2015 年 Charlie Rose：Remembering Don Keough

Remembering Don Keough

Friday 03/20/2015

https://charlierose.com/videos/28301

Friends of the late Don Keough reflect on the life of the former president and C.E.O. of Coca-Cola.

Charlie Rose: A young man named Don Keough worked for the Butternut Coffee Company when it was acquired by Coca-Cola in 1960. His life after that was never the same. Don Keough would go on to lead Coke as president and chief operating officer from 1981 until he retired in 1993. During that period, revenue rose to $14 billion from $5.9 billion and the average earnings gain was about 15 percent annually. Reflecting on his time at the company Don said, "I kept my head down. I jumped into a little creek which became a river which turned into a gulf which grew to an ocean. All I ever did was swim." He went on to become non-executive chairman of Allen and Company where he loved meeting young entrepreneurs from around the world who had plans for businesses. He remarked quote, "It is a lot of people betting on the future that keeps me young." Don Keough died last month at the age of 88 after a brief bout with pneumonia. Today we look back with an appreciation of his life. Joining me now four men who knew him: Muhtar Kent is CEO of Coke; Father John Jenkins is president of the University of Notre Dame; Timothy Shriver is chairman of the Special Olympics; and from Omaha, Nebraska is Warren Buffet, he is chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. I am pleased to have them here. Don Keough was a friend of this program as well and a good friend of mine. So friends celebrate him and appreciate him this evening. And, so, I'd like to begin with you, Warren. Tell me what he meant to you, because you go back further than any of us in knowing Don, who became a neighbor.

Warren Buffett: Yes, Don moved in right across the street from where I live now in about 1960, 1959, perhaps. And his front door was 100 feet from our front door and believe me, there was a lot of movement between those two doors. He was a wonderful friend 55 years ago and that friendship continued every day until just a week or two ago.

Charlie Rose: Here is an interview that he did with me talking about buying the house next to you, Warren. It's part of a documentary I did about you. Roll tape. How close did you live to the Buffetts?

Don Keough: Well, I lived across the street.

Charlie Rose: Across the street.

Don Keough: Across the street. I bought a house there in around 1959, a three-story house -- brick house, paid $27,500 for it and there was a young fellow living across the street in a another house, a big house. He paid $30,000, I think, for his. His name was Warren Buffett. Nobody knew who he was. He was a nice guy. He had -- I think he and Susie had three kids. We had four working on five. And you know, I got to know him. He wasn't easy to know because he -- you didn't see much of him but my kids did. Of course, the real story is he came across the street one day and he said, "Don, I love your kids." I said, "I know." He said, "You know, this is about college, you know, getting kids through college isn't easy." I said, "Warren, I'm working on grade school right now. I'll get around to college a little later." He said, "I've started a little fund, people putting money into it, and if you gave me say $10,000, I think I could build that up into something." Well, Charlie, I didn't give it to him for two reasons -- one, I didn't have it. I could have borrowed it from my father. But I went in to Mickey an said can you imagine giving $10,000 to a guy who doesn't get up and go to work in the morning? That was one of the great decisions of my life.

Charlie Rose: If you had given him that $10,000.

Don Keough: Don't ask.

Warren Buffett: yes, probably over $400 million.

Charlie Rose: About $400 million.

Warren Buffett: We're still friends today.

Charlie Rose: Remember that, Warren?

Warren Buffett: I remember very well because I worked out of my house for about six years, a little sewing room off the bedroom. Every morning when Don would go off to sell coffee, his oldest daughter Kathy would come over and we had a jungle gym on the side there with the slides and swings and the last thing he would see before going to work was me pushing Kathy on the swing or her pushing me. I think that made him a little leery to give me the $10,000 but when he came over later he asked if he could give it to me retroactively.

Charlie Rose: Did you ever remind him of how much it was.

Warren Buffett: Well, he seemed to do pretty well himself. It's kind of interesting -- it's kind of interesting that two guys living across from each other, you know, both living in houses that cost about $30,000 and then he ends up being president of Coca-Cola Company and we ended up buying a lot of stock in it.

Charlie Rose: And we have the CEO here tonight to talk about that. You said three words to describe him -- "everybody loved him".

