Indra Nooyi On Being One Of The Longest-Serving Female CEOs

[Music] so by the way she's on a plane to Singapore the minute this ends so you know just to show you her life hasn't slowed down but I just said to her like how's it been since leaving 12 years as CEO this is a job women want you know or so many women want and she broke into this huge smile it's great you've also described being a CEO it's pretty brutal at times really what it is it is brutal it's a great privilege to serve as a CEO and you have enormous responsibilities and you're always in the public eye but then you know I spent 25 years in PepsiCo 12 years as a CEO and I gave my heart soul everything to the company and when I stepped down I thought I was gonna be devastated bereft everything today I don't even remember having run the company I don't even remember I don't even remember a self-winding or company we have self-driving cars it was just that I'm so busy outside I don't miss the company I miss some of the people but when you really talk about the CEO job no with that um that were brutal sticks with me and not to be you know a downer I know obviously was an honor to serve and it was a great run but what was the brutal side of it see I think when you're a female a colored woman immigrant serving as a CEO of a large company and undertaking a transformation every day there was a critic I'd say the critics to support us mix was like 80% critics and 20% supporters Wow and so all the time you were in the public eye trying to answer the critics sort of allay their fears so it was they grind all the time and you had to do it with great aplomb because if you were down they read too much into it so was there a moment where you learned that like did you know you were down and learn no in hexaco there's a flagpole where you just get off from the car because you can't park right next to the building and then you have to walk up a long driveway to get to the building and all the other buildings are around you and Steve Hyneman who was the CEO before me said I have a piece of advice for you on your worst day when you get off of the flagpole walk up the driveway as if your most confident person smile look up because everybody in the building's is looking at you you see how you feel and what you're transmitting as you know a message so two things the first couple of years I did that after the third year I told the driver take me right up to the building I'm not walking because some day you just feel the weight of the wall on you absolutely so what is your what is your guidance to people who are feeling leaders who are feeling the weight of the world on them on their shoulders look everybody is waiting for you to buckle under pressure okay especially for women unfortunately the expectations that you won't be confident and you won't be able to withstand tremendous pressure so when you have to go through all the pressure act as if you're confident you're absolutely in control and if you really do need to scream or have a good cry which I did now and then I locked my room and I said to my secretary don't let anybody in here for 15 minutes did you cry yeah sure you cried okay out of frustration yeah then put the makeup back off [Laughter] [Applause] you should all know too if you don't remember that you were the target of an activist investor a couple of them and you know he actually kind of I don't want say surrendered but kind of moved on yeah and also activists investors have targeted other women's CEOs but I wanted to move on to the Business Roundtable in the United States for people who are in Canada and didn't read about this the Business Roundtable which is fortune 500 CEOs came out with a statement last month saying that the mission of a company should not be just to its shareholders and not just short-term profits but in fact mobility to a range of stakeholders you have a social responsibility their responsibility the community that you serve in and it's interesting that you were on this early on you know you you performance with purpose but I want to hear about okay that's great but I want to hear about the slings and arrows you had to take to make it happen I mean what were that was the reality of trying to implement that well you know what I was trying to do something very simple when I looked at the world when I became CEO I saw some trends which worried me the trends were you know an increasing focus on health and wellness people trying to make sure they focused on prevention rather than cure I saw larger focus on environmental issues there were more water distressed areas that were worried about companies coming in taking water from their aquifers I saw an increased focus on greenhouse gases on landfills getting filled up and people didn't want plastics to go in and our talent base had to come from the entire population not just from a segment of the population so we had to create a company that was very more inclusive and not just brought people in but retain them so I knew we had to take a great company and make it greater so we said about doing things like reducing the fat sugar and salt in our products without sacrificing that and there were a lot of them I remember talking to you early on very hard to get Americans to buy healthy food back in the day yeah Majumdar Lay's potato chips which is a salty potato and reducing the salt yeah yes the Lay's potato chips today I've got about 20% less salt than it did in 2006 because we took it down in a little bit every few weeks so that you'll never know the salt on that sheet I interview - you like - I don't know if you remember this but like one of the times I interviewed was like eight years ago when you're basically saying you had to trick consumers into buying healthy sneak healthiness I mean the best example I'll give you you know Lay's chips would get fried and something called host Ohio Lake sunflower oil which is a heart healthy oil cost a lot of money for us to do that we put a big sunflower on the bag and we were so proud of in the transition the consumer complaints just been through the roof and the sales plummeted because they said it tastes awful so the next day we took off the Sun fluff in the bags and people said thank God it Jason said okay I was not backing off from the healthy part all right and so all that we were doing and performance with purpose was saying we're still deliver performance right but we're gonna change our portfolio to make it lower in fat sugar and salt and dial up the good for you right we're gonna reduce our plastic use our water use we're gonna reduce our greenhouse gases and we're gonna make this company a great company for everybody who wants to work in company the company not just a few people but all of this required investments R&D investments required investments to figure out how to reduce the water use so I told them this is what we're gonna invest and they told me the following they said you're not mother Teresa why do you have to reduce a fat sugar and salt I look at them and say have you changed your eating or drinking habits oh yeah I have but don't worry about me I don't want your investors yes sir these are shareholders or these are who are these fund managers people people think big owners well people are not team actually embraced and said we had to do this because they were hearing it from their family members who said things have to change they're not paying for it the investors and shareholders are paying for de creating a long sustainably right farming company right but they were more interested in the short-term profit performance data now remember