Replying to LO28166 --
Don Dwiggins said:
>Question: which were the primary essentialities that were impaired within
>Enron to allow things to get as bad as they did?
My comment:
Wholeness:
I think one has to go beyond the state of mind of Enron officials. Enron is
part of a much larger system: the stock market. This is a system of
ownership distribution that encourages people to buy things they know little
or nothing of in order to make money. As much money as possible as soon as
possible. No long term strategy "excuses" accepted. This again pushes window
dressing and short term thinking in management. It is the concept of the
stock market itself that is the problem. It encourages a "me now" mentality
at all levels.
Sureness and liveness:
- owners have little opportunity to know the business they are investing in,
and they don't even care as long as things are going in the right direction
on a short term basis. The prospect of easy money blinds. A phenomena very
similar to gambling.
- managers get stuck in a window dressing and quick fix rut almost never
being able to act on their (hopefully) profound knowledge of their business.
Otherwise they are risking their jobs and/or hampering better packages. Even
if the long term prospects look bleak, a manager will usually prefer long
term uncertain pain to short term almost certain pain (sometimes problems do
go away...)
Openness
-window dressing and short term tactics to keep the owners happy needs a
high level of compliance internally. Diversity of opinion is discouraged.
-the owners only want to hear good news. Bad news leads to sell out.
Spareness:
The hope of problems going away somehow keeps day by day quick fixes going,
ignoring or hoping that the long term limits of day by day quick fixes will
somehow go
away.
Fruitfulness:
Short term thinking discourages fruitfulness because experimentation costs
money and the failure rate of new ventures is high.
Terje
--"Terje A. Tonsberg" <tatonsberg@hotmail.com>
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