Case 3 Mr Maxwell

Ironically for a mathematician, whose only work is to try to help people and organsiations value deep trust and action learnings multipiers for sustaining human progress -peoples economics mapped through the exponential wealth our open human collaborations can compound and network, my worst ever career move began in 1988-1989. This was when:-

I joined a big 5 accountant because foolishly I believed they want to build on my experience of modelling local markets worldwide, the leadership (future history ) secarios of networking and globalsiation models that my father and I co-authored on a 1984 future history to 2020, and the entrreneurial revolution circles we have been hosting, 2006 being the 30th birthday party circles of my dad's publication of Entrepreneurial Revolution in The Economist.
I had left a company I loved working for doing deep market modelling work in over 30 countries the day Robert Maxwell bought a controlling share in it. A few weeks earlier after the youthful exuberance 8 years of working night and day on jobs that at the timed seemed to be about helping to innovate stuff people urgently needed, I had been promoted as a director of the company I left but I was unaware that French law permitted 2 boards one of whome did the Maxwell deal before I even heard of it. So I needed a new job and innocently assumed that globalsiation accounting for markets might be important for mathematical transparency especillay knowing how revolutionary service and network economy scenarios looked liked being. I was about my fifth day in this Big 5 accountant as senior consultant for valuing intangibles of brand amd markets, that I got a very ominous signal. I had been invited as part of my first 10 days initiation to have a cup of tea with the senior partner of our division. There jutting out of the front of his desk was a framed letter from Robert Maxwell: I recommmend Big 5 firm XXX because they always do exactly what I tell them to do.

Of course at the time, all I knew I disliked was the sort of ruin of deeply contextual market research (which needed a lot of iteratuive human questioning and not just number crunching to get at any expoentail dynamic more interactive than linera separation). This ruin of the mathematics of hi-trust market relationship info was coming in because collecting more and more data was the big money spinner the more the data collection companies and computer salesfolk teamed up. A couple of years later Max jumped off his yacht when it was found that he had doubly gambled - both doing a sort of CEO's Nick Leeson or covering one bad bet with another over a compound period of time and by playing with the company's pension funds. It amazes me that given such a clear early warning case of what can go wrong with global auditing when it is subservient to the big boss client, that for almost a decade and a half now pensioners rights haven got better in most democratic countries, nor has governance of intangibles valuation judged by transparent mathematical maps of what future exponentials global market sectors are compounding. But then Macs like I are just humble mathematicians -seeking to value space, resolve conflicts befopre they destroy trust and deeply purposeful relationship systems, and empower people who have a deep passion for contextual knowledge and helping others to web a difference around it can ask open questions without fear or favour - not a smart Max

I guess this is not just my cv but archetypal of any transparency mapmaker: if you know of project work for Macs not Max, our webs and networks love to hear from you at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
Chris Macrae , World Class Business/Brand Networks

The Networks of Messrs DeSkilling

Please tell us at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk subject = skilling of case studies you feel we should follow of people whose networks have compounded untold harm to the hi-trust dynamics that ll knowledge workers need to be systemically supported by

case 1 Mr Skilling
For a time as the trial reports below indicate Mr Skilling ruled Enron. His other alumni links include McKinsey and Andersen (one time biggest auditor of new/knowledge economy corporations and auditor of Enron). Infamously Mr DeSkilling, was a thought leader in a programmen McKinsey advised boardrooms on called War on Talent. In Skilling's reign at Enron this took on one of the most fearsome measures ever to governa an organsiation. The bottom 20% of monetary performing employees were to be cut each year. Think of the chance of goodwilled people surviving 5 years in such an organsiation. We all have lives and families too. If we love them, there are times when tragedies derail us from being hi performers or there are other times when we need to invest in learning new competences. Moreover, why should people in a team or any group situtaion behave in trust-connecting ways, if they know that there are no incentives at connection levels, only the fear of having your head chooped off with another 20% of individuals

Extract from Seattle Times 31 Jan 2006
Lay reacted by quickly posting on his personal Internet site (www.kenlayinfo.com) a statement terming Causey "a victim of the government's continuing abuse of power."

"Most of his money was frozen when he was indicted," Lay continued, "thus limiting his ability to defend himself. He was told that he may be facing 35 to 40 years in prison with no hope of parole, and he did what he thought he needed to do to provide for his family."

Lay had made similar allegations in a mid-December speech to a crowd of 500 at the Houston Forum, a business group that sponsors talks by politicians, diplomats and corporate executives.

"It's like a trial horse — they're trying it out to see how it plays," said Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin, who worked with Lay's lead defense lawyer, Michael Ramsey, to win the 2003 acquittal of Robert Durst, an eccentric New York millionaire accused of killing and dismembering an acquaintance in Galveston, Texas.

"I'd say they probably need a better focus group than the downtown businessmen's club," he added, referring to the grudge Houston-area residents appear to hold against Lay and Skilling. In pretrial questionnaires sent to hundred of potential jurors, some 80 percent of respondents held negative opinions about the defendants, DeGuerin said.


Lay's main defense is that despite having a doctorate in economics, he was a true figurehead in the last few years of his tenure. Skilling, an intense former McKinsey & Co. consultant with a master's in business administration from Harvard, took over as president and chief operating officer in early 1997 and basically ran the company from then until his surprise resignation on Aug. 14, 2001, barely six months after he'd become chief executive.

Most of the charges against Lay stem from the period after Skilling resigned and Lay had to resume the chief executive's role. He is accused of lying on several occasions, including a Sept. 26, 2001, online conference when he assured Enron employees that "the third quarter is looking great. We will hit our numbers." He said this, the government alleges, despite knowing that the company's finances were unraveling.

Skilling has not been as talkative as Lay, but in a series of recent interviews, he and his chief defense lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, have contended that the government is trying to criminalize legitimate business decisions.

Skilling also will emphasize that he was advised by outside lawyers and auditors, who approved the accounting transactions in question.

"Not one lawyer has been charged," noted Houston defense lawyer Joel Androphy. "If none of the lawyers committed criminal acts, then how can the clients who followed their advice be guilty?"

Case 2 Chainsaw Dunlap

If a hall of CEO shame is every publically posted on the web, Mr Dunlap deserves a special lifetime destruction award.

As a CEO, and leader of distrust, many who google him now feel he only knew (or apparently had deep expertise) in one strategy. Change to a new company every 18 months or less. Put out a bid to global management consultants to see who would come in and cut the most employees. Chainsaw Dunlap developed a double speculators network. For a few months when he entered a company the share price would go up, but the big killing was to short the shares before they were bound to come down with all the most competent employees having been either cut our or leaving the burning deck the first day after Chainsaw rule came to what had previously been decently run companies.

I believe it is true to say that Dunalp is now prohibited from running a stockmarketeted company again. Oddly the prohibition has nothing to do with any of hios chainsawing. But at some stage he tried diversifying to fiddling with numbers as well as people, and for that he finally agreed a deal not to be a CEO again. He's probably very rich in his life of leisure, but if you have new sightings or updates, by all means post them.