Enron Ascending

Chapter 14Visionary Enron

Omer Lay served as a lay Baptist preacher in rural Missouri. Son Ken became a pillar of First United Methodist Church of Houston. Although never Evangelical (Ken played to the middle in all things), he would occasionally bring in God and the Holy Word professionally. Enron’s success was dependent upon employees using their “God-given talents” and “God-given potential,” Ken liked to say.

Religion also influenced the corporate mission statement: “There’s a Biblical phrase that says something like ‘Without vision, the people will perish’,” Lay intoned, citing Proverbs 29:18. “Well, I’m not sure the people will perish, but it’s pretty certain that without a vision, they may wander around in the wilderness.”

Ken always prayed for guidance for Enron’s worldly endeavors. As his confidence grew in the mid-to-late 1990s, he came to see Enron as God’s handiwork. In fact, false confidence derived from religion—a misapplication and overreach of faith in the realm of reason—would be a factor in overheating Enron’s engines.¹ It led to a visionary approach heavy on grand plans rather than measured experimental discovery—and on perceived outcomes rather than capabilities. Both set a high-risk compass for Enron.

New Enron Visions

In a mid-1990s address at the annual Houston conference of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), Ken Lay remarked how “the company of the 21st century must be vision-driven.” Indeed, Lay embraced high goals and set ambitious corporate ...