Varner

"Varner encouraged his senior managers, like Williams, to think the same way. Williams was told that his job wasn’t just to keep his head down and run his division—his job was to keep his eyes on the horizon, to scan the environment of his business for new opportunities. Even more important, Varner told Williams to pass this mentality on to everyone who worked for him. The pipeline employees, the engineers, the oil gaugers—all of them needed to look for new deals as they went about their daily work. Everybody was supposed to act like an entrepreneur who worked in the mergers and acquisitions department. “When you get that idea spread among your people, then you’ve got gaugers out there with their eyes open. The ideas come in. If you’ve got a couple of thousand [employees] looking for things, you’re going to get some stuff that comes in that’ll be all right.”"

"Varner encouraged his senior managers, like Williams, to think the same way. Williams was told that his job wasn’t just to keep his head down and run his division—his job was to keep his eyes on the horizon, to scan the environment of his business for new opportunities. Even more important, Varner told Williams to pass this mentality on to everyone who worked for him. The pipeline employees, the engineers, the oil gaugers—all of them needed to look for new deals as they went about their daily work. Everybody was supposed to act like an entrepreneur who worked in the mergers and acquisitions department. “When you get that idea spread among your people, then you’ve got gaugers out there with their eyes open. The ideas come in. If you’ve got a couple of thousand [employees] looking for things, you’re going to get some stuff that comes in that’ll be all right.”"