CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi Full Interview | Leaders of Character

so today we have the distinct honor to interview for leaders of character mrs indranui one of the most character-driven amazing women that i have ever met um i have been fortunate to hear from her several times now and learn valuable lessons ms indranui started her career in business the majority of her career was spent with pepsico where she ended as ceo and chairman growing revenues up to 65 billion dollars by more than 80 percent and also showing that diversity actually increases performance and inspiring millions of women to follow in her footsteps now she has the distinct honor of serving in the board of directors of amazon and more importantly helping shape the next generation of leaders of character as a visiting faculty member at the united states military academy at west point and also is currently writing a book that is going to also have a significant impact on the next generation so ma'am i can't thank you enough for taking the time to be with us today to impact the next generation of leaders and for us to have a candid conversation because the the first step to creating change is is having candid conversations and understanding things because some of the topics today i don't fully understand where i can't have the perspective on certain things such as being a white male i don't understand that perspective of growing up as a diverse woman um in a male-dominated world but i can gain that perspective and people can gain that perspective from great leaders like you and understanding is something that we feel is is the number one way to actually creating lasting change so i can't thank you enough for coming here today to speaking with us to sharing wisdom and helping us really make the next generation better than your generation so we can also make the next generation after us better so thank you thank you for having me it's a real privilege being on the show and thank you for inviting me to speak with you well thank you for first and foremost one of the most incredible things is that you were ranked the number one most influential woman in business by fortune magazine and rightly so is you've shattered numerous uh glass ceilings broken many barriers and you became the first woman to lead a fortune 100 company which is absolutely incredible accomplishment first off congratulations how and what do you think inspired you and kept you going to achieve such amazing accomplishments in your life so max first of all i have to tell you that those lists those fortune lists and forbes list of women you end up on those only because you've performed because the minute you stop performing you're thrown off the list and so it's sort of a uh a scary thing to be on the list second thing is when you're number one there's no other place to go but down so it's an even more frightening place to be on but let me just tell you right through my life um i never aspired for the next job because i always felt that because of my background my ethnicity the fact that i was you know a female in a very different culture and environment because i grew up in one country i was in corporate life in a different country i never thought i'd make it to anything beyond what i was doing so i just focused on doing the job i was doing exceedingly well that was my only focus promotions just happened and the ascension to the ceo was a complete surprise and it's just an indication that if you do the job that you're given exceedingly well without thinking about the next job and the next job which means that you are more worried about your ascension in the company and the politics to get to the talk um you know it's just the wrong approach just focus on doing the job you're doing exceedingly well that's all i did all my life uh if if my job was sort of defined narrowly i always defined it broadly because i wanted to know how my job was going to fit into other people's jobs so i was always trying to zoom out to understand what more i could do to make my work more relevant to others so now in retrospect people tell me that got me noticed at that point i thought that was my job to not just do my job but to see how it fit into other people's jobs so when you put the company and the job over yourself which is what i did uh the rest of it just happened what what do you think allowed you to break that glass ceiling of becoming the the first woman to lead a fortune 100 company um you know i came into the workforce at the time and there weren't too many women and you know even though i faced a lot of resistance it wasn't anything like people faced today people sort of looked at me and said my god here's a woman one of the few in our circles who's doing such a good job let's give her support so i see on the on balance i got more support than i did opposition which is a very good thing that helped me and all my mentors were males max and they went out of their way to lift me up provide me the tailwind tailwinds and i'm deeply grateful to them and so right through my life i did my part they did their part now it's not this they told me that i was awesome when i didn't do something right they hauled me in and said let me tell you what you're doing wrong and what i would do if i were you how to fix what you're doing so uh they gave me strong advice they gave me constructive advice and i listened i didn't immediately say they don't want me to succeed so i was open-minded and this combination allowed me to make myself better and keep doing the job i was doing i think i had an a i had an i had an added benefit which is you know i was an immigrant person of color female and every time i went into a job i viewed myself as being in a home so i said i'm so different people are going to view me negatively so i'm in a home so i knew i had to do exceedingly well to first get out of the hole and then perform what i did not realize is that people didn't put me in the hole i put myself in the hole so my performance was way better than anybody else in fact i think i intimidated more people because of the quality of the work i did now it came at a tremendous personal cost but at that point i just wanted to do well what were one of the watch outs of falling short of that goal and of what you accomplished it's a personal thing uh remember the goal was not to be ceo the goal was to keep the job the goal was to you know make sure that i contributed positively to any corporation or entity i was a part of so that was my barometer not did i get a promotion did i get a big raise i don't think i ever asked for a raise or a promotion so that was not the indicator that i was looking at um the consequences are if you don't do well when you get to senior jobs max you get thrown out and so uh you know the shame of losing your job for performance you know losing your job because their job is eliminated is a different thing but losing your job because you didn't perform uh culturally for us it's a big shame because uh you know culturally i was always brought up saying if you're given a job you do it well or don't be in that job let somebody else do it and you know you've got to give it your head heart and hands that's the only way i know how to do things and that's the way i did it what was it like growing up in business as a woman of indian descent in a male dominated industry like i said every place you went into you felt like you were in a hole and remember the times that i grew up in there were hardly any women i never had a woman boss there were very few peers were women uh and so i could be in meetings with fifty hundred men and i'd be the only woman okay so at that point you don't think of yourself as a woman you just think of yourself as one of the guys and you just have to hold your own you're focused on holding your own i think i got stronger because at every point in time i was watching you know 99 guys and me you know 99 were men right i was watching them to see how they behaved how they acted not that i wanted to act like a man don't get me wrong but i watched what it takes to build confidence what it takes to articulate your point of view and then i had mentors who were men who told me you know don't do this do this sit up straight you know articulate clearly be more pithy they taught me so much so i think in a way i was lucky to risen resilient corp in the corporate world at the time that i did because i was so unique i was not viewed as competition i was viewed most of the time as an interesting addition to the team