Indra Nooyi in conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter

I had to be the mom and go to work you know what anything was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life know why I have to make a lasagna for looks to you dinner I can't miss that meeting I don't know how you do it I don't know how you do it I don't know how she does it all those children are you okay good morning great to all of you yes the effect I'm Norah O'Donnell co-host of CBS this morning and I'm pleased to be with here with Indra Nooyi she is the CEO of PepsiCo please welcome Indra Nui and anne-marie slaughter CEO of New America and author of unfinished business women men work and family please welcome anne-marie I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be talking to both of you because I admire you both so much we just saw those numbers in that video Emory let me start with you is it time for a workplace revolution it is I wouldn't come out to come up here and say no it is the way I would frame it is it's time to make the revolution that that is really making room for care that we need to expect that all workers women and men very much and men are going to have care obligations at some point in their lives they're going to either be parents or they're going to be taking care of their parents and we can you know we can choose to have children but we can't choose to have parents at least not yet so but the point is that we expect that all of our workers are going to have care obligations and are going to need what I call deep flexibility and lots of support and that we just assume that's not something that we have to worry about for women because women are going to have children and we've got to worry about it for them it's everybody so we think about family leave and family support and and ways of working that allow everyone to have that foundation in family that allows them to do their best work and endure as the CEO of PepsiCo how does that take place that revolution well let's go back to what anne-marie said we've been in this revolution mode for many many years for decades in fact because first it was just getting entry into this boys club so how did we get entry into boys club we fought for it we clawed our way a little bit and then we decided to do something much more intelligent we got all the degrees and we got all the topping you know grades in school and all of a sudden they had to take notice of us and then we became all the gatekeepers to all the shopping experiences so now if you don't have the women you don't have a business so we clawed our way into this revolution in this workplace and then we needed parity in pay not yet there we're still fighting for that we still have to have you know equal treatment I mean I hate being called sweetie or honey at times suggesting I'm called okay so all that's got to go we've got to be treated as executives or people rather than honey or sweetie or babe so that has to change and then with all of this talk about how can the sisterhood help each other we talked about lean and pull people up we've done that part to what we've ignored through all of this is fine we're going to help women in the workplace but how are we going to help this interaction between the woman and her personal life because at the end of the day we also want to be if we want to be wives daughters you know daughters in-laws sisters whatever we want to play that role too and society wants us to play that role so what have we done so far we've given people maternity leave great 12 weeks maternity leave 16 weeks maternity leave paternity leave that's great but the end of that period that little infant is only four months old or three months old what are we supposed to do just drop the baby at home and home alone and go to work it doesn't work so we haven't yet talked about the big revolution in terms of how can society government's companies and families help women actually complete the revolution you know and you wrote a great book on unfinished business we got to finish the business okay we know it's unfinished but if we don't finish the business ourselves somebody else is not going to finish it for us so we've got to start thinking of what happens to that next generation that we produce and how gonna help this whole ecosystem do a better job you know bringing those young people into the world and making them people too so used to should write the book called finishing the business more than a book though we actually have to make it happen and implement it but but you are one of those four percent of those fortune 500 CEOs how did you do it not easy I mean I I tell you a painful painful story the other day when we move back to our headquarters and purchase after renovation I had the opportunity to go through all my old mail and I found a letter that my daughter had written to me my second daughter and I joined PepsiCo in she was 18 months old and I lived in the company I just worked all the time and my desk was being given away to get a new desk and she said mom you can't give away that desk I said why not she said I slept in this little area underneath your table with my blankie all the time I was growing up how can you give this desk away and I shot back I said my god what a memory for her to have yeah yeah then I was going through the files there's a letter from her to me which I'm keeping because I have to remind myself of what I lost it says dear mom I love you please come home please please please please please come home I love you but I love you more if you came home this is my four or five year old writing these notes so how did I do it huge number of sacrifices huge huge number of sacrifices trade-offs and I think through it all I might be a CEO today and I love the job I love where I am but I will tell you if I had to write a letter to myself as a younger person I'd say be careful about all the choices you're making because you will look back and it'll hurt like hell and it does mm-hmm but do you regret it I regret this too serious a word the heart aches many times and it's not regret I love what I'm doing I may have regretted not doing it had I just stayed home and spent all my time with them so this is a very come regret is a very complex to a simple word that's got deep meaning that is that is so I mean I'm the other half in another way it's a one I wouldn't you're telling that story I was thinking when when my son my elder son was in first