Team 4

Professor Gustafson
BISMCS 333
03/08/2020
Transcription for Jonathan’s interview
 Full name and title of interviewee – John Wiedemann, Functional
Architect for the Boeing Flight Deck Design
 Interviewer – Jonathan David Wiedemann
 Transcriber - Connie K. Chen
 Note-taker- Jonathan David Wiedemann
 Date of interview - Wednesday February 19th, 2020
 Location of interview - Public place via facetime
 Format of interview - Audio Recording

John W. interview

Interviewer (Jonathan): I want to thank my guest for giving us your time, I know
you have a busy schedule and I just want to express how grateful our group, BIS 333,
and UWB are to have you.

Interviewer (Jonathan): Let’s start off by asking what is your name and what do you
do?

Interviewee (John): My name is John Wiedemann, and I work for the Boeing
Commercial Airplane company, and I’ve worked there for over 35 years. The current
capacity that I’m in, my title is the Functional Architect for the Boeing Flight Deck
Design.

Interviewer (Jonathan): Can you tell us little more about what you do and how you
communicate each day?

Interviewee (John): So every airplane out there has a -- you can think of it as an
office space for the pilots, and what we have to do is make sure that that office space
matches up with the tasks that a pilot needs to do. And that he is able to interact with
everything on board the airplane and communicating outside of the airplane to have a
safe flight for all those passengers that are using airplanes nowadays.

[01:32]

Interviewer (Jonathan): How has culture played a role in work and what steps do
you or your company take in producing a better culture?
Interviewee (John): That’s one of the key things that we have to do. There’s many
different cultural aspects that you can think about in the aerospace industry. One, of
course, is that we have to make sure that we have a key safety culture for the product
itself. And we do a lot of studies about how humans interact. How those humans react
when it comes to piloting, maintenance, building, and various aspects of the human
factors of a particular design. Because the product gets put into many different
countries, we have to make sure that the product and its support mechanisms match
up with the cultural aspects of that country. So, for instance, people here in the United
States, they have very different expectations, desires, and [ideas of] how to interact
with technology, and each other, than, say, someone that comes from China, or Japan,
or Europe, or the Middle East. How we word things. How we design the things for
how they used to interact with things. Their technical knowledge. All of those aspects
we have to analyze before we actually come up with a design, or how we go and sell
the product; or support the product once it’s out there.

[03:09]

Interviewer (Jonathan): So you’re saying that Boeing actively has taken steps to
ensure a better cultural development of its workers as well as its relations?

Interviewee (John): That’s correct. For the most part what we’re doing is we’re
building a product that sells to either governments, or to airlines. Then it’s the
responsibility of the airlines, say, for instance, to market the products that they have,
and the customization they do of their product, for the airplane passengers themselves.

Interviewer (Jonathan): Can you give some examples from throughout your 35
years of how culture comes into play at Boeing as well as in your own work?

Interviewee (John): So because Boeing is a global company, a lot of the aspects are
the same. A product has to go into many different countries with their unique cultures.
But we also have employees that are stationed throughout the whole world.

[04:25]

Interviewee (John): And we have suppliers that build some of our products. So what
we have to do is we have to understand both the cultural and the business aspects for
where those suppliers or those people are located. So for instance, if we have some
employees that work out of Moscow, Russia, we have to understand how their work
habits are; what their business practices and laws are. And we have to go and work
accordingly, not just be a unique Western type of situation. We also, here in the
United States, have people from many different countries, and they can be born here,
or they can have work Visas, so they’re working for us. And what we have to do is
make sure that everybody is treated to the same fairness and equality levels, because
we all have to work together to come up with that safe product. The Boeing company
goes as far as, every year, we all have to go and run through many different classes
that we take.
They’re either video classes or group classes, where we talk about various issues
when it comes to diversity; when it comes to how we treat business favors, and a lot
of different aspects that you normally would not get in small companies.

Interviewer (Jonathan): In your time at Boeing have you seen any shifts in
marginalized groups among the workspace? 

[05:50]

Interviewee (John): It is a big deal, and some of it is dictated by the government.

Some of it is Boeing just being a good corporate citizen and knowing what they have
to do to succeed in the market. What I have seen over 35 years is a big transition. In
the engineering departments, 35 years ago, you saw hardly any females; either in the
working level, or the management level. Now you see big changes. And that can be
difficult for some of the older employees that are used to a time when, say, all the
women stayed home and raised children. So if suddenly they have a boss that may be
a woman, sometimes that can be difficult for some of these folks. The younger
generation though, it seems to be the norm. So I think that what we see at Boeing is
your typical -- as culture and society evolves, Boeing is evolving at essentially the
same pace. It’s just that you recognize it more when you have a more homogenous
type of group. Like our employees in engineering have typically been white males
over the years; now it’s becoming a lot more diverse.

[07:17]

Interviewer (Jonathan): What action is taken if an employee is unhappy or a

situation arises? 

Interviewee (John): So it depends on what the issue is. There’s many different paths
that they can take. The first one, of course, is for them to go and talk to their
managers. And there’s something that we have which is a very open culture with our
management, where you should be able to go and talk with them. If you don’t feel that
you can, if they’re the problem, or if something else is going on, then we have an
ethics department; where an employee can go to the ethics department and put in an
anonymous, or a non-anonymous type of complaint.
You can also go to HR. So there are many different paths, and all of those paths are
described in the classes that we have to take every year.
Interviewer (Jonathan): Based on your industry background, what do you think of
the interaction between the aerospace industry and the rise of social media? Or in
other words how have you seen and interacted with social media as it has come into
play more and more over the years?