okay only recently are people viewing women as real competition to them in my time it was ah she's interesting she works her tail off she uh helps us out when we're stuck and she saves our ass now and then so they liked all of that do you think corporations are doing a better job today at developing and supporting women i think they don't have a choice max because if you look at high school valedictorians 70 of them are women more than 50 of the top grades and colleges are women 60 percent of the professional degrees are being gotten by women women are hungry they want to do better they want financial freedom they want economic freedom they don't want to be caught in any situation where they're helpless dependent on somebody that is not fully dependent uh not fully dependable and so when you have women who are performing so well for us to get the best and the brightest into the company and move ahead we have to recruit from the whole pool not just half the poor and so the minute you go to the whole pool to pick out the best and the brightest you get a large number of women in your interview pool and if you want to get the best out of them you have to create an environment where they can contribute because if you bring in the best and brightest who are also women then you throw all kinds of roadblocks in their way you're just going to strip their confidence and if you strip their confidence you're going to strip their competence what a waste so you ought not to look at them as women and men you look at them as incredible assets to move the company forward so if you look at them as you know real engines of dry of business growth and performance it's a whole different approach than say oh yeah these women there's your mindset that has to change the big challenge is a lot of the young leaders of today the bosses are still the boomer generation or the generation after me who are still getting used to having a lot of women in the workplace i think the millennials are much more comfortable with working with a lot of women so as there's a generational shift i think you'll see a lot more comforted women and this conversation with women and men i hope just goes away to the best talent what do you think corporations can do to maximize their talent overall i think corporations should think about how to use the talent um not as just tools of the trade but as human beings that come with families communities uh the worries and strides you know tribulations of you know managing a life as opposed to just the work and so companies ought to be thinking about how to allow them to integrate the two wonderful thing about covet max is it allowed us to think about flexibility how can you work on home and still do your job or how can you work some days at work some days at the home so covert actually taught us a lot that allows people to balance work and family just a little bit more because it saves you computing commuting time and if you don't have to be on nine to five in a job you actually have more degrees of freedom and still get the job done and so for companies to get the best out of their people they've got to make sure that they provide some flexibility they provide ability for people to go have a family or to care for a sick relative because unfortunately that's all part of life you can't tell people if you have a sick parent that you have to care for especially the terminally ill tough luck you just can't get paid i mean people need uh the power of the paycheck to live um and then i'd say for young family builders uh you know the country needs children we need 2.1 children per family right now we have 1.6 or 1.7 if you want to have families having children where families become a source of strength not a source of stress you have to find some way to provide some child care help because you know you can't have a baby and drop it in the field after two weeks or two months and come back to work you need a care infrastructure so i think some combination of paid leave flexibility and um child care can actually go a long way to bringing in not just the women young family builders into the job and keeping them happy and worry-free stress-free reduce their stresses and and that's necessary for what pepsi i've i've heard that pepsi wants their work force and their demographic other workforce to emulate the demographic of their consumers and race religion ethnicity how far has pepsi come with that or what can they do to actually achieve that so the reason we say that our employee base should reflect our consumer basis because you know we sell to everybody in the world there isn't anybody we don't sell to so let's just take the u.s every person in the u.s is a potential customer right we don't make jet engines or heavy equipment we make simple pleasures in life everybody is entitled to simple pleasure in life so we want to be able to tell everybody in the population we want all of you to have a chance to work in our company just perform you can work in our company and so we we don't want to discriminate based on your background or gender or whatever we just want to hire the best and the brightest that's it and for people who have not grown up in an environment where they can be you know highly uh sought after because they grew and grew up in an environment lots of role models we bring in people who we think have potential but haven't had the role models and the support and we developed them in the company i'll give you a simple example anja mimer is a product we owned the pancake mix now the name has been changed um the angel mimo product was typically for african-american or black families yet the team that was running anja miami was all white now i have nothing wrong with that team because you know typically those people go out and study the african-american community a lot more but it would be much easier if you also had black people on their team so that the decision-making will improve right so we don't do this as a corporate social responsibility max we do it because to get the best decisions the best thinking into the decisions that we make as a company we have to have diversity right and for all the consumers we're serving all of those consumer voices should be in the decision making in the company so for us it was a question of business growth economic success nothing else [Music] moving back to your point about having both people in the workforce and and kind of the challenges that that you talked about i mean you said on your your final day at pepsi a couple key things but one was that it's rarely possible to be the perfect mother wife and worker at the same time and understanding this conflict is the first step to finding solutions what what suggestions do you have to help women find that balance between being a successful business leader a mother and partner at home all of which are three full-time jobs and then obviously depending on the culture you're in maybe you have a you have a fourth full-time job so it's not just women i think we ought to say how do we allow society to do it because once we make it a woman's problem we tell them make checklists be more organized you know that's all fine and dandy i think the real issue is um we have to start off saying women are half the population if you don't hire from that half of the population which is so smart the company is not going to do so well right if on the other hand you do hire from that population and they have to work so hard with no support system and they don't have kids population is not going to grow which is not good for the country okay you need a replacement rate level of growth in our country okay clearly we have immigration as a gap filler we can use immigration but why not grow our own kids and the only way to do that is by providing support for all young family builders to have families you know to me when somebody is going to have a child they ought to get a letter from the president saying thank you for your service to the country as much as i do if you serve the country as a member of the u.s military and the reason i say that max is because when you have a child and all the troubles you go through to deliver the child bring up the child you're doing the service you're doing a service to the country you are helping improve or increase the population of the country and not only are you bringing this child in you're also committing to bring up this child in a way that that child becomes a good citizen of the country but you can't do it alone because for many people life is fragile families