The Ten Commandments for Business Failure [Hardcover]

Donald R. Keough (Author), Warren Buffett (Foreword)

Book Description

Release date: July 24, 2008

Don Keough—a former top executive at Coca-Cola and now chairman of the elite investment banking firm Allen & Company—has witnessed plenty of failures in his sixty-year career (including New Coke). He has also been friends with some of the most successful people in business history, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Rupert Murdoch, and Peter Drucker.

Now this elder statesman reveals how great enterprises get into trouble. Even the smartest executives can fall into the trap of believing in their own infallibility. When that happens, more bad decisions are sure to follow.

This light-hearted “how-not-to” book includes anecdotes from Keough's long career as well as other infamous failures. His commandments for failure include: Quit Taking Risks; Be Inflexible; Assume Infallibility; Put All Your Faith in Experts; Send Mixed Messages; and Be Afraid of the Future.

As he writes, “After a lifetime in business I've never been able to develop a step-by-step formula that will guarantee success. What I could do, however, was talk about how to lose. I guarantee that anyone who follows my formula will be a highly successful loser.”

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A former president of the Coca-Cola Company, Keough has assembled an enviable Rolodex in his 81 years, and his book counts Bill Gates, Jack Welch and Warren Buffett among its champions. His lessons draw upon his long and varied career—from his early days as a philosophy major to his first job as a TV sports announcer and employment at Butternut Coffee and Coca-Cola—and comprise a list of tongue-in-cheek rules guaranteed to make the follower a true loser in business: from quit taking risks and be inflexible to don't take time to think and be afraid of the future. Keough supports his commandments with stories of business mistakes and failures, both his own—the roll-out of New Coke, for example—and those of others—namely, Schlitz beer and IBM. While the author's clear and encouraging tone and renown within the business community will likely garner his effort publicity, the unoriginality of the material—all standard business-book fare simply phrased in the negative—keeps this well-meaning book from standing out or offering original advice to business leaders in the market for a little self-improvement. (Aug.) ""
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved."

From Booklist

Keough, a distinguished corporate executive, offers a perspective on failure that is especially applicable to leaders who have attained some degree of success. With a foreword by his longtime friend and associate Warren Buffett, the renowned investor, the author presents a chapter on each of his 10 commandments for failure and adds a bonus chapter about how losing passion for work and for life is a certain route to disaster. His failure commandments include stop taking risks; be inflexible; isolate yourself; assume infallibility; play the game close to the foul line (which offers thoughtful commentary on ethics); don’t take time to think; put all your faith in outside consultants; love your bureaucracy; send mixed messages; and be afraid of the future. Keough’s book is rich with examples of failure, and he gives advice on how to recover from mistakes while learning from them and moving ahead. This is an excellent book with valuable insight for corporate executives and those aspiring to corporate leadership. --Mary Whaley

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio (July 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591842344
• ISBN-13: 978-1591842347
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #760,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Straight talk from a principled, no-nonsense, and street-smart former CEO August 2, 2008

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

One of the fantasy dinners I occasionally think about would include several CEOs and one of them would definitely be Donald Keough. I tracked his career at Coca-Cola and then his association with Allen & Company as its chairman of the board. Regrettably, I never had the chance to meet him (much less dine with him) but was not surprised by the intelligence and sensitivity as well as circumspection that are revealed in his book. Keough is principled but he also possesses what Ernest Hemingway once characterized as "a built-in, shock-proof crap detector." He confirms a suspicion I have had for years: there are many different paths to business success but all business failures share common causes. Keough discusses ten of them, identifying each (with tongue somewhat in cheek) as a "commandment." He candidly acknowledges that throughout his career, he has broken (or at least bent) several of them when making a bad or at least ill-advised decision, notably the one he and former Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta made involving New Coke. He draws heavily upon his years at that company (1981-1993), citing real-world examples of business failure at a wide variety of companies, some of them otherwise quite successful and highly reputable.

No good purpose would be served if I merely listed the ten "commandments." Keough devotes a separate chapter to each and his insights are best revealed in context. However, I will provide a representative selection of brief excerpts to indicate the thrust and flavor of Keough's narrative, adding a comment or two of my own.

Excerpt: "A company doesn't fail to do anything.... Individuals do, and when you probe a bit you usually find that failure lies not in a litany of strategic mistakes - though they may all be present in one form or another - but the real fault lies, as Shakespeare noted, in ourselves, the leaders of the business. Businesses are the product and the extension of the personal characteristics of its leaders - the lengthened shadows of the men and women who run them. (Pages 8-9)

Excerpt: "As Peter Drucker pointed out nearly fifty years ago, it is management's major task to prudently risk a company's present assets in order to ensure its future existence. In fact, if a company never has a failure, I submit that their management is probably not discontented enough to justify their salaries. Xerox was not discontented in any way. They were very, very comfortable, and, as I've noted, when you're comfortable, the temptation to quit taking risks is so great, it'd almost irresistible. And failure is almost inevitable."(Page 23)

