Library/Case studies/Enron

Enron

Eleven people's email from the first half of 2001, and nothing else: no handbook, no org chart, no names. Leo mapped how the work moved from January to March, then kept that picture up to date from April to June.

Source: The public Enron email corpus, as published by Carnegie Mellon University

4 entries here

ArticleWhat Leo saw in Enron's mail, 1. Where is the signed contract?We gave Leo the email eleven people at Enron sent in early 2001, and nothing else. Seven lawyers each wrote about the deal in front of them. Leo joined them into one problem none of them could see alone: nobody was sure where the signed contracts were.Sales · Operations · 4 min read ArticleWhat Leo saw in Enron's mail, 2. The same terms, typed again on every tradeNine trades with one customer carried three different credit thresholds, because each confirmation was typed fresh. A lawyer asked how to margin $1.3MM of exposure. Leo heard the same document from four sides, from the email alone.Operations · Sales · 3 min read ArticleWhat Leo saw in Enron's mail, 3. Gas still flowing on deals that had endedIn early 2001 gas kept flowing at Enron meters after the deals behind it had ended: about 29 catch-up requests in 13 weeks, each found after the fact. Leo counted them, showed its working, and suggested checking before the month instead.Operations · Finance · 3 min read ArticleWhat Leo saw in Enron's mail, 4. The playbook nobody wrote, kept up by the next quarter's mailLeo drew 63 processes from three months of eleven people's email in 47 minutes, for US$22. Given the next three months, it did not start again: it updated 47 pages, added 26, and caught the lawyers deciding to drop confirmations, a change it had not suggested.Operations · How Leo works · 6 min read