[08:15]

Interviewee (John): Yeah. Yeah, so a couple things that we’ve seen is that, one, of
course there’s your internal social media. So that’s those classes we take, and a lot of
those classes, what they do is they show little video clips of hypothetical situations.
Like one that I remember from this last year was showing the interview process,
because I’m one of those people that have to interview potential new employees. They
have to go and talk about how you act with people from other cultures. So we had one
where -- that showed the example of a woman that came in from the Middle East, and
she has her traditional way of dressing. And what the situation was is when she was
answering the questions, she would only address the woman interviewer; she would
not address the male interviewer. So they would start asking us questions about that
situation. Well, what did you feel about that? What does that mean? Well, we had to
be sensitive to the fact that, in her culture, it wasn’t proper to address a male figure
directly, so she was addressing the female. Now, if you did the wrong thing, you
would be looking at that as, oh, she’s not a good communicator, or this [or that]. But
no, we had to take into consideration where she was from, and that was just one of the
examples that always stuck with me. Now, in the outside world, Boeing puts out a lot
of commercials, in general, about what Boeing does, and its products, and its people.
And what I’ve seen over the 35 years is, when they show the product and the people
working with the products, you can see the people that they’re choosing, whether
they’re actors or real employees, they’re choosing more women, more minorities,
more people from various countries, and they identify those countries. To show off
Boeing as a global company, and a very inclusive company.

[10:20]

Interviewer (Jonathan): Has social media had any impact on marginalized groups
ability to be hired and Boeing’s willingness to be more diverse?

Interviewee (John): It may, it’s hard to tell, because between that and Boeing’s
efforts to become a more diverse workplace, the combination of the two has promoted
that. The key thing is to make sure that once people actually do get in, that they don’t
feel like they’re a token; that they really are included, and a valued part of the design
community. And that’s something -- that is actually hard to do at times.

Interviewer (Jonathan): What do you do to make sure some of these things are
addressed especially when you observe them?
Interviewee (John): I do, and one of the key things is to make sure if -- in my
position, if I see an issue that could affect some of their work performance that may
be based on culture, I go and have one on one meetings with them to talk about that.
And try to explain to them what I’m seeing if there’s a miscommunication, or we need
to do better in one area. Whether it’s the person that’s from that culture, or the person
that is not from that culture and is not aware of words [that] they say, or how they act,
and so forth. And that’s one of my responsibilities in the organization.

[12:05]

Interviewer (Jonathan): What are the biggest ways social media has influenced your
way of communicating at work over the years? And would you agree that it will only
continue to evolve as new forms of social media/communication evolve. 

Interviewee (John): I think it’s naturally headed that way anyway. But even the
design world is starting to change and use social media more. So for instance, a lot of
our design work used to be someone having a design meeting, and then you’d go to a
secretary, and you would type up the notes from that meeting. Now we’re designing
things 24/7, and we’re doing it sometimes over instant messaging, over email;
sometimes we’re doing it with committee work, with outside industry, where we’re
using social media to be able to interact with each other.

[13:10]

Interviewee (John): Items like what we’re doing here with this interview, we’re
doing a lot more meetings that are WebEx based, or FaceTime based. And then the
other piece of it is [that] there’s so much information out there in the world. People
are going to different crowdsourcing types of ways to either influence or gather more
information. Like, for instance, if you go to a Wikipedia type of thing that talks about,
what are the aspects of the flight deck? Or, what can we do to go send training
material to various people? Social media is becoming the great communication
means; that all we had when I first started was telephones.

Interviewer (Jonathan): Thank you

Interviewee (John): Alright, you’re welcome.

[14:01]

Notes:
 Functional architect for flight deck design at Boeing. Over 35 years. “Every
airplane’s cockpit is like an office space for pilots (John).” He has to make sure the
office space matches up with what the pilots want to do by communicating directly
with pilots and engineers. Culture comes up often in this type of environment because
the product gets put into many different countries around the globe. This requires a
high level of cultural knowledge in order to communicate and build something for/in
a different language and culture. Boeing encourages this level of cultural awareness
through various training and philosophes because they understand the value and
importance of global cultural awareness. Boeing goes as far as running its employees
through a yearly training where cultural practice and awareness is raised. In his 35
years he has seen a definitive increase in the number of women hired. When he started
there was no woman in upper or managerial roles. One group that this has affected is
the older population that is more used to how things were as opposed to how things
should be. Younger generation has adapted to this alot better and often thrive. Has
definitely become more diverse with a more open culture being able to talk to your
superiors. Through training Boeing also offers a place for anonymous complaints so
employees feel there is always a place to be heard. Social media has only
strengthened the need for these trainings on cultural practices and communication.
Boeing puts out a lot of commercials and over the years he has seen a shift in who
they chose to represent more often diverse members now and women in the past
decade. John and his group don't want people of marginalized groups to come and feel
like they are just the token diverse person of that race. One of John’s jobs is to
actually reach out to these employees if he sees that there is a need to. Rise of social
media has a design that takes place 24/7 since communication is so accessible,
especially since telephones are all he had when he started.