Enron Mail

From:kevin.hannon@enron.com
To:kenneth.lay@enron.com, jeff.skilling@enron.com
Subject:Cornell
Cc:rosalee.fleming@enron.com, sherri.sera@enron.com, carol.brown@enron.com
Bcc:rosalee.fleming@enron.com, sherri.sera@enron.com, carol.brown@enron.com
Date:Wed, 29 Nov 2000 00:51:00 -0800 (PST)

Ken and Jeff,

As I think you both know I have been active in recruiting at Cornell for the
Enron Associate program for several years now. I also recently have become
involved with something called the Park Leadership Fellowship Board which
provides scholarships and forums to discuss business leadership issues. They
are holding a pretty prominent event called Leadership week which will
include the business heads of Corning and American Express discussing their
company's strategies for defining leadership in business today. I hate to
ask you guys to do things like this but it is a pretty big event and would
really highlight Enron's recognition of Cornell as being a "Core School" in
the MBA recruiting process. The event as outlined below is scheduled for
March 28th. I appreciate your consideration.

Kevin

----- Forwarded by Kevin Hannon/Enron Communications on 11/29/00 08:38 AM
-----

ras22@cornell.edu
11/29/00 06:19 AM

To: Kevin Hannon/Enron Communications@Enron Communications
cc:
Subject:

Kevin-


Just a quick follow-up on my November 2 email regarding Enron's
participation in the Johnson School's March Leadership Week and the
possibility of doing a case study on Enron. Wondered if you have had a
chance to float these ideas with Jeff or Ken? I know you have lots on
you plate. Let me know if you have any sense of how this might go.
Below is the earlier email I sent to you. Thanks for the help. Hope all
is well with you.


Nov.2 email text


We at Cornell's Johnson School would like to establish a stronger link
with Enron, a company which we believe to be a leading example of the
agile organization which will dominate in the dynamic, unpredictable
markets of the next decade. One connecting point which we would like
Enron to consider is with our Center for Leadership in Dynamic
Organizations which draws faculty and students from across Cornell and
beyond.


The specific activities that we propose at this point in time are two.
First, we would like to invite a senior leader from Enron to be a key
speaker at the Johnson School's Leadership Week in March, 2001. As
described in the attached materials, Leadership Week is made up of three
conferences focused on academic faculty, leading-edge corporations and
students. We very much would like Enron to present what we call a "live
case study" at the corporate conference on <underline<March 28,
2001</underline<.


You, of course, are an obvious candidate to do this. Alternatively, this
is the kind of event that is made to order for Jeff Skilling or Ken Lay
and would give them a chance to interact with other corporate leaders and
the Cornell community. Other corporate leaders we have signed up for the
corporate conference are John Loose, President and COO of Corning, Ken
Chenault, incoming CEO of American Express, Marty Coyne, just announced
President of Kodak's new Commercial Group. Each of these leaders has a
distinct message to deliver about the leadership challenges involved in
continually reinventing themselves in a fast-changing marketplace.


We have several other speakers lined up for other parts of Leadership
Week, including Ken Blanchard and, we think, Abbey Cohen from Goldman
Sachs. We have some chance of getting Bill Ford from Ford Motor Company
and an outside shot at Jack Welch through our President Emeritus Frank
Rhodes, but these are still long shots.


The point is that this is the biggest thing that will happen at the
Johnson School and probably at Cornell next year. If Jeff or Ken wanted
a platform for telling the Enron story, this would be a good one. If
they can't do it, hopefully we could convince you to do it. Again, the
date is March 28, 2001.


The second proposal is to develop a teaching case on Enron along the same
lines. In fact, if we started working on the teaching case soon, it
could become the basis for the March conference live case study
presentation. We believe that Enron is unique in its ability to
literally create new markets. The question is how do you lead and manage
an organization to keep the tight financial and risk controls in place
that you do, but still create the entrepreneurial behavior that seems to
be the case at Enron. What kind of management philosophies, systems and
practices make this possible.


I know that Enron was the subject of two Harvard cases in 1993 and around
1997. As I understand it neither focused on organizational and
leadership issues. We would like to devote a small research team to
building this case about Enron, directed by myself and Professor Lee Dyer
from the ILR School. We would need access to a number of people in the
Enron organization, but are very aware of the demands on time for fast
moving organizations and are committed to doing this in a very efficient
way.


Kevin, we appreciate your willingness to entertain these two ideas and
hopefully test them with your top leaders. We will do anything we can to
make it feasible for Enron to engage with us on these two initiatives.
Please let me know what I can do to help you carry this forward. As
always, thanks for your great personal support.


Dick