Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo

I am fascinated by people and what happens in the business world. As someone who is a student of business, who deals with people and works in the business world, I believe I can improve myself by blogging about people, business world, and people in business. Please follow along my journey if you share my interests. 

My first post is about Indra Nooyi. She visited UCLA Anderson, as part of Dean's Distinguished Speaker Series, to give a talk to MBA students.

Indra Nooyi @ UCLA Anderson, November, 2012

I had no idea who Indra Nooyi was before but I came away from this event very impressed and inspired, by her insights and her remarkable story. She is the Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, the second largest food and beverage business in the world. What’s even more remarkable to me, personally, is that she was born and raised in India and yet she climbed all the way up the ladder of one of the biggest American companies, as a foreign-born citizen. I think that’s really remarkable. In this event, she took a wide range of questions, everything from impacts of social media to competition with Coca-cola, and she answered them with a level of thoughtfulness and understanding that befits her title. When asked about competition with Coca-cola, she jokingly said, “which company (are you talking about?)”, and drew huge claps and biggest laugh of the day, displaying a sense of humor and a certain confidence and pride about PepsiCo in a very likable way. 

Let me share her story and her insights on few topics, which I think you might find interesting or useful. 

Her mom and Prime Minister/President of India

She shared her story of how her mother would ask her and her sister on the dinner table what they would do on certain issues if they were Prime Minister or President of India. Then she and her sister would give speeches and her mother would vote on who had the best answer. (For those parents out there who have kids, this might be an exercise for you to consider adopting.) Her mom gave her the sense that she could be whatever she wanted to be. She told another story of how her mother gave her a piece of paper, told her to sign her name and write President. Why? Because her mother said to her that, “because one day you can be the President.” Well, she didn’t quite become the President of India, but I think it’s safe to say she has done OKAY for herself. 

Advices to MBAs and aspiring General Managers

During Q&A session, a student asked for advices for MBAs in general and what things to strive for and what mistakes to avoid as an aspiring general manager. To this question, she basically said we have to work hard and there’s no short-cut or substitute for hard work. I found this answer very direct and truthful. She said that when she was our age, she worked her tail off. When she was given a job, perfection was only thing she could accept and she worked all the time and 24 hours was not enough. Also in today’s worlds, everything is more volatile and it’s more difficult to operate in today’s worlds. She told us that we have to get even more of a wide perspective on issues, not just sound bites from social media but go in deep and learn issues, really engaging with issues. I could feel instantly what she was trying to say, how our generation tends to glance things over and have a superficial knowledge about things, not real understanding or knowledge about the issues. “There’s simply no substitute for deep engagement and hard work. You are going to have to put in the hours.”  "Don’t think that the world of the future will mean less hard work." Second piece of advice she gave was to invest in communication skills, very early in life. She said that, as a leader, we have to motivate people, medium-sized and large-sized groups, and write in a way that is simple and to the point and how you communicate will be critically important. If we don’t learn it early in life, we will never learn later in life. The third and last piece of advice was, “when you go to work, don’t go to a job aspiring for the next job. Don’t run for office. If you do the job you are doing very well, next job will come to you.” This last piece of advice aligned with what I heard from Jim Morris, CEO of Pacific Life, who said that he never really looked past his post and then…..promotions kept coming his way at certain points in his career, eventually leading him to his CEO position.

First woman to receive
the Wooden Award

Legendary UCLA Basketball Coach John Wooden

She were to receive a Wooden award later that evening and she shared her perspective on Wooden and his legendary leadership style. The thing she learned by reading and learning about Wooden is the question of how to live a better life. How do you live a life where you believe in yourself and how do you live a life where you believe in others? Coach Wooden often talked about virtues of virtuous cycle versus vicious cycle. Positivity breeds positivity. Believe in people and bring out the best out of them and they become better. I think this is a good lesson for leaders. In contrast, some bad leaders rule by negativity and take out the sticks only. But Coach Wooden emphasized using carrot and sticks, and he emphasized the importance of a team and he emphasized the belief in others as well. I found this Coach Wooden quote I think you might want to read. It's definitely a quote to reflect on.: 

"Leadership is all about helping others to achieve their own greatness by helping the organization to succeed" 

- John Wooden. 

Short-term VS Long-term

She lamented how a notion of short-term has changed from once much longer period down to 3 years, 1 year, and now all the way down to one quarter of 1 year. Realities of stock market where market value of company is set by short-term marginal traders and projections of some analysts might  force CEOs to manage the company only for the short term and doing so would be a disaster for that company. That’s because when you manage for the short term, you are running and pressing the company too hard and at some point, that catches up with you and company crashes and someone has to come back again run it very hard again . She likened it to running a NASCAR race. When you feel like it’s a race, you could make some short-sighted move and crash or run it so hard that the car only run about 20 laps and have to stop and refuel. Or you could run at a steady pace and get more laps out of the car.  She said, “We are not in a race. We are in a long-term, sustainable enterprise building business.” She mentioned that companies cannot run on a quarter…companies have to think about duration AND level, not just level…and CEOs and board of directors have to get more courageous in managing for the long-term as opposed to managing for the short-term brought on by pressures from the outside.

Attracting the best people

Her response on this was something I have never heard before and I think it is interesting. Dean Olian came in and mentioned that Indra ties 50% of her bonus to talent sustainability. I am not sure how that gets measured but nonetheless, I could see that she takes talent recruiting and sustainability very seriously. Her approach in attracting the best people is that she tells people to “bring your whole self to work.” People are husbands, wives, daughters, mothers, artists, and citizens. PepsiCo employees don’t have to park all that they are at the door when they come to work. She wants her employees to come to PepsiCo saying I am all of these things at home and a citizen in a community and a country. This way, employees bring all of their sensibilities to PepsiCo. Then she can tap into all of their capabilities and sensibilities when they bring their whole-selves to work and she can create a better company this way and she makes sure to create an environment in a company that makes employees feel wonderful coming to work at PepsiCo. 

What a woman. What a success story. Incredible insights about how to work, how to be a leader, how to run a company. What do you think?