Coca-Cola Company. - Inside Coca-Cola: a CEOs life story of building the worlds most popular brand

This book is dedicated to my two families:

my parents, who molded me into what I would become; my wife, Pamela; daughter, Cara; son-in-law, Zak Lee; and grandson, Rory;

and

to the men and women of the Coca-Cola Company. Without all these great people, none of this would have been possible.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

This memoir, penned by my husband, is also about a life shared. You, the reader, might be as surprised as I was that my husband asked me to write this foreword.

During the past many months, as he wrote this book, he wracked my brains for the perfect person to introduce him, but he decided that this honor must rest on my shoulders.

I assume that part of his reasoning was that obviously I know him best. This must be true, our having been married for forty-one years and before that living in sin for two years in what was then referred to as Zambia, the small country where we met. We were considered very avant-garde at the time but it was the Swinging Sixties and so we were just ahead of the trend and have proved to naysayers that our relationship is a lasting one.

Even when I first met Neville, I knew he was the one I wanted to marry and as we got to know each other in those first weeks and months, I discovered his amazing work ethic, perseverance, and of course, ambition.

Over the years, I have watched him grow, but he made me grow also and rise to the occasion as well, and I believe that I was the soft cushion he could return to after a stressful day.

We realized early on that our personalities really complemented each others. Neville is a definite Gemini. He is gregarious, fun-loving, and adventurous but on the opposite side of the coin he can be serious, compassionate, as well as stubborn. I believe that by being a quiet and steady companion I have been the anchor in our relationship.

This book has been enormous fun, as I have really relived our life all over again and found it fascinating to look back through the mist of memory and re-remember so many things. I must admit that I also shed a tear or two over the lows, but they were few and far between, I can assure you, and we faced them together.

The lows were his constant traveling and focus on the job at hand, and I sometimes felt second best, but this helped me develop a very strong bond with our daughter, Cara, as she was my constant companion when Neville was absent. There were also wonderful highs: the traveling to countries and places that I would never have seen otherwise, basking in the glow of the position Neville finally reached, and the great financial rewards that have helped smooth the bad times and given us a golden life.

Reading this book has made me see my husband in another light: first as a young man making his way slowly up the ladder to bigger and better positions. Neville was always a very focused man, driven not necessarily to become CEO of the Coca-Cola Company, but to succeed at whatever task faced him at the time.

He was always excited with the job in hand and his motto was that he should tackle that to the best of his ability while looking for ways to improve the business and, of course, make his mark. He always said that if you fulfill your duties to the best of your ability the next step will come to you.

The journey with Coca-Cola took our family around the world. Whenever Neville was offered a new position, we would always discuss it in depth, and if it was in another country, we would get out the atlas and pore over the map, especially before we moved to the Philippines as I did not at the time know where they were. Coca-Cola always took great care of its expat personnel when they were transferred, and this was a huge help when facing life in a strange country, often with a new language to contend with.

The one person in our family who suffered from all our globe-trotting was our darling daughter, Cara. Neville and I had both been uprooted as children, moving from Great Britain to Zambia. We both found travel exciting and stimulating but poor Cara was moved to so many different countries (she has lived on five continents and attended six schools), she found it very disruptive during her early life. Now, however, she is happily married, and she and Zak, her husband, have shared with us our beloved grandson, Rory.

In todays increasingly global business world, these are challenges many families will face. Neville and I hope that our story will offer some guidance to those facing similar adventures, which are fascinating but not always easy.

While reading Nevilles memoir, I was full of admiration for the way he quietly faced the many crises and confrontations during his career that I knew nothing about. He kept his equilibrium every time.

One thing I always appreciated is that Neville would insist on taking his holiday every year, come what may. This was very important to him and our family, and we always enjoyed being able to get away and relax.

We had never expected that he would become CEO and Chairman of Coca-Cola, and had been looking forward to enjoying the rest of our lives together in a well-earned retirement when the call came that would change both of us and our lives forever. My main worry was over Nevilles health, our relationship, and how this new challenge might change it and his ability to tackle the daunting job of running Coca-Cola. What if he failed? I would be left to pick up the pieces. Reason won the day and now I blush at the thought that I tried to keep him from this pinnacle of success.

Five wonderful years passed and I saw him continue to grow, become even more confident, and relish all the difficult situations thrown at him almost daily as well as thrive at increasing his knowledge of geopolitics.

I also learned to appreciate him in a different way. He was able to include me in so many trips, and it was a pleasure to know that he really wanted me by his side and considered us a team.

When he stepped down as Chairman in 2009 I feared that he would find it difficult to relinquish all the trappings that go with the job, but he took this in his usual stride and was happy to pass the baton on to our dear friend Muhtar Kent and bow out from the stage and spotlight.

Neville always had a plan for retirement: to be intellectually engaged and stimulated and to live to at least eighty with me beside him. Now I look forward to all these promises.

I hope you enjoy reading this memoir as much as I have enjoyed living through it.

Pamela Isdell

INTRODUCTION

I was happily retired as a senior executive of the Coca-Cola Company, living on the island of Barbados and playing golf regularly in the bright Caribbean sunshine, when in February 2004, board member Donald Keough, former president and a great leader in the history of the company, phoned. Douglas Daft, Cokes Chairman and CEO, planned to resign after only four years on the job.

Don was named chair of a search committee to replace Daft and wanted to know if I would throw my hat in the ring. There were no guarantees, but he was willing to let them know I was a serious candidate.

These were dark days at Coca-Cola. Dafts predecessor, Douglas Ivester, had lasted only two years before he was told on a runway in Chicago by members of the Coca-Cola board of directors, including Warren Buffett, that he no longer had the boards support.