Excerpt: "Charles Kettering, the great engineering genius who helped steer General Motors during its glory years, said `Don't bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me.' It is instructive that during World War II, Winston Churchill created a special office whose sole duty was to bring him bad news. He wanted the unvarnished truth, no matter what it was...Isolation [from painful realities], carried to its most extreme form, tends to breed a sense of almost divine right."(Pages 51 & 57)

Excerpt: "Watch out for bright lights that surround themselves with dim bulbs!" (Page 55)

Excerpt: "The Jesuit priest and distinguished paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin noted that `no evolutionary future awaits man except in association with all other men.' Therefore, it not only behooves us to treat our fellow human beings with compassion and respect, it is essential for our collective survival. Unethical men and women can flourish for periods, sometimes very long periods, but ultimately their lack of morality - and their lack of humility - destroys them. You cannot build a strong and lasting business on a rotten foundation." (Page 77)

Excerpt: "If you want to get nothing done, make sure that administrative concerns take precedence over all others! Love your bureaucracy!...There are layers upon layers of people, yet when a customer calls, nobody's home. They are all in meetings. These meetings generate more paperwork, more e-mails, more calls, more meetings. In fact, most often there are meetings to plan meetings. Meetings are the religious service of a great bureaucracy and the bureaucrats are fervently religious."(Pages 116 & 120)

With regard to this last excerpt, I am again reminded of James O'Toole's observation that many of the barriers to change initiatives are cultural, resulting from what he aptly describes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Bureaucrats tend to be the most vigorous defenders of the status quo until convinced that any proposed change will not threaten their own subculture. It should also br noted that waste is one of the most important themes in Keough's book, one that is directly relevant to most (if not all) of his commandments. Drill down to determine the root causes of a business failure and you'll probably find extensive waste of resources and opportunities. In 1963, Peter Drucker shared this insight that remains true today: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."

Although most of the real-world examples that Keough cites involve major corporations such as Coca-Cola, IBM, Montgomery Ward, Republic Steel, and Xerox, I think that his observations and recommendations are relevant to just about any organization, whatever its size and nature may be. Although he places Commandment One, "Quit Taking Risks," at the top of his list of ten, my own opinion is that the last, "Lose Your Passion for Work - for Life," should be there. Among the most common causes of failure, not only in business but in life, I agree with Friedrich Hegel: "Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion." One man's opinion....

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out these books written by other fantasy dinner guests: Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, Peter Drucker's Adventures of a Bystander and On the Profession of Management, Jack Welch's Winning (with Suzy Welch), and James M. Kilts's Doing What Matters: How to Get Results That Make a Difference - The Revolutionary Old-School Approach (with John F. Manfredi and Robert Lorber). Also Bill George's Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value and his more recent True Blood: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, John C. Whitehead's A Life In Leadership: From D-Day to Ground Zero: An Autobiography, and Sydney Finkelstein's Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes. Read more ›

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Make sure you don't follow the commandments May 7, 2009

By Viriya Taecharungroj

Format:Hardcover

"While no company can ever embrace all of the world and all of mankind, Coca-Cola comes about as close as any."

"The Ten Commandment for Business Failure" by Donald R. Keough, a former president of the Coca-Cola company, is a small book that, if you follow the instructions, will guide you to be a very successful loser. If you do not want to be one, this book is a must read and take those lessons as a cautionary tale.

Coca-Cola is one of the most recognisable brands on the planet but it was still vulnerable to failures. In this book, Keough tells you stories of Coca-Cola, among other companies, on how it became successful and how it failed at times. When you read the words "failure" and "Coca-Cola", I bet the word "New Coke" sprang to your mind. Despite all the stories from any business book or textbook, in this book, you will have a chance to know it from the former president of Coca-Cola himself.

Contents

Commandment One: Quit Taking Risks
"It's reasonable to think that because when you achieve something, even very little, there is the great temptation to quit taking risks." Apart from telling you the reason that quit taking risk is a sure way to failure, Keough wrote briefly about Xerox and how they quited taking risk.

Commandment Two: Be Inflexible
Keough started this chapter with a story of Coca-Cola bottlers in 1940s-1950s and how they almost brought the company down because of the inflexible practice. This chapter also has the examples of IBM and Ford. All in all, "when the conditions around you change, remain inflexible. Keep on keeping on. Stand firm, You will fail....'

Commandment Three: Isolate Yourself
This chapter targets at those who get yourself a great big office in some remote corner of the most remote executive floor and the shut the door. And also put out a sign: "Don't make the boss mad. Bring me no bad news."

Commandment Four: Assume Infallibility
"If something seems to be heading in the wrong direction, cover up, better yet, wait until you have a full-blown crisis, then blame it on some external force - or blame it on somebody else." Keough wrote about a brief ignorance of Coca-Cola that damaged the reputation dearly in Belgium. There was also a story of Coca-Cola in Germany that Keough admitted he was wrong because he somewhat assumed infallibility.