break up at times you can have a crisis in the family where you don't have the financial means to support yourself you need both people working if you want to create wealth both the husband and wife have to work to create wealth for the future to put away money for retirement given all that women need to have the power of the purse women need to have economic freedom and so we all have to get together and say what are we going to do to encourage both allow them to be in paid work and have kids that's my book all about but getting getting to that solution one of the first things we have to do is understand that that there is a problem and if we're looking at the statistics right now there is a problem because ideally we want to look at everybody just socially and say everybody has a responsibility but looking at harvard business review studies and everything it showed that more the more successful a man is the more likely they are to find a spouse and be a father whereas the opposite is holding true for women right now where the majority of high achieving women do not have kids they're either divorced or they were never married now you hit the trifecta at work um as a parent uh as a wife and as a businesswoman but statistics right now suggest that you're an exception not necessarily the rule can women today and tomorrow have it all um successful career children and relationship um when statistics are showing that they've struggled in the past and they still are struggling today to do that so first thing is if you want to get married okay make sure you pick the right guy critically important critically important you gotta have the honest conversations with your spouse on equality at home both are going to help one's not going to watch tv while the other one is working all the time okay so it's got to be both are going to contribute to the family both are going to further the family's success so both have to come into working equally second is you've got to let go of perfection especially women uh we want to be perfect at everything doesn't work there's so much to do there's no time to be perfect at everything you're going to let go of perfection uh third is that guilt will overcome you uh remember gift is not something you can just get rid of overnight to say i'm not going to feel guilty anymore it's going to overcome you figure out how to way to handle it because if it consumes you then you're always uncertain whether you should keep working and then when you quit your job and stay home you wonder why you quit your job and stay home because you feel like you've lost your identity or sense of self-worth it's a very complex thing um and so i think that you know what we have to do to get the trifecta is marry the right person have the conversations let go of perfection handle guilt properly and know that um every day there's going to be trade-offs you make every day every hour sometimes there are trade-offs you'll be making it's okay to make those trade-offs it's okay sometimes you might say am i going to go out and have a drink with my friends or am i going to go home and be with the kids and the family that's your choice i never went out and had a drink with the friends and hung out when my kids were small for me it was simple i'm going to go to work i'm going to go home to the family period end of subject i didn't feel i missed anything but all every time you're going to have to make some of these choices and as long as you recognize that major decisions are not going to be made at the bar and nobody's going to exclude you from decisions if you choose to go home and be with your kids that's okay but then it comes back to the first thing i said max if you are a terrific performer and you are so good at what you do people cannot not include you in their decision making so the biggest investment you can make is to be supremely um outstanding in the work you're doing so people look at themselves and say our decision making is going to be so much better if andra was here in the room and i think maybe that's why i got to where i was because uh wherever i went i wanted to make the whole better as opposed to just endorse the whole no i mean obviously you raised two incredible daughters that are going on to do great things but that burden of guilt still has to weigh on you a bit and you talked about that a little bit in your last days yeah a bit a lot well that's you know part of the course because my kids remind me oh you were not here but i was there for every event that they had every school event i was there and i was on the school board i never missed a single board of trustees meeting if they sprained their ankle i was the first mother who rushed to school of course they tell me mom you're embarrassing us why did you show up because the nurse called and told me you sprained your ankle so i'm here so i was always there but you know with kids it's interesting um on the one hand especially with the moms they use them as punching bags okay at the same time they also respect those moms who work so this is one of these uh damned if you do damned if you don't you think it's harder for women on average to deal with the guilt of not being there for their children as much as it is for fathers i think it's in our genetic makeup guilt is into a is embedded into her gene pool and so women feel a lot more guilt i think recently i'm hearing a lot from the men too that they too feel like they missed out in their children's development or mixed up missed out on family time and i can understand that but women just you know have it in abundance let's put it that way right it consumes you right even now i'm looking at pictures of my kids when they were babies you know little chubby things and where was i how did i miss all this i was there but i i still miss it you know you you kept a note from your daughter she wrote you a note when when she was really little saying i love you but i i really miss miss miss you and i'd love you more if you were home more yeah and you you kept that note why why did you keep that note because it reminded me that for all the success there were also you know some collateral damage if you want to call it where my kids really miss me please please please please please come home i still keep it in my desk but um look we are all people because we have a family around us we're people who love us people who center us people who make sure we don't start thinking we're way bigger than we are right i love my family i mean they're my everything and as you get older you they become dearer to you and so when your kids however old they are walking and they give you a big hug it's such a great feeling max and so those notes and i have many of them from my two daughters they remind me of how much they love me then how much they love me now and what an important role parents have to play in children's lives do you think having children makes you more inclined to success or do you think it detracts from somebody's ability to be ambitious and become very successful that's a leading question see children are more work there's no question about it if you think you can just have children and say there's no more work forget it it's a lot of work and as the children grow they need you more and more it's not that they need you less so children are a lot of work and while they need you at the pyramid in the organization is narrowing so you have to study more and more and read more and more to move up in the pyramid so the biological clock the career clock are both in raging conflict with each other but that's life and so um i think having children is a lot of work but it gives you a third dimension of softness and it also teaches you how to mentor and develop people because you're developing and mentoring people at work all the time as you are your kids it makes you a fuller person it also allows you to understand the trials and tribulations of what other people go through because when you don't have kids and we don't really have a family you expect everybody else to perform like you are and they can't because they have families too right businesses are systematically trying to help with some of those issues one of them is many companies are allowing women to freeze their eggs as a way to try to systematically help that but that also has a whole host of issues because as women are waiting longer in their lives to have kids number one it's a very painful uh process but number two it also is never easier to have kids as you progress through the corporate ladder