Be Wary of Boeing's Dreamliner Excuses

The Business Press Maven almost had to delay production of this column for several months. The "j" key is missing from my keyboard, and there was a worldwide shortage of "j" keys. Don't believe me? Good instincts. The truth is I was too tired, too bereft of ideas, and my brain is burned to a crisp from a book deadline.

Lucky for me, Boeing(BA) ambled along with an announcement of far-reaching production delays, right on the heels of a claim akin to a worldwide shortage of "j" keys.

Follow the parallel. My deep-seated problems don't seem as serious if I speak about them in terms of a shortage of "j" keys. And Boeing's global supply-chain problems on the highly anticipated 787 Dreamliner didn't seem as serious when the company first goaded the business media into portraying them as exclusively a shortage of fasteners, i.e., nuts and bolts.

Now Boeing officials are saying that their problems go further than nuts and bolts, but they won't (honest!) be as screwy as Airbus' long delays. They might be right this time. But we need to look at the full picture. That would be the one not being given by the business media, who fell first for the fasteners-made-us-do-it defense and are now failing to make connections needed to put the excuse-making to the test.