MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How Not to Organize In-House Experts: Lessons From Boeing

Accidents involving 737 Max airplanes and Boeing’s ongoing internal struggles serve as a stark reminder that having experts is not enough: Leadership must organize expertise effectively.

In the race to recruit and deploy talent, organizations often focus on attracting highly skilled experts and then optimizing internal knowledge flow. But translating expertise into better business decisions and superior outcomes hinges on how well in-house experts are organized. Balancing specialization with collaboration, matching experts with the right tasks, promoting a broad spectrum of expertise, and embedding domain expertise into leadership are all factors that matter. The disasters involving Boeing’s 737 Max 8 airliner, which claimed hundreds of lives, and the company’s ongoing business struggles offer a stark lesson: Poor organization of expertise can have severe consequences. Only by thoughtfully placing and valuing experts can managers unlock their workforce’s full potential.

That insight was derived from my recently published research, which was based on interviews with engineers, technicians, and product managers specializing in dozens of expertise areas at another major aeronautical organization. The 15-month in-depth field study examined how experts are organized — staffed into job roles, grouped in departments and projects, and classified in specialty directories. My findings indicate that the design of organizational structures can reveal and enhance expertise — or devalue and obscure it. The research also informs guidance on how to improve your organization’s approach to organizing experts.

About the Author

Pedro Monteiro is an assistant professor at Copenhagen Business School and a Malmsten early career scholar at Gothenburg University.

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