either so they're systematically trying to find ways but kind of that solution holds a whole host of issues in it of itself how can businesses try to systematically help women have it all where they're not doing the best job right now at it so you know in a way i'm glad companies are now paying for egg freezing costs that's fine but the better thing is encouraging people to have kids earlier we're providing the child care support but with child care i mean you've taught me the child care system is when you're thinking about leaving probably your most valuable asset your children with child care workers that are getting paid less than grocery clerks how could somebody feel comfortable doing that it's ridiculous if we don't start looking at child care workers care workers both child care and senior care workers are saying what's a fair wage for them you know max really trusting are most vulnerable to people who don't get paid much it's not fair i mean it's like um i'm not saying money is the only motivator for people many of these care workers do such a great job and i just think it's wrong for society to look at them and say your job is not much you're just a glorified babysitter because what happens is when we are young we are spoiled by local neighborhood babysitters are willing to do the job for a bitterness but they're all school kids high school kids or you know college kids who are willing to do this as an add-on job but don't make the entire care employee system high school kids right you know don't pay them like that so i think there's one debate and discussion and move to action that needs to happen it's paying the care workers the right amount of money major piece of work that needs to happen fast i mean i mean this isn't a political debate i mean this is economically it's a necessity i mean you talked about the 1.6 to 1.7 children that my generation is going to need to have to take care of the older generation so if people are what 10 000 people a week are becoming 65 and then 75 we are going to have to pay for the medicaid medicare or not but there's there's no incentive to do that because number one like like you were talking about it's it's very difficult because if we are going to grow up that 2.1 rate both people have to work in a relationship and they have to have kids but now you're saying that we're going to give our most valuable resource to somebody that society doesn't value so now one person is probably going to stay home or you're going to be incentivized i would have less kids rather than more kids summarizing the problem in a nutshell that is the problem in a nutshell so what are the ways around this uh you know with a combination of paid leave flexibility and care right you can manage through things because you can tell people work out a home some days come to work some days for days that you come to work we'll have child care so if you work that equation carefully you can help families you know balance the two but we have to stop treating five plus um schooling as a societal responsibility right zero to five being an individual responsibility that's what we're doing we put down public school education five plus into the tax base right we pay for schooling in our tax base i've never thought about it like that that's that's a great point zero to five except when states have head start we basically look at zero to five as an individual responsibility now there's another way to look at this to say when the child is zero to five if one of the parents chooses not to work and stay home okay uh and take care of the kids full time is okay but that's if you have one kid right if you have two kids immediately seven years if you have three kids it's ten years you know that zero to five has to go through right the minute you get that done you're completely irrelevant in the workforce because if you're out of the workforce for five to ten years it's very hard to come back in the return ramps are not very good and so we have to get practical about this issue max really practical so but but even with paid time so obviously there's something that is is is a big problem now but then there's second and third order effects right so we figure out uh maternity and paternity leave right so we get people but but regardless if women are paid or not they are out of the competition for the period of time that they're having kids so if you have two three kids even if uh financially if you're coming up in in the military or an investment banking you're missing very crucial experiences either being in a military side of deployment or maybe multiple deals that you could be learning as analysts which which also is is hurting how do you fix or help with that so in my life i had my father who was terminally ill i had to take care of him right i was in a car crash i was out for three months i had two kids my two kids i got 12 weeks of maternity leave for my car crash i got three months off with pay and my father was terminally ill they gave me three months off with pay so net net almost a year of vacation i got from my employers over time but through that time when i was away i just didn't sit there doing nothing i kept in touch with the work that was going on the industry going on when i came back i wasn't completely behind the scenes i mean behind the um rest of the class and so it's also what you do okay but now i want to be practical if you're caring for a sick relative sometimes it takes all your time so you don't have time to so you will fall back a little bit if you think you want to stay well within your class and move with them move with your cohort group it's going to be very hard to do it while you have family burdens very hard that's why a lot of people have stress about families and keeping the job and moving lockstep with everybody else a lot of stress associated with that so will women always have to work a little bit harder than men to achieve the same things unless there's systematic things in place within corporations to do systematic things and um and society basically saying men and women had this conversation about how we can share the responsibility not don't call it a burden call it sharing the privilege of bringing out the kids look at the kids as a privilege i mean look at that when you i didn't know what love was until i had kids i love my husband but the love you have for your kids is a whole new uh dimension of love from the deepest part of your heart you know you show love why why do these conversations not happen more why do tough and candid conversations not happen as much as they probably should yeah i um i went back and looked at the laws when president nixon was president he almost signed in a universal child care law in the country and got pulled at the last minute i think to this is some of his hypothesis okay one is most of the decision making is still men in power right and i think men have to come to the table to say we have to make a difference the second thing is there's a preference in the eyes of many people for women to stay home now why should women have freedom of the purse why should women have economic freedom financial freedom why should women compete in the workforce so there are people who genuinely feel like women should stay home they don't like this equality discussion look i'm not sitting here going uh i'm fighting for equality no i'm just fighting for the best and brightest to be in the workforce right and if you fight for that automatically you'll get to equality so i'm not starting with equality i'm starting with the best and brightest but the the first step is starting and and right now obviously in today's society there's a strong cancel culture some people are even fearful to start a conversation or to have candid conversations what do you think about that i don't know why they're not having the conversations i look at the research max there's so much research that's been done there's so many conversations that i had but it doesn't lead to action right and that's i think recently i'm seeing some movement that people want to address child care want to address female participation but if we treat this as a charitable program or we have to employ women because if we don't we'll get into trouble that's the wrong reason you got to think about we're going to hire women because they are wicked smart and they'll get it done that's the reason you should hire the women not say god if i don't hire women i'll have all these women actively shouting at my door but don't hire the women and put every barrier in