grade he was asked to draw a picture of his family so he drew for you know mother father his brother and himself and he drew me as a laptop haha not a person on a laptop that would have at least had me just a lot haha and he drew his father cooking and I looked at this we put it on the fridge and I thought oh great my child thinks I'm a computer right you know and it was sort of this moment as you said with the desk squeeze I at that point I thought maybe you know I should put the laptop away but but you know it's but those images are also important for another reason aren't they but to me I know will you feel guilty about it but what's the other message that that's about to to your children I mean actually I was funny by my I put that stories in my book and my elder son said son was reading the book and he said mom I did not and I said oh yes you did so I mean it obviously didn't scar him for life he doesn't remember that that's what that was something he did you know I think it's what indras said that at that moment I thought okay time to make it a little adjustment I mean I at that point I really was managing we had two kids I was a Dean but you know we could do it because I lived with and my home and my work were within a half mile of each other their school was a half mile we were making it work later it's actually in Drew when you say you know thinking about looking back when I had to decide not only to leave the State Department but not to go to put my hat back in in 2012 what I kept thinking was my children have four more years left at home and I know at the end of my life if I look back and think I missed that I'm going to think I made the wrong choice but in my case it was you know I was going to have to go back to Washington and just not see them at all but I think it is that sort of what is the balance between the value on both sides the value of care and the value of being a really successful woman making a big difference but Nora what we're not saying is we need to take back the gains we've made and have women go back to just being at home that's not what you're saying not at all I think the big unfinished business and the next revolution is how can society the workplace companies everybody together and families work together to address all of these issues how can we allow women to have a productive career because countries need women in the workplace because we are 50% or more of the population we are 60% of the graduating classes in many many colleges and we are 75% of the top grades so the best and brightest are sitting right here and so I think we need to make sure we need to make sure we provide an environment where we can productively and gainfully allow women to use their skills but also allow them to do everything else what's the challenge as the CEO of a big company - extending parental leave and paying for it like some of the Silicon Valley companies are doing so extended to what let's say we go from 12 to 24 to 52 weeks at the end of 52 weeks an infant is still a year old and so I think what we have to sit down and talk about is there are two issues with the extending parental care first Lemmy's when somebody takes the maternity leave and goes for 12 or 16 weeks somebody still has to do the job that that person vacated for 12 to 16 weeks what we tried to do was reallocate the responsibility to the rest of the work group the rest of the work group came to me and said Indra thank you for giving this person the time off this was taking care of a sick parent appreciated your very caring but we all have families to go to we can't take on the additional work so I think we have to sit down and ask ourselves the question what kind of a job is that person going to come back to and the longer they stay away how can we keep that job open that's the first challenge our the second challenge is if they're away for a year or two years they've lost their place in the queue and leave it or not there is a queue and you've lost your place in the queue and there now with a different cohort group and they don't like it because they feel like they really came in with a different class and they're going with a different group people don't like it so we have to figure out how can they come back to work quickly but we can ease them in and then allow them to also have the time with the kids example we're looking at building a daycare center on the PepsiCo campus because we have you know 1800 people on the campus a daycare center but a daycare center where there's also sick baby care upstairs so that if your child is sick you can bring them in a daycare center is fully technologically wired so you can see what's going on qualified daycare people qualified daycare people many of us have daycare help there's no training no certification of daycare workers that's what takes care of our kids so we come to work with the fear and the pitiful Tama always we don't have to be that way so what if companies were to step in and say we're going to provide this for our employees you have to pay for it I would be nice if governments gave us a tax relief because we are helping society but we have to come up with these solutions because if we don't who is going to what did you do when your children would call in to work asking for something well because of my Indian heritage even though we had nannies helping us we had grandparents supervising the nannies because we never trusted any of the nannies so we had you know we we put a list together we went to the extent our extended family his side my husband's side and my side and said he would you like a vacation in the United States they said sure so we give you a three-month vacation and for two months you stay in our home and supervise a nanny for one month we'll give you a ticket to go around the US and then the rest of the time my parents are his parents stepped in just to supervise the nannies okay but I think when we have a society that's aging and we have women that are working let's figure out a way to bring the aging parents to be the supervisors of the daycare and figure out a way to get qualified daycare make society work on that very point this is a very important point and I know you both care deeply about this almost 20% of the population now live in multi-generational households that is double the number from the 1980s look at the White House even Michelle Obama's mother is living in the White House and helping helping with the two girls