Warren Buffett: That's absolutely true. How many people 88 can you make that statement about? But everybody did love him. And it was intergenerational -- Charlie. I loved him. My two wives loved him, my kids loved him, my grandchildren loved him. I mean he could connect with anyone and he connected immediately and he knew more about people and human nature when he was 20 than I've learned in 84 years. An incredible man.

Charlie Rose: Muhtar, what did he mean to you?

Muhtar Kent: Warren is right. Everybody loved him. Everybody respected him. Everybody -- not just the customer or the truck driver or the store owner, heads of government respected him. He was just a wide giant of a person. I don't think I'll ever meet someone like that in my life. I think if you're lucky -- if you're really, really lucky someone like that comes across your life once -- if you're really, really lucky. And that's who Don was. I met him very early on, very early 80s when I joined the Coca-Cola Company in 1978. And ever since that time, you know, we had an incredible bond and close relationship. He taught me all I knew about what I had to know. When you think of Peter Drucker's book, "The Effective Executive", I think he wrote about Don Keough. That was Don Keough. And then he was much more that because he was also a wonderful family person, an incredible father, incredible statesman and he knew he could go up and down. He could go from 50,000 feet all the way down to zero and then go right back up again. So those are things that are not always learned. It's combined, he used to learn until the day he passed -- I know that, every single day. He would say, your brain is like a sponge, it just keeps taking it in. And you have to open it so that you can get more information every day. Again, you know, when I told my wife he'd passed, she started crying. That's how people so loved him.

Charlie Rose: Fair to say you wouldn't be in a position you're in without --

Muhtar Kent: Without any question that he was somebody that touched me and I've become what I am as a result of that.

Charlie Rose: Father John Jenkins? He had a close relationship with Notre Dame?

Father John Jenkins: Yes he did. And personally as with Muhtar -- he's a great man Charlie. I remember I had been president of Notre Dame for ten years and his saying, you know, "Stay nervous. Avoid complacency and hubris," kind of ring in my head and had a huge impact on me. I think one of the things Don gives you, gave me is he was very generous with resource but most importantly he was generous with his vision. He challenged you to be better and he had an inspirational way about him that made us better. That's why we have near St. Patrick's Day one of the great Irish study centers because Don insisted on it because he was a proud Irish-American.

Charlie Rose: In fact he said to you, you know, this great university doesn't have an Irish studies program --

Father John Jenkins: Exactly.

Charlie Rose: -- and it needs one.

Father John Jenkins: It's the "Fighting Irish" and you don't study Irish? We went from zero to the best of (INAUDIBLE) because of Don. But not because of teach Irish because of his vision. And that's what he gave you; he inspired you to do great things.

Charlie Rose: Special Olympics was what, Tim, 1968?

Timothy Shriver: It started in 1968. I'm thinking that probably we owe our success to this catastrophic -- that poor decision Don made with Warren Buffet's offer. Because my mother, an Irish-American, went to him right around the beginning of the Special Olympics movement, and probably said to him something like "I have about 10,000 athletes and I want to grow it." He probably heard an echo of Buffett's voice in the back of his and said, "I'm not making this mistake twice." I think what's -- I mean just two things jump out at me. First of all, you know, listening to people talk about Don and going to his funeral, Charlie, the thing that struck me was how many people talked about him as a dad. And this is a generation of men who grew up to be powerful in politics, powerful in business, powerful in literature and the arts -- they weren't really known, to be honest, most of them, as dads. This is a man who, when you look at the full story of his life, almost everybody refers to Mickey, almost everybody refers to his children and his grandchildren, almost everybody alluded to the fact he was always there at the Little League game, at the drama show. This is a man who somehow came through the 50s and 60s and 70s when the role of men was changing, when business was changing, when he was in the most competitive businesses in the world, really. Challenged to swim in an ocean, as he said; and still managed to convince everyone around him that his family was the most important thing in his life, which I find so inspiring to men today.

Charlie Rose: He had a close relationship with your mother?