front of her it's not fair right young people right now are probably more inspired than ever to make change due to recent events due to all different types of of motivators but it's very difficult for young people to make change so how do you take advantage of this situation where even all these young people that want to make change they want to do good but they just don't know how what would you tell them you know this is where the older generation can be of help you know the young people today know a lot more than many of us know i'll be honest with you they're so wicked smart all of you are educated through social media i mean i feel great about the generations after me because i think all of you are just giving you want to make a difference and you're super smart um but if you need advice on how to make change how to get dialogue started we can't help not everybody in my generation but many people in our generation are willing to help the other great thing you have max is you've got social media you can crowdsource for ideas and everybody will jump in and give you ideas so nobody says i don't want to give max an idea on how to do this better everybody wants to lean in to provide an idea so i think this power of crowdsourcing the power of asking digitally for ideas is a unique privilege again that you have right so i think it's more important is not to be shameful about asking for advice right absolutely yeah what what are resources or ways that somebody should go about that so if somebody's looking for a mentor or looking for resources where would you tell a young person to go to find purpose or or find how to actually affect change or use their inspiration to do good in the world first of all if you want a mentor mentors pick you you can't pick them a real mentor picks you because they see something in you that they like and they want to hitch their wagon to you so mentor is actually selfish they say you know i will mentor mac because i see something in him i know he's going to become a four star general i want to be able to say i played a part in it okay so it's a real mentors pick you because they see something in you but it doesn't mean some people will never have a mentor you can have people you go to for advice you can have people that you go to for um you know how do i get myself out of this predicament kind of a question but are they going to advocate for your career and support you explicitly probably not they're going to have a handful of people that each one mentors okay the other thing with mentors max is people don't understand is if a mentor gives you a suggestion and you don't take it you got to go back and tell them why you didn't take it because if mentors keep giving ideas and you ignore them they're going to say one day why am i giving max any ideas he never listens to me anyway so my practice is if i get an advice piece of advice from a mentor i always go back to them and say remember that advice you gave me let me tell you what i did with it let me tell you why i didn't take it exactly the way you suggested but i tweaked it a bit so they feel like they're part of my decision making process so for a young person today the wonderful thing you have is youtube right you can get any anything you want advice on it's in youtube even i look at youtube for things like that so you have the power of this uh digital uh sound bites on how to address any problem go look at that read read as much as you can and how other people approach the problem and look for forums so people are discussing these issues the wonderful thing about the digital world is you can join remotely you don't have to journey some place to join even pre-covert you could join remotely and so i think young people should start thinking about how to redeploy some of this video gaming tick-tock instagram pinterest time to really understanding uh you know how people did things how can you learn from them you could redeploy your time but first you kind of have to find purpose and one thing that a lot of young people are struggling with today is finding their purpose what would you say to the young people that are struggling with that ask yourself the question what do you really want to do in life now it's very easy for me to say this because most people say i want to make the most amount of money because if you've struggled your family doesn't come from much you know you want to have a comfortable life you want to support your family you want to build a family so many people will say i need to get the job which pays the most and i have no issues with people who say that i understand why they're saying it but if you really want to get down to saying what do you want to do you have to ask yourself the question what kind of a company and products i want to be part of and do i feel good about the direction of the company do i feel proud telling people i work for this company and can i articulate a reason this company exists to change the quality of life for our community and country if you can do that then you should work for that company if you can't and you hate going to work every day don't go there for just a paycheck because you will be miserable what's your biggest advice to young women who have big aspirations to do big things or make great change i'd say dream big i'd say the next few decades are the decades of women they need us to work hard and contribute to the economy they also need us to have kids so we are the linchpins of the future so go to the job lead in with confidence and ask for support just ask for support come together as a group and ask the company for support because people have to realize that you can't make it without brilliant minds like women women's minds coming to the workforce how do you promote women supporting women because right now in a lot of business and and military women don't necessarily support women as much as they should um whereas you've mentioned sometimes men will they in corporate meetings you've talked about men really you know giving good is like hey you need to fix this where you've seen women not do that same support for one another why is that the challenge and i've never been able to figure out somehow i feel like because the pyramid narrows um women say look in this next level there's only room for one woman and there's four of us because they feel constrained by the quarter they keep saying at the next level there are 10 men and five women vying for the job i bet the company will say or 20 of the companies women therefore the next level is only 20 women so it's one woman and four men so given that i'm going to have to elbow out other women to move up i think we have to move from competition to collaboration and competition competition should be there but you're going to also add collaboration go ahead sorry no sorry man and the company should stop saying the quota is only for one woman in the next level bran the company should say the best and the brightest are going to be promoted and it's all five women that's okay and somebody has to show proof that they only promoted the best and the brightest it's easy to have people who are just like you would think like you talk like you with your kind of experiences sitting around the table with you it's easier to do business when you bring a diverse brain or figure into the boardroom all of a sudden the nature of the conversation changes i would argue for the better but many people would say i have to change my behavior to accommodate that person i don't want to do it i was fortunate to get negotiation training and the first day was negotiation doesn't have to be what do you get and what do i get it can also be growing yeah right so if you can have a win-win and grow the pie why is that not a mindset of of many people of hey it's not you and me against each other but it can also be us together growing the pie because there's more examples of win lose or lose win than there are win-win so we have to publicize as much of the win-win as we do the win lose most of negotiations is replete with examples where one party one the other party lost right and one thing that you've you've done a great job of is is looking at things from from multiple different ways and i think creativity is obviously a way that we can grow the pie is looking at things from different perspectives not just a win lose and and you showed that comes from diversity as well and obviously diversity is is one of the biggest determinants of success for a company like pepsi and you showed that diversity actually