The Nimrod Review - Official Documents

‘Ten Commandments’ for business failure
Chapter 17 – Columbia and Other Lessons
17.44 It is instructive to have regard to Donald Keough’s ‘Ten Commandments of Business Failure’: 51
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1. Stop taking risks.
2. Be inflexible.
3. Isolate yourself [i.e. work in silos].
4. Assume infallibility.
5. Play close to the game line.
6. Don’t take time to think.
7. Put faith in [external] consultants.
8. Love bureaucracy.
9. Send mixed messages.
10. Be afraid of the future.
As explained above, many of these ills are to be found in the RAF and MOD, which have become ever-increasingly
reliant on a complex matrix and culture of process, paper, meetings, and ‘box-ticking’ as a substitute for sound
thinking.
Conclusion
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Donald Keough said (memorably) regarding the Eighth Commandment:
“Love your bureaucracy... There are layers upon layers of people, yet when a customer
calls, nobody’s home. They are all in meetings. These meetings generate more paperwork,
more e-mails, more calls, more meetings. In fact, most often there are meetings to plan
meetings. Meetings are the religious service of a great bureaucracy….”
Columbia and other cases have shown that, often, fundamental organisational causes lie at the heart of many
major accidents, and these have to be addressed in order to learn the real lessons for the future. Many of the
Recommendations later in Part VI of this Report seek to address these root organisational causes.
51 Donald Keough, former Chief Executive of Coca-Cola, Ten Commandments of Business Failure, pages 116 & 120.
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