If you could move your company’s headquarters anywhere in the world, where would you go? How would you narrow the possibilities? By what criteria would you judge them? Before beginning, you might want to contact John Warner, the man who led the site evaluation process for Boeing, which just last month moved from Seattle to its new worldwide headquarters in Chicago. HBR’s Andrea Ovans talked with the senior vice president and chief administrative officer to find out what exactly was involved in moving a $ 51 billion company’s head office from a home it had occupied for 85 years. Why did Boeing decide to move? About a year ago, Phil Condit, our chairman and CEO, started conversations with his strategy council and other executive leaders about Boeing’s long-term strategic growth plans. In the course of those conversations, it became apparent that our headquarters needed to be in a neutral location, one not directly associated with one of the major units of the company. Since Boeing was founded in Seattle, and our commercial airplane unit is headquartered there, many people think of Boeing as only a Seattle commercial airplane company. But in fact, we’re a much larger entity. The company includes McDonnell jet fighters, Douglas commercial aircraft, Hughes helicopters, Hughes Space, North American Aerospace, and many others. So part of our strategic plans called for a headquarters separate from existing businesses and focused on developing global growth opportunities. Who is on the strategy council? The council is made up of Phil; Harry Stonecipher, who at the time was president and COO and is now vice chairman; our CFO; our head of human resources; our chief technical officer; our general counsel; and me, the chief administrative officer. We deliberated on the decision late last year, discussed it with our board of directors in December, and the board formally approved it in February. Then we had to act rapidly, as our goal was to move before the start of the school year in September. On March 21st, we announced our shortlist of three cities: Chicago, Dallas—Fort Worth, and Denver. Seven weeks later, we announced that we’d picked Chicago. It happened very fast. How did you narrow your choices down to those three cities? Because of the nature of the business, we knew that we needed to remain in the United States. But we do business with 145 countries, and we have significant operations in 26 states. Seattle, southern California, Wichita, Philadelphia, and St. Louis—we have major operations in all of these sites. So we were looking for a place that would minimize travel time throughout the country and internationally and that would also give government leaders and financial markets in Washington, DC, New York, and abroad access to us. We needed a central location near a major airport. Based on that consideration and a number of others [for the full list of the selection criteria, see the accompanying exhibit], we very rapidly narrowed our choices. You were in charge of the site evaluation process for those three cities. How did you go about it? First, we decided to go public with the search. Most companies try to keep headquarters’ searches secret. They quietly collect information, and when they announce that they’re moving, they’ve already picked the site. We saw that it would be impossible to gather all the data we needed in such a short time without going public. In retrospect, making the announcement was very much to our advantage. We were given a lot more information than we even needed. Even though we said we were considering only three cities, I have a stack of material in the corner of my office that’s literally about three feet high from various places—big and little cities. Working with outside experts in real estate and corporate relocation, we immediately started assembling information relating to our selection criteria, and we posted it all on the wall of my conference room. Then we set up three short two-day visits to go look at specific properties, to get a firsthand sense of what they looked like and how they felt. I was the senior executive on the trips, and I went with people from our facilities, realty, communications, and human resources departments, and the consultants. We coordinated with state and local officials, but we made it clear that we wanted to do the visits on our own; we didn’t want guided tours. How did you manage to see everything in two days? Most of the team concentrated on the potential headquarters’ buildings, but some members looked at residential considerations for our employees. We used helicopters to check out the area, looking at potential sites and getting a feel for nearby neighborhoods. You can get a terrific impression rapidly with a helicopter. I toured around with maps in my lap and with people in the helicopter who knew the area. Our real estate agents had already scouted out buildings that would be available in September, so we knew exactly what to look at. We arrived in Chicago on April 17th and left on the 19th. We went to Dallas on April 23rd and left on the 25th; on the 30th of April we went to Denver and left on the second of May. And when I came back with the information, I briefed Phil on Monday, May seventh. The next day he told me his decision, and we announced it to the world on May tenth. Would you have liked to have had more time? We were certainly very busy. I hardly did anything else during this period. As we moved around the different cities and looked at specific buildings, we made some decisions right in the helicopter. We said, “Nope, we’re not interested in that building,” and we took it off the list. We didn’t even land to tour it, much to the consternation of the people who were waiting for us. But frankly, that time pressure helped us concentrate on the essentials. There’s a discipline you learn when you have to do something fast, although moving that rapidly might have driven our costs up a little bit. I didn’t spend much time thinking about who to hire to help us; I just said I wanted the best. If we’d had more time, though, it might have gotten more confusing. So was some of this intuitive? It was intuition based on a whole lot of facts and data. I think I have an intuitive feel for what is the image of the Boeing world headquarters. And Phil trusted me to have the right understanding of that, which is why I got the job to do it. It’s the CEO’s decision, and the CEO needs somebody he believes can really look through his eyes with his criteria in mind. How much did you worry about the weather in Chicago? I didn’t worry about it at all. There are about 8 million people who’ve figured out how to deal with it, and we will, too. We also didn’t worry about political issues, although a lot of people thought that was going to be a driving factor. What I did worry a lot about was the angst that was created in the state of Washington. It was a tough decision for the community to take, and we’ve worked very hard to assure people there that the Boeing presence won’t diminish one bit. They’re having trouble believing that now, but in the long run they’ll see it’s true. But the weather? No. It is what it’s going to be. You might ask me again in February, though.