increases performance how how did accomplishing something like that so it's no longer a it is you know a speculative thing it's no diversity is necessary this drives performance and i have the proof to show it i actually have to give credit to steve reinemann my predecessor in the job i hate to say he was a naval academy grad a marine fantastic child absolutely fantastic guy steve reinemann taught me a lot he said i have got to get diversity into the company and the boardroom because diversity makes us a better company leads to better decision making and the company's employee base should reflect the consumer base that was his mantra and so he went about saying if i don't get a critical mass of diverse people into the company we cannot put in programs to build diversity right so i'm going to spend the first five years bringing the numbers in once i get critical mass i can grow from that so he focused on getting that critical masses he put in place a scorecard we said parity hiring parity promotions he forced it on the company we all kicked and screamed but he was doing the right thing once you had a critical mass of people you could change people's behavior and say treat this group differently don't you know don't have macho conversations in front of these people talk in a normal way you know talk in a way you would with your sister and your daughters right you know just don't talk like at all drinking buddies okay so he affected that change he gave us training on how to do things differently and my job was to stand on his shoulders to make sure that i built on his diversity programs and i made sure that diverse people especially women and minorities didn't get evaluated more harshly we're not held to a higher standard we're not excluded from discussions because they didn't go out drinking or socializing with the men so i had to make sure that there was no implicit bias in the organization itself that would derail the career of these women or my own minorities what why does diversity drive performance because you get different points of view right uh you know when um 10 people grew up in the same neighborhood you know metaphorically speaking the same background the same educational background their thinking is you know sort of monorail thinking they're thinking all one way all of a sudden somebody comes and shakes something up a little bit and just asks a different question from a different perspective all of a sudden the quality of your decision making goes up because somebody has come in and injected some consciousness into you that's all so every study has been done shows that diverse teams have higher performance values right so i mean in in human resources obviously they're the ones that drive diversity but as a leader you drive inclusivity yep and that's a whole different animal as as just creating diversity how did you hire somebody in and you don't make them feel wanted and included you wasted time and money on hiring them right and then you got a whole group of people who are pissed off because you didn't treat them well yeah so once you commit to diversity you can't just do diversity you've got to commit to diverse hiring inclusion retention yeah training and retraining and then over time retiring you've got to worry about the entire cycle yeah and if you don't and just get them in and then don't do the right thing to get them included max that raises all different other problems a whole different other issue we don't talk about driving inclusivity a lot we talk about obviously driving diversity and that's that's the first step but how do you drive inclusivity bad behavior you know there are many many little examples of bias that happen people don't even realize they are acting in a biased way but little examples of rolling your eyes when somebody diver speaks or talking over them or basically writing off what they're saying so many things we do little little things we do um the leaders have to notice this behavior and put an end to it when it happens don't wait for to address it many months later and say you know six months ago at this meeting you did this nobody's going to remember this at the end of the meeting tap the guy on the shoulder come here let me tell you what you did at this meeting if it happened to you you'd have felt terrible why do you do it to this other person and you've really got to draw out of them the issues and nip it in the bud now what happens is after every meeting there's a debrief people go oh my god not another debrief on inclusivity and race and political correctness you've got to explain to people this is not about political correctness this is about letting each person feel like they're on an equal footing in the company when you come into work everybody is the same so you've got to get that mindset in the company and the ceos as responsible for it as are the other leaders of the company do you feel that black people feel that businesses are doing a good job at driving diversity and inclusion and inclusion through their initiatives right now well the thing we have to be careful about i see progress that's a good news what we have to be very careful about is when the winds change in the political system or whatever suddenly we hire a lot of diverse people when the winds change again we get rid of all of them that shouldn't happen we should just focus on hiring diverse people and promoting them don't do it because there's some social movement happening or because political power changed do it because it's the right thing for the company and the society for you to do it understanding motives for why you're doing what you're doing do you think hispanics feel the same that businesses are are also doing an equal amount of participation in diversity inclusion initiatives it to include them as well i think the people say that both black people and hispanics are getting more attention now these days than before my fear is the question we should ask ourselves are these initiatives um expedient just because of the situation at hand or is it being done because it's the right thing to do for the long-term success of the company i want us to think the latter not i want to keep the mobs out of here i want to keep social media attacks on me out of here therefore i'm going to do this and guess what let's just give this hispanic or black people some token job and they pretend as if they're in an important job don't do that it's not fair to anybody yeah i i think that one thing that is very interesting is that just because you're a successful leader or you've you've financially done well doesn't mean you're necessarily good at leading diverse teams or your company is what do you think actually leads to a successful leader that also leads diverse teams and and is good at good at it again um you know i had a lot of diversity on my team because i was only hiring for the best and the brightest i just said look i want the best talent for that job and don't just talent for performance i want potential also so when i open my aperture and said i'm just looking at whoever comes in the door the best talent and the best potential all of a sudden i was looking at a bigger pool and i could pick the right people if on the other hand i said i want the best xx person you know very naturally defined as one ethnic group or one gender then i'm really shortchanging the company and you know when i went i went around the process this way max another thing happened if i hired a white man nobody complained because they said andrew was looking for the best and the brightest right if a white male was the best in the brightest so be it i've noticed zero issues with it i wanted the best and brightest for the job i had outstanding white males i had wide-standing outstanding women i had outstanding hispanic african-americans but once you brought them in i got to make sure that nobody feels like they're viewed as a quarter hire or a diversity hire but they're hired for their skills then you support them you promote them you not first you support them and develop them give them the tools to do the job all of the people don't give some people the tools and some people no tools give them all the tools mentor everybody i mean every i mean i've mentored more white males than anybody else as i have females people of color hispanic people to me everybody is an asset to the company everybody how do you analyze talent though we have a talent model we look at core leadership skills domain expertise we look at sort of uh you know potential leadership skills we have a