John Emshwiller
speaker
265 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2021
last heard Oct 2021
John Emshwiller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
In the 80s, Enron was a pretty standard oil and gas company.
It had pipelines that moved energy around the country.
But executives weren't satisfied.
They told everyone they were going to revolutionize the energy industry.
And they did.
Starting in the mid-90s, Enron would be named America's most innovative company year after year.
Enron had a reputation, and executives would do just about anything to keep it.
That's where I'd like to start the story.
1998, Enron headquarters, Houston.
That year, Enron wanted to showcase a brand new sales room it had set up for one of its new operations, Enron Energy Services.
The goal was to cut up the middleman by selling energy directly to businesses and, of course, make a lot of money in the process.
Enron had invited Wall Street analysts to downtown Houston to check it out.
If they were impressed, the analysts might tell their clients to invest even more in Enron.
There was just a little problem.
The sales room wasn't ready.
Enron still hadn't hired enough people to fill it.
They could have delayed or just told people they were ramping up.
But instead, Enron executives decided to just go ahead and make it look like it was fully running.
I remember being told, everyone, bring some of your personal items, put it on the desk, make it look normal, and everyone just act like you're really busy.
That's Robert Bradley, a former Enron speechwriter.
Showing 21–40 of 265 · page 2 of 14
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