The Ten Commandments for Business Failure

by Donald R. Keough

Description

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 show more 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." show less

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2 reviews

librisissimo 2,423 reviews

Substance: Very worthwhile information not only for business leaders and managers but for any type of project or relationship; especially applicable to politicians. Read in conjunction with Phil Vischer's biography "Me, Myself, and Bob" to see many of the "failure principles" in action. Reverses Tolstoy's dictum that (paraphrasing) happy families are all happy in the same way, and unhappy ones in many different ways. Keough says that there are many paths to success, but most failures incorporate his ten rules.
Style: Casual and informative.
Notes:
The Ten Commandments for failure are: Quit taking risks, be inflexible, isolate yourself, assume infallibility, play the game close to the foul line, don't take time to think, put all your faith show more in experts and outside consultants, love your bureaucracy, send mixed messages, be afraid of the future, (#11) lose your passion for work and for life.
Note that being flexible is good, but not if it includes waffling on your principles (and know what those are). show less

Sep 18, 2011

aquamari 135 reviews

Pieter Slegers gave you a copy

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