very clear model and then we assess people against those model that model criteria but we also do another thing max we send them to assignments or projects which demonstrate their leadership which can develop and demonstrate their leadership skills leadership development is a two-way process you have to do your part i have to do work for you yeah because i see the potential in you i got to draw that potential out from you potential is latent performance is explicit so i have to draw that potential out of you that's my job as a leader what do you think differentiates highly successful people that are going to go take executive leadership roles how do you analyze those people yeah it's you actually can we have a system where even as an entry level person we can almost spot somebody and say ah this person is going places they're very curious yeah not negatively curious but positively curious they are doing a job which is a little bit more than the job they're assigned to remember i talk to you about little zooming out a little bit they do that they go out of their way to make other people feel included they have a sense of company as opposed to sense of themselves and they truly want to live a life of integrity and character they're honest they're straightforward they're not shady they don't do things that will cast them in a negative light because they're not those kind of people it's interesting you know we interviewed maybe 400 pepsico executives up and coming high potentials in-depth interviews and one of the things that was common amongst i would say 350 or 380 out of the 400 all of them grew up in humble middle class families who didn't grow up with a silver spoon in the mouth right they worked the hard way they climbed the ladder salt of the earth people all the people and i think that um it doesn't matter what your background is it doesn't matter what your financial condition was as long as you know the value of money the value of work the the as long as you know that what you do has got to be bigger than yourself and you act that way you know you may not realize it from the day you walk into a company you're being assessed right and every every day every every hour of the day you you were assessed a lot early on but you also were picked as one of those high executive future talent leadership from in from an early age but you also were criticized essentially your whole career i mean you had critics um in your ear throughout even until today i'm sure what has allowed you to consistently prove those critics wrong and endure that harsh criticism for so many years i had clarity and direction max no i i framed a direction which was outside it i said what are the what are the trends happening in the world and what does that imply for pepsico right and if i have to change my strategies because something changed in the outside world so as long as my strategy was based on an outside-in perspective every time there were critics i'd say why do you think i should change let's say because a b and c if it was always about because i want more money i'd say forget it on the other hand if they felt that something the world had changed and i wasn't changing i was willing to accept it i wasn't close-minded all that i was saying was give me a good reason why i should change what i'm doing right and remember i i own a lot of pepsicos talk myself so i don't mind becoming more wealthy but i don't want to destroy a great company right so the company was more important to me than me a lot of these critics i could have made short term a lot of money and then out of here no what why didn't you what what do you think gave you that moral compass and strong sets of values from from an early age it was instilled in me from the time i grew up saying that anything you do is not about you it's about the impact you have on people around you and i think it's important that we give these messages to young people today in some shape or form maybe that's what you're doing max we have to tell people that um your job is a part of a whole you've got to think of the whole and the whole improving the outcome for everybody okay don't just say how can i just do my job muscling everybody out from around i'm sure you've seen some of that too abso absolutely what what do you think leads to a lot of people losing their character or having character shortfalls essentially in their career as they progress and get higher and higher with power is one positional greed or financial greed i mean army doesn't give you money opportunity to make too much money but positional greed right and power uh can uh change people a lot i mean look be very careful about position and power because it's fleeting yeah it can go overnight then who are you always ask yourself if my position goes who are going to be my friends and what kind of life am i going to lead because you'll have thousands of friends when you're a ceo the day you stop being ceo many of those friends who came because of your position disappear they've gone on to the next ceo so you've got to decide who your real friends are and have you guaranteed i'm sorry no you have to have clarity and you've got to make sure that people understand you for what you're going to be long term not what you are when you're a ceo you you are probably the most humble person i i've ever i've ever met um how have you been able to maintain this strong sense of humility when you you could have i mean you you can have all the fancy cars and private jets yet you considerably donate back to other with time and money to situations organizations issues that you feel are going to impact the world to do better what gives you this sense of of humility and also purpose to continue to do good and and spend and give your time consistently to the next generation gratitude incredible gratitude i mean max think of every part of my life um when i went to high school and college in india as i look back you know when i studied chemistry i looked at those labs they were awful so i decided when i had the first chance i had money i rebuilt all those labs i looked at the women's lounge in the college that i went to it's a piece of crap i mean there were no chairs that were not broken to sit on so i redid the entire lounge so it became the envy of the entire comment so i do things out of gratitude i mean they gave me the education they built me into a person of character you know when i came to yale yale gave me wings they gave me an education they taught me how the public and private sector came together so i give back to you in time and money i came to the state of connecticut connecticut welcomed me made me feel part of the state i give back to the state of connecticut my time and money several years ago i was invited to speak at west point just to your senior class and i spoke with them and all of you young young young people young faces younger than my kids um were getting ready to deploy and you know it moved me beyond anything because i said to myself all the freedoms i have here in this country this incredible country because people like you go out there and give your life to defend the country again sense of gratitude okay i have a sense of gratitude towards the united states i mean i came as an immigrant i didn't flee oppression repression nothing i came with a valid visa as an immigrant and i was encouraged and supported and mentored to be successful i have a sense of gratitude towards the country so all of this is because of a deep sense of gratitude that's all so you you live your life obviously that's a that's a key part to your success is gratitude and humility um what about physical fitness and mental health how important have those two things been to your success so one of the mistakes i made in my early days when i was working so much i'm traveling so much i didn't worry about my physical fitness i never exercised i would always find reasons why i couldn't exercise because i say i'm up at four o'clock reading i have no time to exercise right i come home at eight i got kids i'm too exhausted i didn't exercise um but in the last three or four years uh as i was slowing down in pepsico i'm now disciplined about my exercise reggie regimen i'm you know i'm a vegetarian so i don't eat much but the exercises made a huge difference huge difference um i used to check my emails every half an hour all through the night now i only check it twice through the night maybe midnight and 3am or something like that okay before when i was at pepsico if this the email system would be at my year