there is that one solution do we need to think larger about our support systems is a CEO we build support systems at worked we need to think large in a larger way about building a family support system at home if we do I mean so we do an extended family care is a very big piece of the puzzle that is becoming bigger already but it's also there's a cultural difference here you know as Indra says that's not at all uncommon in in India that you have grandparents living together or uncles and aunts with parents and actually if you think about how the United States population is changing and you think about Indian Americans and African Americans and Hispanic Americans and East Asian Americans all other cultures pretty much other than traditional white anglo-saxon Protestant America much more likely to have extended family living and it's much more likely below the very top when you actually look at the figures in many states people families live together to support each other but we still imagine you know the family is the you know the four person unit or the however many for one thing you've got lots of single parents and single parents who are depending on extended family at thinking about that thinking about how you support it how you support it in terms of real estate how you support it in terms of company policies and then you know the place I would say we can we can help this revolution you know everybody in this audience knows that the United States and Papua New Guinea are the only two countries in the world that don't have paid maternity leave you've heard that ten times that's right but this is the one place where America might actually be able to leapfrog the rest of the world like many countries that never had landlines and they went directly to cell phones we can go we can bypass the whole maternity paternity parental leave issue and go directly to paid family leave paid family leave for whether you're caring for children or caring for parents or caring for an ill spouse whoever it is and equally available to me it men and women so imagine if you had a child and the father and the mother both get six weeks but then they also get time as they need later to care for parents or for others and an reach your point you say that is the first step in valuing care yes in value but the second step I think is interested here too what after then those example of months what's then the solution to its building a system that supports a woman in the workplace who wants to have a family at home to look I don't know about all of you but in my home my I've got the most supportive husband 35 years something like that I don't remember some 3,500 I says you never remember you said you sound like the man say you can't remember that anniversary anniversary days right it's forever I didn't matter to him okay and he's he's awesome he's awesome I gotta tell he's awesome very supportive very helpful but if he's home and the kids are missing something they pulled me out of a meeting to ask me where it is so I thought hey dad's home why don't you ask him he'll never know where it is but the fact of the matter is we are it we are it for everything so I think we have to come up with the solutions we keep saying one of the solutions is equality you know make the husband help you out if they do that that's awesome but let's not count on that let's figure out solutions but here let's let's be good on our own don't agree what I don't agree and then what happens is if you figured out our solutions and if they become part of the helping out that's just awesomeness personified so till then let's just figure out our own solution so what do we need to do I think companies can help and I think we are a lobby Washington like hell to get bigger tax breaks when we pay for daycare and I think the voice of women cannot be ignored and we've got to do it in a coordinated way we've got to ask for this and get it it can't be just daycare facilities it's got to be sick baby care you know and our kids go to school there jump factories I mean they get a goal they get a fever all the time and when they're at home sick I mean I'm constantly checking my phone I used to now my kids are grown up constantly are they okay are they doing well so how about sick baby care so you can bring the child to work and put them in the sick baby ward so you can run over to the daycare center and look them up what's wrong there's two children they need to be cared for third I think like a vocational school we have to insist that daycare certification centers be open we are asking people to take care of the most vulnerable of the world not a lathe or a drill machine but little babies and there is no certification program there is no vocational training and we just hire a random person to take care of our kids we ought to put in vocational schools for daycare and for we have to work with an Ann Marie and I working on this how do we work with the developer to build some prototype communities where you've got a community maybe of 500 families young people the young people live on the outside in the second circle are the parents or the relatives that want to have homes there and the center is a community center where accredited daycare workers can take care of the kids but the aging parents have to take turns to supervise the daycare workers this is like a the perfect family culture environment but you know we have to create these things they don't just happen you know we have to create it all right we everybody cannot wind in yes it was an impediment to creating that what's the impediment when we've just had this dialogue and Marie and I so from PepsiCo's perspective we'll build a daycare center but we can't build the development communities so we'd love to have one progressive developer join up with us we will design this with a wonderful architect then we have to start playing with these communities because I think the sisterhood has to become way stronger than it is today I really believe that yeah well well in the first place the demographics push in that direction right real estate developers are building more multi-generational kind of arrangements in part as we know the baby boomer 60 you know 10,000 people are retiring every day most of us can't afford to retire I mean even those of us who know better haven't saved enough and most people can't so what you see our parents moving back to be closer to their children they care for the children when