RIP Nic

I just heard the news that Nicola Kettlitz, head of Coca-Cola Canada, has lost his courageous battle with lymphoma.

The Olympic Movement, the Coca-Cola family, and the Canadian, Italian, and American business communities have lost a dear friend tonight.

His will be a death that will be felt around the Globe. Not due simply to his thirty-four year, multi-country, career at Coca-Cola. Not due simply to his leading role in managing Coke’s involvement in the 2006 and 2010 Olympics. Not due simply to his genuine involvement in so many charities, causes, and industry associations. Not due simply to his very public passion for his wife and daughter.

The impact of his death will be an emotional cocktail of all those things and more.

The more is simple for me to define. In a business world that often is filled with massive egos and blinding self-righteousness, Nicola stood out for his lack of either. He was as selfless an executive I have ever met.

I first met him while building a partnership for Coca-Cola Canada and a leading charity, that would be leveraged during the Olympics. He later ensured I had an opportunity to bid on some 2010 Olympic work, that despite our losing he personally reached out to ensure we would stay in touch. That’s incredily uncommon in our world. He meant it.

Not only did we stay in touch, but Nicola committed to supporting me in various endeavours. Chief among his actions was to speak at our 2010 Sponsorship Forum, despite the fact it was during the final weekend of the 2010 Paralympic Games. He not only showed up to fill his time slot, he presented an amazing keynote, that today mystifies me as to how he would have time to prepare during a crazy Games period.

When Nicola was named Head of Coca-Cola’s Canadian Business Unit, I was delighted. Selfishly my thoughts were solely on how I could grow my relationship with him, and not just from casual business acquaintance to client. I sought Nicola out as a mentor and he willingly agreed.

He regularly made time for me on his calendar and we frequently met at his favourite local Italian restaurant. I would often pick his brain on a myriad of business issues, and always marvelled at how this busy man seemed to have no end of patience for my self-serving queries.

But do not misinterpret my words that Nicola was soft. His drive for perfection was remarkable. But because he led from the front, his charges never wavered in their joining his pursuit.

Case in point was one of my advice-seeking chats with him. At the time I was looking at ways to fix some issues with my agency and candidly my career. Not issues regarding our revenue or our size, but in terms of achievement. At an earlier lunch I had outlined my challenges to Nicola and at this one I was sharing my plan with him.

As he flipped through the pages, my delight as his agreement with my vision was hard to contain. Nicola’s approval brought childish happiness to me. But suddenly he stopped in his tracks and eyed me judgementally. The halting page outlined my goals for the agency. One of them suggested how I perceived our agency being “rated” in a particular services sector.

He froze me with a steely eye and chided me for not being ambitious enough. He almost suggested that my leveraging of mentors like himself and others, wasn’t worthy of such a modest goal. He then skewered me more precisely that Coca-Cola only works with top-rated agencies and that if I wasn’t one now, my plan better call for me to be one.

This wasn’t a meeting. It wasn’t an agency review. It wasn’t a negotiation. It was Nicola being a friend. A business friend yes. But more.

He was being a mentor. He was being a leader. He was being himself. Which was a person committed to bettering others.

Goodnight Nicola.