Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Coca Cola and some advice on Bouncing Back

I read a lot. I read a lot abot management and leadership. I read self-help stuff. Not the 'talk you down from the ledge' type of stuff...but the stuff that makes you more successful and more productive.

What does this have to do with Soda?

I was reading Steve Farber's Extreme Leadership blog today, and he was reviewing a book called Bounce Back by Karen Salmansohn. Karen allowed Steve to print an excerpt from her book about how to deal with failure and career adversity.

Early in the exceerpt, she quotes Roberto Goizuetta. Who is Roberto Goizuetta? Why, he was Coca Cola's most successful CEO, that's who! (and readers of the blog would know that because I sing his praises any chance I get!)

Anyway, Karen Salmansohn talks about Goizueta stating:
Roberto Goizueta, Coca-Cola's CEO, says the risk-taker mentality is the very reason he hired back the guy who launched New Coke--a huge marketing failure. Goizueta recognized how you can become uncompetitive if you're not tolerant of mistakes. In fact, if you let 'avoiding failure' become your motivator, you¹re going dangerously down the path of inactivity.
"You can stumble only if you're moving," he says. So if you recently stumbled and fell in your career, re-focus on how your risky thinking makes you more knowledgeable. Own the positive lesson learned --as proof you are an outside-the-box valuable thinker. See work failure as 'fullure'--full of many lessons.


SEE?!?!? This is why Goizueta was my hero. (Although smoking 3 packs of day and dying of Cancer before the age of 60 is not exactly what I want my legacy to be....).

You can read the entire article about Karen's book here.

You can read more about Steve Farber here.


And remember...you can find the Coke vs. Pepsi Cola Wars lens here.

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