Timothy Shriver: He did. He saw something about business I think before most people and my mom was captivated by this. He saw that business had to be about values, not just about bottom line. He knew that he could build hi business if he had people who believed in his brands and believed in his products, who trusted his products, who understood that it was a promise and the promise wasn't just inside the bottle but it was all around the bottle. So my mother was enormously charmed. I mean the Special Olympics movement today is five million athletes, Charlie. But I'll tell you right now, it would not be where it is right now were it not for the fact that one corporate executive who had a global portfolio and who had a giant heart said this is something our business can believe in that will be good for human beings and be good for this company, too.

Charlie Rose: The heart there as an executive at Coca-Cola was reflected in all the global trips he made where he would go and see Coke employees around the world and bring the heart of the company to them.

Muhtar Kent: Yes. I mean Don got involved with the world of the globe in the 1980s when he really became the president and chief operating officer and, from that minute on, it was like he was the person -- the go-to person for everyone in the United States of America of what is happening in the world. So quickly -- how can someone just start this journey and become so quickly -- have that knowledge, have that inspired knowledge? And he basically always had wisdom that he was willing to share with everyone. And now the thing is, so, there wasn't a period of time when, after he retired, I would meet prime ministers, President Lech Walesa of Poland, President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, prime ministers all across the world. The prime minister from Austria -- "how is Don Keough"? They wouldn't say how's business, how's everything? "How is Don Keough. Please give him my best" -- years after he retired. Still happens today. And we got letters from all kinds of statesmen that are in their 80s, 90s, retired -- "We just heard, our condolences." And it's very unusual. It's the man. It's who he is.

Charlie Rose: What was the relationship he had and the partnership he had with Roberto so that they became, as some have said, a perfect combination?

Warren Buffett: They were a perfect partnership. I've seen probably three or four partnerships in business that really just stand out from all the rest and certainly when Roberto and Don combined their strengths it really was a case of two plus two equaling a lot more than four. They were complementary to each other in an extraordinary way and neither would have achieved the success they did without the other one. But Don was indispensable to Roberto. I watched that for many years. Let me tell you one story that I feel I owe it to Don to tell this because he never talked about it. But we were up in Sun Valley one time, and we were playing a golf match against his son Clark and my son-in-law Allen. And we really wanted to beat these young guys. So we started out a little - we were three down, and I forget whether it was the fifth or sixth hole, but we were three down and it was starting very badly. We got to this par 3 and I said, "Don, the only way we're going to turn the tide is if you knock this in". And he actually hit a hole in one at that point, and totally destroyed these kids. We went on to win the match. Don never told that story but you can confirm it with Clark and Allen.

Charlie Rose: There's also the story that he told me about discovering your investment in Coca-Cola that somehow Roberto may have asked Don, somebody's buying our stock, what's going on? And he said to Roberto, let me make a phone call, I know a guy. And he called you up to say --

Warren Buffett: Yes. Well, we bought about six percent of the company, and I don't like anybody to know when we're buying because it causes the price to go up, so I didn't tell anybody. All of a sudden, the phone rang and I picked up the phone and I can remember his exact words, he said, "Warren, you wouldn't be buying a share or two of Coca-Cola stock, would you?" And the cat was out of the bag.

Charlie Rose: They bought a lot of shares, did they, Muhtar? There's also the sense of understanding the company and its brand. No one was a better communicator of what the brand meant and what it meant to him and which he talked about. He said, "I define my role to protect and enhance the trademark of the company."

Muhtar Kent: He would always say, I have a very simple job. All I do is go in every morning, wherever I go to, working for the Coca-Cola Company and its bottlers, and I polish the brand a little more each day. That's what he would say and that's what he did. And he did it so masterfully. There was nobody living that personified the brand better than Don until he passed away last month. There was just no one that came close. That's why we -- you know, we named our current leadership academy at the Coca-Cola Company the Donald R. Keough Leadership Academy.

Charlie Rose: Teaching young entrepreneurs what?

Muhtar Kent: Teaching young leaders of the company, young entrepreneurs, young leaders about leadership and how Don -- it was personified in Don.

Charlie Rose: His values.

Muhtar Kent: His values, his wisdom, his wit, his humbleness and his way of clear communication and how he would set priorities. It would just come so naturally to him.