they're young and then as they age it returns and you know I want to I want to I want to just say one word on husbands and I will just say for a moment I don't believe in a lot of biological differences but the phenomenon called male looking where you open the cabinet and you say would you say where's the peanut butter and it's right here it's really Dunley that there so there are biological differences I have to say my my husband would take issue with you what he thinks he's a better parent than I am and and I don't agree let's be clear but I do see I actually do think men men men can do more and if we expect them to but the piece I want to really comment on that is so important is interest point about paying our care workers because we now know the first five years of a child's life you are not just teaching that child knowledge you are shaping his or her brain you were determining what he or she will learn be able to learn for the rest of his or her life so from the point of view of our own individual children but also society if we want to you know to have people who are going to be able to defend us to have a competitive economy to rectify inequalities those first five years and actually teenage years - are essential and yet we pay our care workers the same wage that we pay people to mix our drinks or park our cars or walk our dogs that's crazy great it's just crazy and you know Nora any way you look at it and I've said this before our career clock and our biological clock on conflict with each other's totally in conflict so we have to figure out a way to resolve our conflicts because nobody else is going to and you know for those of you know my husband please tell him I said he is awesome personified I don't want to hear that I've been onstage his beautiful talk theater I said that he's not supported he is awesome my buddy but he's a man oh god please yeah when the peanut butters moved six inches to the right he said had it been six inches to the left I would have found it six inches give me a break but he's awesome I got you there are other things they do there are other things they do how important is it to deal with conflict or comments that are sexist with humor hmm well I was I'll just say well I because I think the inclination of course is to immediately call someone on the mat for it what's the best way to deal with that how have you done dealt with it well I I listen to Barbara Bern yesterday at new America McKinsey rolled out its parity power of parity report in the United States and Barbara who is vice-chair of Barclays and had a long history and Finance said she said well you know women are always called difficult right and she said you know and then she said my file is full of difficult I am really really difficult and she did it in this way and she said she you could just see her doing that in a meeting but in a way that there's a truth there right absolutely if you're a woman who gets things done you have sharp elbows you're difficult there are the very attributes that on a man would say he's a go-getter with a woman it's it's typically there's something negative but I thought her point about deflecting or speaking truth but doing it in a joking way was very important and I was saying indras is a master managing to you know use use humor I think in a very effective what I try don't you that people do call it difficult they calling they say things behind your back but we all know that's the price of entry and the price of moving up this chain so we have to figure out our own coping mechanisms but I think is a bigger issue that we have to talk about I don't believe women help women enough in the workplace and I if there is one thing that we can do for ourselves is get the best behavioral psychologists to design programs that address this issue on why do women compete with women too much in the workplace because when I hear young girls say today god I wish I was in an office where there were more men or I wish my boss was a man because it's tough to work with a lot of women I'm going are you nuts you should be thrilled you're working with so many women but then I hear the stories and I go what's wrong with us women we ought to be helping each other out and I'll give you an example and this is from my own experience at PepsiCo some of you may have heard this before many times we're in a presentation and the guy's giving a presentation not going so well we call a break they go to the men's room hey Bill that was awful your presentation fix it man you know don't gesture so much little fist bump they come back and Bill's doing fine okay you know a woman does a terrible job and you walk into the women's room and you go you know Mary that was terrible what were you doing god she's so no I'm trying to give you constructive feedback so what we do is we assume that feedback from women means something is wrong but if that same feedback came to us from men we're willing to accept it or worse still we don't give the feedback to women the way we should even though we know that they're not doing well because we go good she's struggling I can take that position I think we have to change our whole approach to supporting each other taking advice from each other seeking it out and I one thing I feel very badly about all my mentors in life have been male but then I sit back and say maybe I came into the workforce at a different time I think we have to change the dialogue so if there's one plea I have everybody in this room let's figure out how we can help each other way more than we are today I also think it has to do with how we describe the behavior of our daughters and I happen to have eight-year-old twins and a seven year old and my eight-year-old daughter likes to tell the kids at the birthday party where to sit when they get their cupcakes so I have written about this and I turned to one of my friends when my daughter Grace was telling everybody where to sit and I said geez I'm so sorry grace is telling everybody what to do it she said Oh Nora please Grace has executive leadership so I got t-shirts printed up that said I have executive leadership skills and I got about 20 of them and she gives them to her friends but not bossy you have executive leadership skills in describing not only our children that way our friends children's but the women we work with in that way they have executive leadership skills otherwise some people would say you're not manageable yes here's the problem