Wisdom needed at the top

What caused the demise of Enron? Kurt Eichenwald, in his book Conspiracy of Fools, describes Enron's problems as a commanagement - petence, fraud and lack of gray hair in top management. Enron had managers who lacked values, ethics and wisdom — few if any had the tested experience to do the jobs they were hired for.
If gray hair and wisdom are what we need in top management, why are so many companies eager to get rid of senior people — the very people who combine knowledge of the business with the wisdom to know the right thing to do?
The wisdom void at Enron ultimately led to violations of what we might call Management 101. Enron didn't do the basics: It didn't track its cash, it didn't write or keep track of its corporate guarantees in a single place, and it wildly, without due diligence, invested billions of dollars in farflung and unrelated businesses that ultimately didn't work.
Wasn't there anyone who could see the end coming? According to Eichenwald, there were. Reports with warnings emerged from an internal Enron review and from a report from outside auditor Arthur Andersen.
They were ignored. The senior Andersen executive was taken off the Enron account. With inexperience and narcissism at the helm, Enron developed a culture of greed that ultimately provided a breeding ground for fraud.
What we do in the everyday world of work, when no one is looking, is the real meaning of organizational culture.
Growing, molding and influencing young managers to adopt the proven values of successful and virtuous senior managers is critical to a long-term successful economy. And it is set, rewarded and put in place by top management.
If the corporate culture says, "If you speak out, you will be fired," nobody is going to speak out, regardless of what is written in the personnel manuals or published in the vision statements.