Charlie Rose: One of the things he said, that success made him nervous because it scared him that there would be arrogance and complacency.

Father John Jenkins: That wa his theme. And I heard that many, many times from him. Stay nervous, is what he told me frequently, and good advice. Good advice. I mean a brand like Coke, it's easy to ride on that or Notre Dame, but he was always pushing for more.

Timothy Shriver: He brought the same discipline to the issue of the -- you know, I could say not for profit sector. The initial sponsorship, if you will, of the Special Olympics movement in the 70s, he wanted to do something good for people and he thought it was good for the Coca-Cola Company, but he was clever too. He bought 100,000 T-shirts. I think he bought them for about $1.50 each and that summer every single local Special Olympics event all over the United States, about a thousand or 1,500 T-shirts were distributed and every single volunteer became an ambassador. The brand was all over. I mean you talk about polishing the brand. He polished the brand 100,000 times on a day those T-shirts were shipped. And his message was 100,000 this year, we're going to do more next year. You have to grow this thing. When I went in to see him when I was in my 30s and thinking about my own career, looking to him for advice as so many us did, his challenge to me was how do you grow this thing? How do you bring it to China and India? How do you make a difference for more children -- talk to the folks down in Atlanta. He always said, don't take to much of their time, he said, just ask them for what you need and then get the hell out of the way. I've tried to follow that advice, not always successfully.

Charlie Rose: Let's talk about new Coke -- he was part of that disaster. He said "We're not as smart to have thought it would be too perfect or too dumb to have not realized the mistake.

Muhtar Kent: Well, I think it's all about also having the courage to do something because rather than just, you know, watch things happen, take destiny into your hands, do something and have the courage. He always used to say where there's no risk, there no reward. I always repeat that all the time. So, yes, not everything that you do has to work, but making decisions and standing behind those decisions and be willing to admit that something is not working and go and change, have the flexibility, perfect example of that. And the brand and the company got stronger and better as a result of all of that put together. That's why he would say to you, you know, we didn't do it on purpose. We're not as stupid or we're not as clever as all of that seems. And then he was exactly, you know, talking about how he felt.

Charlie Rose: Warren, did he talk to you about that decision at the time? I mean you were on the board, by the way.

Warren Buffett: No, I wasn't on the board at that time.

Charlie Rose: OK.

Warren Buffett: In fact, none of us were there at that time.

Charlie Rose: You don't know anybody who was there.

Warren Buffett: I was out of communication. But the one thing he did tell me. He says -- he was talking to me about it afterwards, and he said, when those letters started arriving at headquarters addressed to "Supreme Idiot" and they brought them in to my desk I started to get the idea we'd lost a little something here.

Charlie Rose: Here's Don talking about that very decision with me at this table. Here it is.

Don Keough: Our U.S. business has had some challenges. A new formulation was built. Roberto had said, from the day we started, he said, let's sit with (INAUDIBLE) everyday -- everything's up for grabs. Don't be afraid to bring anything in. So a group of our technicians and our U.S. management developed what they thought was a formulation that was going to take over the world. Now you know,, we sat there at the corporate headquarters or sort of isolating ourselves a little bit and saying maybe it would go away, but they kept doing more taste tests, which I covered in two or three commandments. They got a lot of outside experts and sooner or later these things tried of take on a life of their own. I don't want to go into it too far. We ultimately bought in to it --

Charlie Rose: You bought into it?

Don Keough: We bought into it.

Charlie Rose: So you recognized the mistake and Coca-Cola did the work OK after that.

Muhtar Kent: I mean where there's no risk there's no reward. And be flexible and be fast. And then, of course, Don the giant of the man had this stature to go on television nationwide, I mean that night.

Don Keough: The simple fact is that all of the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the depth and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people. They said they wanted the original taste of Coca- Cola back and they wanted it soon.

Muhtar Kent: I was based overseas at that time, but that night, it was first news on all three anchors, and he was there in person and talking about it to consumers. And that's the way to handle something like that. There is no -- the perfect example of how he would go out and handle something like that. You know, not everything has to work. The thing is stand behind your decisions, and know when you've made a mistake and change it.

