LEADERS PERSPECTIVE II

“The moment avoiding failure becomes your motivation, you're down the path of inactivity. You stumble only if you're moving.”

Roberto C. Goizueta

CEO, Coca-Cola comp

1981-1997

He coined 'Coke Is It!'

Roberto Goizueta was born in Havana on November 18, 1931, to a prominent family in Cuba's sugar industry, and studied at a private academy in Connecticut. There, he polished his limited English by watching the same movies over and over. He earned a degree in chemical engineering at Yale University, then returned home in 1953 to join the family enterprise. But a year later, he entered the soda business by answering a classified advertisement in a Havana newspaper.

Working his way up from technical operations, Goizueta was named a vice chairman in 1979, president in 1980 and and chairman of the board and chief executive officer on March 1, 1981. The new CEO immersed himself in the company's accounting and economics. With a new, punchy advertising slogan, "Coke Is It!" he successfully increased domestic sales while continuing to plumb new international markets.

During his tenure at Coke, Goizueta turned around what some business analysts once called an old, conservative company by emphasizing global sales and making moves never seen by the company before. His motto: return on investment and stock price. "The curse of all curses is the revenue line," he once said, referring to the need to be profitable.

And fortunate for him and Coke investors, Goizueta's company was just that. Since becoming CEO in 1981, he created more wealth for shareholders than any other CEO in history, largely due to his global marketing skills. Total return on Coke stock was more than 7,100 percent during his tenure, according to analysts. He owned nearly 16 million Coke shares worth roughly $1 billion, making him America's first corporate manager to achieve billionaire status through owning stock in a company he didn't help found or take public, business analysts said.

A lifelong heavy smoker, Goizueta was diagnosed with lung cancer in the summer of 1997 and died on October 18, at the age of sixty-five. He was buried in Arlington Memorial Park in Atlanta. Since his death, Coca-Cola has maintained its worldwide presence but has not come close to reaching the financial heights it enjoyed during the years of Goizueta's leadership.