The Ten Commandments for Business Failure - Don Keough [54]
Eventually, the owners of San Miguel were persuaded by John Hunter, one of our top executives, to allow us to run the Coca-Cola bottling operation under a joint operating agreement.
The equipment remained the same. The twelve thousand employees remained the same. We just changed two things. John Hunter, an Australian who had worked for Coca-Cola in Japan and the Pacific Rim, took over the region for The Coca-Cola Company and Neville Isdell, an Irishman who had worked in South Africa with Coca-Cola and briefly in Australia, took over the bottling operations and the twelve thousand employees became his team.
John and Neville worked together to change and energize the Philippine bottling company. Neville reinvigorated the several thousand bottling company employees and a plan was developed and executed. There were political problems in the Philippines that added a level of stress for everyone. Then, too, the competition had become very aggressive in their tactics and pricing. But above all else, Neville, as head of the bottling operations, listened and realized that the employees had a very low opinion of themselves and a very pessimistic, even fearful, view of their future. The business was basically what it had always been. The mood, though, was gloomy.
Neville even put on fatigues and led pep rallies. He constantly walked through the plant, greeting people by name, asking about their families. He rode out on trucks to make deliveries and talk with customers. He had this contagious kind of enthusiasm that defies quantifying, but you know it when you see it. It’s leadership.
In one year, two people, Hunter and Isdell, working together, highly focused, turned the results around completely. Coca-Cola was outselling Pepsi two to one.
What had Neville Isdell done with bottling company employees? He connected with his people and basically convinced them that they were better than the competition. He also gave them a bright picture of the future. He was passionate in his optimism and that rubbed off on everyone from the lowliest sweeper to the highest volume customer in Manila.
John Hunter went on to become executive vice president of The Coca-Cola Company in charge of international operations and on retirement from the company became chairman of the international operations of Seagram’s.
Neville led our operations in Europe and became chairman of one of our largest bottling companies, and, as I write this book, he is chief executive officer of The Coca-Cola Company and still exudes that contagious optimism.
The pessimists tell us the world was born in chaos and has been going downhill ever since. But we have to live with some hope. We have to live with some faith in our fellow men. We have to act as if there will be a tomorrow, there is some point in starting an enterprise, in starting a family, in admiring the sunset, in going on.
If you want to fail, be afraid of the future. If you want to succeed, approach the future with optimism—and passion.
And that brings me to a little added bonus—an eleventh commandment.
Commandment Eleven
Lose Your Passion for Work—for Life
“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
MY FATHER ONCE SAID that the genius of this country is contained in a few words in our Declaration of Independence: “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The latter phrase was intriguing to him. It said that the Founding Fathers believed there should be more to life than just struggle. There should be bread, but roses too.
Being Irish he had certainly had his share of exposure to the dark and keening side of existence, so he was doubly impressed by his nation that was born with the audacity—the incredible optimism—to include that word “happiness” right there in its foundation