Charlie Rose: Warren he told me a story about that and he said that some woman called him up and got through to him and said how could you have destroyed Coca-Cola because it meant so much to me. He said "When was the last time you had Coca-Cola?" She said, "20 years." He said but why are you so concerned? She said, because you're destroying my youth. She remembered that Coke meant more to her than just the drink at some time. It was memory.

Warren Buffett: The people own the brand. The people own the brand. And taking it away from them, they found out how important that brand was to people. And just like that woman that hadn't had one in 20 years. But Don was in touch with people. They may have made a mistake there temporarily, but he could feel what people were feeling. He didn't have to put it into words. He just had that ability to just connect with you in all ways. That book he wrote, I don't know whether you're going to get to that.

Charlie Rose: Right now is a good time. Go ahead.

Warren Buffett: Well, we have a group that met every two years since 1968. We call it the Graham Group. Actually, Kaye and Don Graham was in it, Tom Murphy was in it and Bill Gates was in it (INAUDIBLE) -- and all of these people. And Don was in it. And every time we met the group wanted to hear Don speak. So I kind of wanted to rotate things but they didn't want me to rotate things. They wanted to hear Don. So he gave the key points in that as a talk one time and the crowd went wild. So we all suggested to him, you know, you have to put it in a book and he did and the world was better for it.

Charlie Rose: I repeat that now because Herbert Allen and I were talking about that early today. Herbert wanted to be with us. He just got back from Australia. And he said to me, "Don combined the best values of a great teacher and a great listener. He never held a long meeting, always leaving with you wanting more. He had the unusual combination of needing to be needed but never needing to be recognized." I heard the speech at Sun Valley which became the basis for the book and the book was released I think in 2008 and was called the "Ten Commandments for Business Failure". Ten things you can do for business failure and they are: quit taking risks, being flexible, isolate yourself, assume infallibility, play the game close to the foul line, don't take time to think, put all your faith in experts, love your bureaucracy, send mixed messages and be a friend of the future. That summed him up, did it not?

Warren Buffett: 100 percent. That's 100 percent. It was such a great way to present it, too, because everybody's got these ten rules for success, but he got -- I heard it in Sun Valley. I heard it with our group. I mean he just had that way of presenting things that grab you in the first minute and you would just hope he wouldn't stop talking, it was so good.

Charlie Rose: He wrote a letter to you when your mother died.

Timothy Shriver: He did. You know, I think he was of an era, Charlie, where there were sort of great Irish-Americans, if you will -- not just because they were Irish, but because there was a certain sense of faith that underpinned their lives. Don was tough. He was raucous. He was funny. He was wise. He took risks. But he had a deep faith. And I think that's what connected him to my mother. They had this beautiful -- whenever he would see her -- and she wasn't a touchy kind of person -- he would always hold her hand. And I never forget it because no one did that. I mean my father didn't hold her hand. I mean she just wasn't that kind of girl, you know?

Charlie Rose: But Don did.

Timothy Shriver: But Don did.

Charlie Rose: And she liked it.

Timothy Shriver: Don would reach across and he'd hold her hand and look at her in the eye and say, Eunice -- and there was an energetic connection there that I think he knew that she brought something to him that was important to his life, not a great huge university like Notre Dame and a powerful center for hiring education, but these little humble people that she represented also meant something dear to him. And she as their representative they formed a beautiful friendship.

Charlie Rose: Here's what he said about Notre Dame vs. Nebraska when I asked him about the competition between his beloved Notre Dame and Warren's beloved Nebraska. Roll tape. So what happened when they were playing the University of Nebraska?

Don Keough: Well, I have to tell you the truth. I was kind of pulling for Notre Dame.

Charlie Rose: Of course you were. I know.

Don Keough: And you know, Warren is one of the great fans of the University of Nebraska. We've seen a couple of those games together and Nebraska won both of them.

Charlie Rose: So the two of you were there rooting for the opposite teams?

Warren Buffett: Charlie, I have to tell you, Don broadcast Nebraska football at the very beginning of television when there was only one television station in Omaha and they paid $25,000 for the rights. So he actually broadcast the game. And of course, he had a 15-minute program on the local TV station at the time.

