Daily Finance, an AOL outfit, announces that to be a CEO one must be certifiably insane. The article points to that old cliche, that Jeff Skilling was cray-cray and the evidence was the Richard Grubman call.
Intermittent explosive disorder: Repeated episodes of violent, aggressive behavior out of proportion to the situation; may include angry outbursts or temper tantrums
Let’s set the wayback machine to April 2001 for one of the most impressive outbursts of CEO fury ever. Before Enron’s devastating failings were known, analyst Richard Grubman posed a very legitimate concern on the company’s conference call: “You’re the only financial institution that can’t produce a balance sheet or cash flow statement with their earnings.”
CEO Jeffrey Skilling’s response: “You, you, you… Well, uh… thank you very much. We appreciate it… a–hole!”
Granted, it’s arguable that outburst wasn’t particularly “out of proportion,” given what we all later found out about Enron’s true financial condition. People who are doing the wrong thing probably don’t enjoy exposure to anything close to critical thinking. Still, Skilling’s outburst seems pretty nuts.
Actually no it doesn’t seem nuts. As I’ve explained numerous times on this blog, there was a reason he called Grubman an asshole, the most important of which is that Richard Grubman was being an asshole. Enron did not have the cash flow statement because it was still collecting and collating information. If Enron had published a cash flow statement at that time, it would have been incomplete and/or incorrect.
Furthermore, the whole idea of CEOs being crazy just grinds my gears. For every crazy CEO, you have a million who are normal, quiet, unassuming guys (heck, look at Joe Hirko and Ken Lay within the same organization; they were CEOs and they didn’t call anyone an asshole.)
Can’t we as a culture please get this event correct in the correct context? Can’t we do that?
I heard gruman died, two months. This is just a lie?