every time there was a ping i would be up to check it that kind of obsession so now i'm much more focused on myself and i feel better i really believe the question is a very profound one max you can't do your job well and not wear out unless you focus on your physical and mental calmness and strength meditation just thinking about slowing down your brain breathing properly allowing your body to rebuild physically and mentally is critically important what do you think family plays a big part too what do you think about routines and daily habits critically important you know it's interesting steve reinemann taught me one thing he would go to bed at 9 pm every night he used to drive me up the wall because i'm a person i went to bed at 1 am in the morning okay and i said steve why do you go to bed at night stay we said you know routines are important right you'll find out recently i try to go to bed around 9 30 well i wake up at 11 30 that's a different question but you know i go to bed at 9 30 and i got to tell you it's fantastic when you have that routine you get into that discipline and live your life on that routine it's good for your body good for your soul good for your brain i really believe in it you you've you have worked with several highly ceos highly successful ceos and some of which predecessed you such as steve reinemann who's a naval academy and service academy graduate have did you notice anything different about service academy graduates or their leadership style i think all my predecessors in pepsico serve in the armed forces in some shape or form i was the only person that did not serve in the u.s armed forces each of them men of character you could say that they'd all been through fantastic training so they were all men of character um i had the privilege of being hired by wayne callaway then roger enrique and steve and before wayne was don kendall was in the navy too i knew him very well he had an office next to me as an emeritus so i had the benefit of knowing the four ceos before me and they never treated me differently because i was a woman immigrant they said here's the talent i'm going to develop this person they gave me tough feedback when i deserved it they just developed me and so i think what i found about these men amazing people of character who only cared about talent and competence and were willing to put in the time and the effort to develop me so again gratitude towards the u.s armed forces for finding these people and developing them that benefited me downstream you you never served in the army why do you invest such a considerable amount of time now in west point and in developing the cadets and faculty here gratitude again i mean i do it out of a deep sense of gratitude i regret that i was not in the army in the sense of i couldn't also protect the freedoms remember i was born in a democracy i live in a democracy and so i didn't it wasn't even considered okay for women to be in the army those days okay they were not allowed only now they're all being allowed so i didn't do anything to protect people's freedoms but all of you put your life at harm's way i mean you're all children of parents like me you know it's painful to even think of the fact that you would be out there in the front facing extreme harm every day and i do it literally at a sense of gratitude to all of you and so i for west point is very personal to me what is your biggest advice to west point graduates that are set to graduate and commission here here at west point in the next couple of months first of all thank you for your service to the country thank you for defense of our freedoms thank you for everything you do but i have to say something now that i've looked at the curriculum in the bsnl department the amount you learn is spectacular i am in awe of every one of you i've been talking to average spain and brian read kind of colonel spain and colonel reid like wow the amount to teach these kids and a month they absorbed because i sit in classes where you're being taught you absorb all the material so you are an awesome group of people who are over-educated versus your peers in colleges when you go out into the actual frontline deployment so the first of all you you should know that you're leaving with a wicked toolkit of education that is unequaled anywhere second is however long you choose to serve in the army or navy or whatever you're going to acquire skills as you go along but you should also know that at any point if you chose to step off that track and come back to or come to private industry private ministry should be glad to have you pepsico's one of the largest hire you know companies that hires veterans i think we're number one in the country many many many of the veterans have done exceedingly well in the company exceedingly well in the company and so we as a company are better off for those people who go out there are extremely well educated have tremendous leadership skills and are people of character people of character so i think it's been a privilege working with so many of the people from the armed services in pepsico and i think companies be better off if they're committed to hiring people from the armed forces and i'll wrap you with one more question and that is what is your biggest advice to all leaders of character people that want to go on and do great things they want to make change and also make this country better whether that be in private sector that be government that be military regardless they want to go on and be a character driven leader what would your advice to them be if you come to the corporate world okay because in the armed services you have to be leaders of character otherwise the armed services knocks you knocks you out of the harm services so that's the great thing about the armed services when you come to a corporation to be viewed as leader of character think of doing your job especially if you're the leader for the duration of the company not the duration of your job so ceo should run the company for the duration of the company not for the duration of the ceo so don't start off by saying i'm gonna run the company for five years i'm gonna cut slash and burn every investment make a lot of profits and stock price drives up and i'm gonna hightail it don't say that ask yourself in 10 years this company has to remain successful what investments do i have to make today it's tough to do that but you've always got to view your job as an enduring job not a short-term job you're not in an assignment you are there to preserve and protect and grow this company for future generations you know i talk to the young people in pepsico and i always tell them i am the caretaker of this company for you so if i don't do a good job you should hold me accountable and doing a good job is making the right investments to keep this company vital and rejuvenating over the years that was my single biggest responsibility i wanted to judge my success based on the success of my leader my successor a leader of character things that way it's very easy to cut slash and burn make a lot of money and get the hell out of it yeah or worse still do things that pass costs onto society but makes the company look good like dumping chemicals in the river or you know selling opioids that create addiction but you make a lot of money don't do those things worry about the company's place in society ma'am i can't thank you enough you've been an incredible inspiration to me i've appreciated every bit of advice you've given me today and the several conversations that we have had i i can't thank you enough for for being on leaders of character and and helping impact the next generation of leaders and and really not only talking the talk but walking the walk and and continuing every day um being a selfless servant leader character to to our nation into our world by making it better through all your initiatives and and and and really just your wisdom and and your example so i can't thank you enough it's been an absolute honor to be with you today thank you max thank you for having me and thank you for everything that you and everybody in the us military academy does for the country thank you i really appreciate it thank you ma'am

Channel: Leaders Of Character

Views: 1,847

Rating: 4.9354839 out of 5

Keywords: indra nooyi, leaders of character, ceo of pepsico, indra nooyi interview, women in power, ceo women, women in the workplace, business, pepsico

Id: yPXULL_L6-0

Length: 75min 12sec (4512 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021