat saying, hang in there, didn't work.

If that doesn't work, I don't know what will.

I know, I know. Let's just give up.

You know, this culture change that Kelly Orpurg is talking about, it's an acknowledgement

that what's gone wrong at Boeing was something fundamental,

interwoven in the very nature of the company and its decision-making. And for many Boeing observers,

the mistake was shifting focus from engineering to financial engineering.

Today on the show, we explain what financial engineering is and why this cultural change at Boeing may have led to the company's current problems.

Carl Tack is a former corporate lawyer and investment banker. Today, he teaches finance at the

College of William and Mary. And a couple weeks ago, he gave a talk about Boeing to a group of

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