I know, I know. It’s a huge shock to discover who was the boss at Enron, so please repair to your fainting couch when I reveal that it was Jeff Skilling. It only took ten years of research into Enron’s emails for this gem to be revealed.
I think researchers like these folks are trying too hard to find something interesting about the Enron emails. In this case, the researchers are attempting to create “smarter messaging software”. What that means in practical terms is rather boring: a piece of software could prioritize your emails based on the words used in them.
You know, like Google does right now.
For Eric Gilbert, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, the email database has shed light on which words are used most frequently in messages going up and down the corporate hierarchy (and yes, a conservative approach and many filters were used to ensure the types of messages examined would apply to a typical organization, not just a fraudulent one).
The top 5 “upward predictors”found in the Enron corpus were “the ability to,” “I took”, “are available”, “kitchen”and “thought you would.” Words/phrases found most frequently in messages heading in the opposite direction were “have you been”, “you gave”, “we are in”, “title” and “need in.” The value of identifying such words and phrases is that they can be considered reliable indicators of message types, and that kind of insight could be used to develop artificial intelligence-based messaging systems that automatically prioritize emails (say fast-tracking only emails from other higher-ups into the CEO’s inbox).
“We have organizational charts, but they don’t tell the whole story,”and the research could help map “informal power and reporting structures,” said Gilbert, in a statement. “A classic example is the CEO’s administrative assistant: That person may not occupy a high box on the org chart, but he or she still has a large amount of influence.”
Meh. So what? And that last example was pretty interesting, considering neither Jeff Skilling nor Ken Lay wrote their own emails.
I hate to say it – because nobody loves to read about Enron more than me – but the Enron emails are about as exciting as watching grass grow. Their content was nearly universally about work. Whatever organizational clues can be gleaned from them could probably be gleaned in some simpler way.
I think researchers keep toying with the emails because it is fun to say “Enron emails.” That’s about the only reason I can think of to keep wading through them, looking for new insights.
