Management & Leadership

Ken, Greg, Mark -

Thank you for your leadership over the last several weeks and this morning. We appreciate it.

Following are some additional thoughts and some more detail on my comments from this morning:

The leadership group in that room needs to feel the sense of responsibility to lead our businesses. Everything we say & do - including all written, verbal and "body language" - are signals. We must communicate and lead all day, every day.
As an organization, and as part of our culture, we lead with our chin - always have and probably always will. We are going to take our share of bumps and bruises.
We have some great businesses here....and we are fortunate. We have grown the size and profitability of our core businesses substantially, and in a market where many companies have not been as successful.
Most of our wounds are self - inflicted. We can and should do a better job.
I believe this leadership team needs to make an absolute commitment in the following areas:
Vision - define what we want this company to be in the next 3-5 years
Value - as part of building the World's Leading Company, my vote is that we dedicate our energy towards building long term, sustainable value. This is not about just creating value in the eyes of Wall Street - this is about creating real value, perhaps as defined by "after tax operating profit minus the real cost of capital". Market cap will follow this type of economic value creation. We need to measure it and incent people this way.
Teamwork - we are a leadership team. I don't feel as though everyone buys into that nor is it clear that everyone around that table feels a sense of responsibility to lead across the business. I would like to discuss how we improve as a team. Many of our employees (at an average age of 33 years) have never been through:
an economic downturn
a global military conflict
problems like the ones we are currently experiencing at Enron
We need big time leadership now....from all who are around that table
Clear Demonstration of our leadership - in clear view of our employees, customers and shareholders
People - we must make sure to retain and enhance the interest of the employees that add value to Enron everyday. These people need to believe - with our actions - that we are absolutely focused on making sure they have an environment that is conducive to building and creating value over the short, medium and long term.
The ball is in our court. We have to lead and be perceived as credible leaders. We've got to dig deep and get down the road - together.

If you wish, I would be pleased to discuss this further.

Thank you again for your leadership.

Regards - Dan