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Cindy Olson
The Collapse of a Culture . . . Lessons from Enron
Session Description:
Cindy’s life changing career at Enron has fueled her devotion to building Cultures where solid values do not just exist on the walls of the corporate office, but are embedded in the "Hearts and Minds" of the people that work there. She believes that corporate culture is the primary driver of a company's performance, yet is often over looked as a key business strategy. The need for an Innovative Culture is more important than ever and through her experience at Enron she played a key role in helping shape that innovative Culture......becoming the first company to ever top Fortunes Most Innovative List for 6 years running.
Speaker Bio:
Cindy Olson began her career at Koch Industries and then became an auditor with Pizza Hut. She went on to work for Inter North in Omaha, Nebraska, which later became Enron where she ultimately progressed to the Executive Committee of the Fortune 7 Company. Olson, uniquely lived both the creation and the demise of Enron. Ultimately serving on the company’s 20 person Executive Committee. Olson held the position of Executive Vice President of Global Human Resources and Community Relations when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2001. She was responsible for helping Enron become Fortune’s 22nd best company to work for and driving Enron’s innovative culture which led to Enron being the first company to be named Fortune’s most Innovative Company 6 years in a row. After the Enron bankruptcy she was the first Executive to testify before the United States Senate and United States House.
She authored the only book written by a top Enron Executive, “The Whole Truth so Help Me God” that describes the “real Enron” from a true Insiders point of view and gives an insider’s account of both the rise and fall of Enron and the lessons learned from both. “There are many lessons that can be learned from a company that was so great and fell so quickly” she explains. In all of her keynotes she takes the audience through the transformation of Enron into one of the greatest business successes in recent history and the events that led to its collapse. “What happened to Enron can happen to any company and all leaders should want to understand how they can prevent such a devastating outcome”
In her current role as Chief Human Capital Transformation Strategist for Choice Solutions she is able to bring all of her past experiences together to help business leaders not only create and maintain a Values Based, Innovative and Risk Aware Culture but to highlight how tightly linked a business’s success is to forward looking adoption of emerging technologies. Her vast Human Capital experience both as the head of a Global Human Resources organization and also as a transformational leader in many other organizational areas gives her the expertise to help leadership teams transform their business.
As Digitization specialists, Choice creates technology solutions that enables mobility, automates business processes, and secures your most sensitive information to empower people and power business Innovation. Choice also helps navigate the transformation of the organization’s complex and fast changing IT organization by understanding the “Innovators and Disruptors” in the technology world and the transformational leadership expertise essential for an organization’s success.