EAT THE DONKEY
The comfortable drift toward mediocrity is the silent killer of great brands and companies.
Most organizations and departments don’t collapse from disruption. They slip, inch by inch, day by day, into sameness—playing it safe, optimizing yesterday’s success, and mistaking efficiency for progress.
In Eat the Donkey, Anthony Reeves proves how iconic companies and brands break that pattern. Through vivid stories from the Australian Outback to the world’s most influential boardrooms, Reeves reveals why identity erodes so easily, why “best practices” produce the same results for everyone, and what it takes to stay distinctive in a world that keeps drifting toward average.
This is a book about choosing discomfort on purpose. About knowing what you stand for, and protecting it fiercely.
Clear, sharp, and unexpectedly personal, Eat the Donkey is a guide for leaders who want their company, and their career, to matter for longer than one good cycle.
To be a brand that customers believe in. To be a company that your team believes in.
You must articulate your Foundations.
When a company scales, it begins to layer processes, structures, and hierarchies on top of its foundation. This is necessary—you can't run a billion-dollar company the way you run a garage startup. But slowly, the foundational instincts fade into the background. You hire specialists who weren't there when the donkey was eaten, and suddenly, decisions are made by people who don't know what hunger feels like. The company begins to wobble.
Your Foundations are your company's anchor. You can swing at the mooring and still be safe—the wind shifts, the current changes, storms roll through, but the anchor holds you in place. You know where you are. You can adjust your position, but you're tethered to something solid. Break that anchor line, and you drift. Not knowing where you're going. Not even knowing you're moving until you look up and realize you're miles from where you started, heading toward rocks you never saw coming.
Your Foundations are all you have.
Your Principles keep the Foundations strong.
Every company has the same access, to the same technology, the same people, the same assets, and the same thinking. Your Foundations and brand are not something you add to your business. Your Foundations are the reason your business exists. Your purpose, passion, and growth engine.
Whatever products you manufacture or whatever services you sell, somebody else can do it better, faster and maybe cheaper. Your only difference is you Foundations, Principles and Characteristics.
