The Ten Commandments for Business Failure - Don Keough [58]
Someday you will not be doing what you’re doing now. Think about your corner of the world at the moment, and think about how you’d like it to look when you move on.
Many people spend all their years and never learn this valuable lesson—there is more to life than having everything. As you go through your working life, in every job you do, decide that this is the last job you will ever have and, therefore, whatever the assignment determine you want to leave it better than you found it.
The Ten Commandments for Business Failure all come with my personal guarantee that if you follow them steadfastly and consistently, you will fail.
But Commandment Eleven is the most important of them all because passion is essential to continue and expand the American Dream. I have had the benefits of that dream all my life, and I hope that others will for generations to come.
Optimism and passion are the warp and the woof of the same fabric of leadership and social progress.
If you want to fail, you can ignore these psychological factors.
But if you want to succeed, then apply them to turning your corner of the world into a better place.
A word of caution: Don’t be afraid of the criticism that great enthusiasm and optimism sometimes engender among the cynical, the “realists.”
“Be realistic” is appropriate advice in some instances, but before you leap to accept it, ask yourself if being realistic is not just an easy way to discard a higher, more idealistic goal—a vision of something extraordinary perhaps that others around you do not yet see or understand.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.”
—George Bernard Shaw
THIS PLANET OF OURS with its more than six billion fallible human beings and with all its tragic flaws is still a marvelous place. Wherever one looks there is something that could stand a bit of improving. While many would argue, I’ve always believed that business is one of the key instruments for improving the opportunity for people around the globe. I’ve always believed that serving in the business community is more than a privilege. With it comes the responsibility to make things better than they are. In my fortunate life in the Coca-Cola business, I’ve seen vivid examples of that in every corner of the world.
Some sixteen hundred years ago Saint Augustine wrote: “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”
If you want a better world for your children and grandchildren, believe! Believe that one individual can make a difference. And that individual can be you.
You will fail if you quit taking risks, are inflexible, isolated, assume infallibility, play the game close to the line, don’t take time to think, put all your faith in outside experts, love your bureaucracy, send mixed messages, and fear the future.
On the bright side, there is redemption. React in time, recognize the danger signs, and you can probably extricate yourself from one or even more of these traps. It’s hard for people and companies to avoid them some times. As I’ve confessed, the leaders of The Coca-Cola Company, including me, have been guilty of some of these failings from time to time. But never for very long. That’s the way it is with great companies and smart people. No matter what happens they are never mired in failure. They fall but always find ways to pick themselves up and move on.
“They laughed at Joan of Arc, but she went right ahead and built it anyway.”
—Gracie Allen
Acknowledgments
NO BOOK, even a little one, is a one-man effort. During the past twenty-five years I’ve had the privilege of being associated with two people who have helped me clarify and shape my spoken and written communications. As I have found myself communicating