Cindy Kay Olson

 

“Ask Why.” was the edgy and memorable advertising campaign that ran on national and international TV promoting  Enron’s businesses.  At Enron, we encouraged employees to always “Ask Why” so it is natural for me to “Ask Why” …..Why are leaders continuing to lead with arrogance?  Why didn’t we learn from Enron’s fall and the 2008 financial crisis?  Why are there so many books on leadership but leadership failures exist in our business community every day?

 

Using the experience of helping create one of the most dynamic cultures that ever existed in American history and learning from the dramatic failure of that culture along with the research of over 10 years of employee survey results..... It's clear that creating a trust based Innovative Culture requires 4 key elements:

 

1) A committed CEO  2) A Human Resource function equipped to help the CEO lead that Culture 3)  The right people in Leadership roles throughout the organization and 4) A proven disciplined process to consciously create a culture of Innovation.

 

Leadership is a daunting responsibility.  With Enron's collapse, 25,000 talented employees lost their livelihoods, their families were impacted, the thousands of customers and suppliers of Enron were impacted and millions of dollars given to numerous non profits in the city of Houston vanished.  Over 60 Billion dollars of market cap disintegrated and the failure caused another great company, Arthur Andersen, to fail as well.

 

A version of the Enron collapse and the "lessons" are taught in almost every business school in this country even today.  So its relevance exists if simply from the fact that we are training future leaders based on an event that occurred in 200l.......An event that continues to repeat itself.

 

Today my passion lies in translating my unique experience into coaching and teaching Leaders how to create values based cultures that produce better financial results and more innovation. If you are a leader and have that desire, I want to help you.