“The tale of Enron is a story of human weakness, of hubris and greed and rampant self-delusion; of ambition run amok; of a grand experiment in the deregulated world; of a business model that didn’t work; and of smart people who believed their next gamble would cover their last disaster—and who couldn’t admit they were wrong.”
Bethany McLean, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
“McKinsey partners tend to be designers of ditches, not diggers of ditches. When it comes to executing their lofty theories, well, consultants lean toward leaving those messy realities to the companies themselves.”
Bethany McLean, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
“Which offers up the problem: no company can prosper over the long term if every employee is a free agent, motivated solely by greed, no matter how smart he is. No company can function if it only hires brilliant MBAs – and sets them against each other. There is a reason companies value team players, just as there is a reason that people who get along with others tend to do well in corporate life. The reason is simple; you can’t build a company on brilliance alone. You need people who can come up with ideas, and you also need people who can implement those ideas and are well compensated for doing so. The pure meritocracy Skilling thought he was installing was, in fact, a deeply dysfunctional workplace. That was hard to see in the early days, when the place felt vibrant and heady and exciting and they all were working so hard that they didn’t have time for anything else. But over the years, as the business became more established, the sense of excitement waned and the dysfunction became more evident. The very qualities Skilling prized – the opportunity for creativity to run wild, the mixture of brain and hubris, the absence of gray hair and structure – turned Enron Finance into a chaotic, destructive free-for-all. Over time, as that culture infected the entire company, Enron began to rot from within. But that came later.”
Bethany McLean, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