Commandment Five: Play the Game Close to the Foul Line
He wrote about the problem with the Wall Street that made CFO the rock stars of business instead of being the guardians of the transparency and the fiscal integrity of the corporations. "There is no such thing as business ethics. Just ethics. It's not separated from the rest of your life."

Commandment Six: Don't Take Time to Think
Keough wrote that we are in the generation that is obsessed with technology. People said we are in the `information age' but he disputed that we are in the `data age' with all the ICT (Information and Communication Technology). We need to think and Keough tells you the vice of not thinking.

Commandement Seven: Put All Your Faith in Experts and Outside Consultants
This chapter has the popular case study, New Coke, not on how it failed but how it was caused. There is also a nice anecdote on Coca-Cola wine business.

Commandment Eight: Love Your Bureaucracy
"The bureaucrats who control these (bureaucratic) rituals guard them with their lives because any change undermines their own power or authority." He also mentioned that bureaucracy in one of the main reasons talented individuals left the company. There are some short stories of Coca-Cola, Dell, NASA, etc regarding love of bureaucracy.

Commandment Nine: Send Mixed Message
"It doesn't matter what you do, you'll be rewarded." is an example of a mixed message that Keough wrote about. Mixed messages create confusion. He wrote about Columbia and how Coca-Cola purchasing it sent a mixed message to everyone.

Commandment Ten: Be Afraid of the Future
The pessimists will not push anything forward be it corporations or a society. This chapter, Keough hit on the faces of those with pessimism.

Commandment Eleven: Lose Your Passion for Work - for Life
This is the bonus chapter and Keough wrote on how it is the most important one.

...

Next, I'll compare this book to an ideal business book or a book that is easy to understand, distinct, practical, reliable, insightful, and provides great reading experience.

Ease of Understanding: 9/10: It is a little book written in a plain language and all the commandments were beautifully in sync. You do not have to fret with statistical data or figures, everything is easy to learn and absorb.

Distinction: 4/10: The major difference between this book and others is that it is written by Donald Keough. All the commandments and stories in this book are not new, just from an opposite perspective.

Practicality: 8/10: It is somewhat confusing to define `practicality' of this book. Following the book will definitely lead you to failure and this book is written in a sarcastic tone. Thus, do the opposite and use the commandments in this book as a caution.

Reliability: 9/10: It is very hard to dispute his commandments. Look at the ten (eleven) commandments and try to tell which one will not lead to business failure. I can't, and I don't think anybody can. Although his experience alone is great enough, Keough put together different and interesting (albeit indifferent) stories of other companies and industries.

Insight: 5/10: This book is small and the stories are short. I wish stories, especially Coca-Cola ones, are longer with more insight and details. However, another thing I love about this book is quotations from various people. They are not numerous but I like every single one.

Reading Experience: 9/10: You will finish the book in no time. It is a pleasure to read. The tone of the book is sarcastic, casual, and joyful. I have never and will never have a chance to talk to Donald Keough but from the experience I have from reading the book, I come to think that the foreword by Warren Buffet might be true that "Don talks such sense and offers such inspiration. Don can tell you to go to hell so wonderfully you'll enjoy the journey."

Overall: 7.3/10: Get this book and you will like it. There are some flaws because it is very short but I truly believe that you can find much use of it. Hang this book it front of you office to remind you what you must not do in your business and you will shut the door to failure. By the way, I rarely pay attention to the praises and foreword but this book probably has one of the best compilations; Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jack Welch, and Rupert Murdoch... well... and George W. Bush! Read more ›

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another manager's perspective, but entertaining angle August 12, 2008

By Bill Gossett

Format:Hardcover

Anyone reading Donald Keough's book would do well to first review books like How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business and The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers just to keep things in perspective. Both of these authors explain why would should temper "expert opinion" even when it's presented as entertainingly as in Keough's book.

As someone who has been reading case studies and "the world as I see it" books by top executives for years, I find that many of the examples Keough lists are very familiar. Of course, the New Coke example has been around since I was in business school but, since he was there, Keough gets a special "insider's" pass and does provide some useful new insight. The other cases are also a little worn, but I don't think I've every been this entertained reading those cases.

The Ten Commandments themselves are also individually familiar. Does an exhortation to keep one's passion and to remember to take risks really ring that profound? No, but, come to think of it, I haven't found them all in one place nor do I think I found them as engaging as you will find in this book.

Keough will also get extra credit for a convincing appeal to authority. Authors which much more mediocre careers have written books with similar observations but Keough comes off as knowing what he is talking about - and still manages some self-deprecating humor.

This was a quick and delightful read and I found myself laughing out loud, pointing out paragraphs in the book to my friends, and email quotes from the book.... I plan to anonymously deliver this book to a couple of people who need it most (they may not get the joke, but I will). Read more ›