Don Keough: You know each day, as part of WOWTV's late noon hour show, we have 15 minutes where we drink a little coffee and meet a lot of very interesting people.

Warren Buffett: And he was followed by Johnny Carson who was just beginning his career. They lived in the same apartment house. And when I would see Don 30 or 40 years later at a Coke meeting or something he would say, "Warren", he said, "whatever happened to the Carson fellow?"

Charlie Rose: Warren, what were his passions other than Coca-Cola, friendship and Notre Dame?

Warren Buffett: That's pretty good list right there.

Charlie Rose: And Special Olympics, too.

Warren Buffett: Yes. His family and friends I mean. He, for five years after he had oral cancer, he made every single one of Berkshire Hathaway's directors' meetings, and after every one of them where maybe eight or nine managers would present, every one of those managers would get an individualized note that meant something to them. I mean he really was analyzing the business they were in where he might be helpful and these were not form letters. Every single one of them would get a message that meant something to them specifically. And that went on year after year after year after year when he could not eat a meal or anything of the sort. He came and he participated. Just anything he did, he did 100 percent.

Charlie Rose: He was on the board until what?

Muhtar Kent: Until a couple of years ago, and then he retired from the board and stayed on as adviser to the board until he passed away. You know, to Warren's point about the intellect that he put into the letter, I kept every single letter that he has written to me over the last 30 years and there would be one letter that came from him always on St. Patrick's Day. But I obviously received many other letters and I put them all in a file and I kind of opened that file and read through that file, and I had to hold my breath because it is so current, whatever was written 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, has incredible relevance and meaning today. And it's just -- they're just beautiful words put together by a deep, strong intellect and passion.

Charlie Rose: OK. Here's picture with you Muhtar. You and Don meeting the Austrian prime minister, this is 1992. You can see that picture in a moment.

Muhtar Kent: Yes, that was Franz Vranitzky who was the prime minister of Austria for -- chancellor of Austria for ten years from '86 to '96. And there we are opening our office for eastern and central and southern Europe, and Don visited us. You know, I traveled with Don a lot and met with a lot of dignitaries. As I said earlier, it was just a bond, like what Tim said about the bond between Eunice Shriver and himself. There was just a bond. Those big hands would hold and the eyes would lock in and there was just a deep intellect, humor, wit, understanding, ability to listen to people and contribute. And so whether it's Franz Vranitzky, chancellor of Austria, presidents all around, they would just care about the person and remember, even if it was one meeting.

Charlie Rose: Let me get a final word from each of you, Tim, as we remember and appreciate a friend.

Timothy Shriver: I think the great thing, Charlie, about Don is that, where business is going today, you see brands all over the world trying to find ways to embody big values, to capture the power of delivering the product and delivering the value proposition at the same time, about being that something more, something bigger. Don knew that 40 years ago and he created the world's most powerful brand because he linked it with deep value; because what he brought to individuals, he brought to the company. There will be business leaders for the next 20 or 30 years who would do well to study what Don Keough believed deeply which is the heart and soul of the business is just as important as its operations and its efficiencies.

Charlie Rose: Father Jenkins.

Father John Jenkins: I'd just say -- I'd just build on what Tim said that again, Don, you look for a technique or you look for some trick he did. It was Don. It was who he was, the values he espoused and lived by. The way in which he connected with people as Muhtar was saying said in a deep level. That gave him the power of being a great leader. It wasn't any gimmick. It was Don. That's what he taught me.

Muhtar Kent: He was the most special person that came through my life and I will always remember him and love him for that and for what he did to make everyone he touched a better person.

Charlie Rose: Warren, final word.

Warren Buffett: I'd just say again. Everybody loved him and they were 100 percent right.

Charlie Rose: For all of you who came here this evening to appreciate Don, thank you so much. For all who knew him, all who knew of him and all who wished they had known him, for all those whose lives he touched -- we remember him and our thoughts and sympathy are with his wife Mickey; his daughters Kathleen Soto, Shayla Rumely and Eileen Millard; his sons Michael and Patrick and Clark, 18 grandchildren and two great grandchildren, a remarkable man who understood the power of friendship. We remember Don Keough tonight.