well that is I was told growing up right exactly right happy one mouth and ten years yeah not the other way around right there's one other issue I want to hit on quickly too because we talked about childcare but the other issue too is aging parents and I know each of you feel strongly about that the challenge that that will present for a CEOs of corporations what that means for the workplace I mean this goes back to another way that we can make room for care when we think about careers and again from my point of view it's it's for men as well as women which will take a while but but we've got to get there you know you think about your career I like to think about it in terms of phases and I'm about to enter what I call phase 3 and phase 3 you know it's when your kids are out of the house I'm praying that means college but regardless out of the house and you know where I I will be you know in my late 50s and in I think of myself as having ten to twenty years of really productive work ahead of me in that period right that's often a period where your kids are out of the house but your parents then are aging and so we have to think about you know these periods where in your 30s or 40s whenever you have kids there may be a period where you're going to need more time to take care of your kids and later there may be a period where you're going to need more time to take care of your parents but the point is it shouldn't at any point knock you out it can knock you on to it you can be on a slower track no question you're not going to compete as fast as those people who don't have care obligations but you should be able to say okay I'm going to you know I'm going to need to take this period I'm going to or I'm going to just need to have more time at this point to take care of my parents and you again you need an extended family setting but then I'm still going to be able to to go fast when I want to and there's no reason not to do that it's just that we have we are accustomed to thinking of workers as people who have someone else at home doing those caregiving obligations and if that's not true for women and for men then we have to make room for care Indre you know we are aging too we're going to be part of this aging parents cohort group pretty soon and you know I talked to you about this letter that I saw from my daughter my older daughter has many journal entries where she's missing mom to you know the last Labor Day weekend my husband and I kept waiting for our two kids to come home and we kept going to the window saying maybe they're coming now maybe they're coming now and they didn't come until Monday evening we were so mad then we sat back and said that's how they felt when we didn't come back from work on time and we missed them so much now so I come back and I go in a few years they're gonna have kids I hope and we're going to be the aging parents hoping that they would come hoping they incorporate us in their life so we've turned the tables a little bit and we told them have all the kids you want we'll take care of all your kids till we are alive and breathing we will take care of all your kids and we will pay for everything just have them give them to us go on vacations do anything you want we are going to be Indian parents on steroids okay and free Pepsi product Olli don't I mean I mean I will do everything for them we'll hire the best certified daycare to work with us everything model kids we're gonna divide model grandkids why are we doing this not because that's our only goal in life we'd like to travel we'd like to spend some time as a couple too but we want our kids back with us because I'm afraid to let go okay because I didn't spend much time with them and they were young so I think there's a way for society to take aging parents the children and the grandchildren and create a supportive ecosystem where all of society improves as opposed to everybody struggling with you know where am I going to see my kids how am I going to take care of my kids let's solve it by bringing the aging the middle-aged kids are having kids and the little kids all together to be a supportive system and I think that's the next revolution it also has all sorts of benefits in the sense that your kids will often take things from your parents or from grandparents that they never take from you right I can say something to my son and you'll say absolutely not my mother you know manages to say it and that's a whole different thing so they're they're very different relationships there can you have it all hardened or that's not fair I said yeah so Nora said afterwards she said I think I disagree with you on having it all and I said in the first place I don't use that phrase never if I can avoid it because I frankly think to all of us here it is it feeds an elitist narrative that none of us have any interest in disseminating I mean what we're seeing now in the country increasingly is and you're seeing it and supporters of Bernie versus supporters of Hillary is the sense that there's this elite white corporate feminism and then there's everybody else and having it all just kind of talking about having it all is a bad idea so the discussion should be focused on finishing the business it should it should be talking I think it should be focused absolutely on finishing the rub Ellucian on finishing the business on valuing care and on confidence I mean these are all all pieces of it but so I said I never said you couldn't have it all I said we are not where we need to be unless we need make a whole nother set of changes so I don't like to think of it in terms of having it all but can women and men have wonderful careers and strong families at the same time absolutely do we still need to make a revolution in our cultural attitudes our workplaces and our government policies to get there absolutely and continue to fight for it beautifully said what anne-marie slaughter indra dewey let's finish the business thank you so much thank you

Channel: Women in the World

Views: 195,925

Rating: 4.8191185 out of 5

Keywords: women in the world, tina brown live media, tina brown, women in the world summit, new york city, Lincoln center, womens empowerment, feminismwomen in the world, feminism, work life balance, Indra Nooyi, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Norah O'Donnell, working women, sacrifices, PepsiCo

Id: JUfVvF_019Q

Length: 34min 33sec (2073 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2016