it's not that we were delivering bad short-term performance we were just balancing short-term performance versus long-term investments nobody should beat an index all the time if you're doing that that means you're under investing unless you're in the tech sector you can't you can't beat an index all the time you just cannot in a traditional traditional industry and if you're a tech company you're held to a different standard anyway so if you're beating an index all the time you have to ask the question let me put the math in front of you if your sector is growing at 3% and your revenues are growing let's say 4% and your profit is going 10% what the hell is going on you must be cutting costs somewhere or you've got phenomenal innovation so look at the innovation is the yielding priced premiums not really if it doesn't where is your margin coming from margin leveraged it's got to be because you're cutting costs but are you cutting so deep that you're not investing back in the company my point was I will give you a good spread between revenue and profits it is not going to be extraordinary because I'm going to reinvest back in the company because people like not mean just all CEOs should run a company for the duration of the company not the duration of the CEO because it's very easy to say I'm gonna be CEO position duration of the company not forever okay because you can say it is I'm gonna be CEO for six years I'll cut all the investments for six years deliver fantastic profits nine retire the next person comes in and what happens typically they crash the financials and they create court alpha then they run it for six years then they again crash finances that is no way to run a company right and I thought my success should be judged by how my successor did not just based on what I did honey's doing very well and and you're doing well and and the Umberto shows and one of the things I've always loved about you Indra is your candor we talked about I remember talking to you about what you were just talking about the fast food or unhealthy food way back but you've also been really candid about work/life balance by the way I interviewed Indra in front of Navy Midshipmen at the u.s. Naval Academy yes it was oh my gosh these this auditorium full of women women in white Navy uniforms dress uniforms who are students there wasn't that powerful Mo's and I teach address points amazing right front of all these camouflage wear in men and women it's really great but a few years ago you said women can't have it all hmm what did you mean by that and do you still believe that look that was a interview at the Aspen ideas festival when anne-marie slaughter had written an article about can women have it all whatever it means my only point was the following being in a job as a full-time job being a mother is a full-time job being a wife is a almost full-time job for an Indian person being a daughter and a daughter-in-law also full time because we have responsibilities to the family you know the expectation is that you would be a dutiful daughter-in-law dutiful daughter you try to balance all of this it doesn't work so I've all my husband always tells me the problem with you he says and with a smile is your list goes PepsiCo PepsiCo PepsiCo then comes your daughters you know when he's upset it's your daughters then your mother somewhere in the bottom I'm there he should be happy he's on this I will tell you and I've said this before I will tell you when you have somebody with a high-powered job which all of us have here and you have kids and you have families to think about especially of aging parents the person that hurts the most is your spouse yeah the person that hates I mean I'll give you an interesting story I hate I hate the fact this is live stream because of my public life and my private life it's been a whole word you know when my kids were small when I came home from work I changed into this final night count that had holes in it and my kids loved it because they knew if mommy change into the final nightgown she's not going anywhere that was a test for them yeah they'd love to hide inside the gown and they would sort of wrap themselves around me to them that was heaven my husband come from work and say Oh God yeah but you know what seriously two babies yeah and you had one of those babies grow up and express some frustration with you for being gone all the time os she still you know girls are like yeah I get a lot of that trust me you know I'm not like this duck hot dog but down here it's like whoo yeah questions raise your hands for questions we'll get to the minute and take the mic over here would you what's your advice looking back to you're writing a book about work-life balance what's your advice to women trying to manage family and the tact that I'm taking in the book is that to integrate work and family is going to be a challenge it doesn't look it requires multiple issues to be addressed the first thing is that when you come into the workforce you have to address the whole issue of unconscious bias because when bias happens in the workforce it strips away a woman's confidence when it attacks your confidence it attacks your competence it's a vicious circle and so it's very very important that we stop talking about unconscious bias and I do something to address it do you think the onus is not just on the man it's also the women I think as women our sisterhood has to get much stronger I've talked about my binge watching Sex in the City 94 episodes of it okay let me tell you I catching up it's been a while I haven't seen any I never heard of I mean I'd heard of it I didn't grow up here guys I didn't watch that show but it popped up on my HBO screen one day and I said you know the fashions look good let me see what it is so I popular I loved the first episode so I watched all ninety four episodes of hood staying up all night but you know you can faster and plus you counted them like Ella Bear is x you know what I loved about them is every episode had a lesson but the sisterhood was so strong they never judged each other they supported each other they could talk about mr. big in a very private environment to me for those of you haven't watched it watch it as a lot of fun the reason I bring this up is we need our own Sisterhood's unconscious bias can only be addressed with the sisterhood decides to support each other to call out the unconscious bias we tend to compete with ourselves and I think it's getting better but we have to really step it up that's I introduce yourself yes I'm Ashley tapping within Signum I was going to ask you in Deraa about if you're going to write a book but now we heard that so my two other questions are one I heard you once shared that you had baked Lay's at dinner instead of naan is that true Bakley what instead of non okay well it crispy one is soft never make hay non is so good and then my second question then since I know that you're writing a book is what's on your bucket list now what's my bucket what's all right what ready doing the book is gonna take back okay yeah but you know besides all the work stuff I'm doing I'm crazy busy some years ago I decided I wanted to learn ballroom dancing so I started about three years ago because I stink with or without your husband without my husband of course you crazy if I started leave him he's gonna say not again so I started a lot of great teacher young kid from England terrified of me because student like me because I'm like let's get going don't talking but what's the schedule where are the tests and so since culturally I have nothing to do with ballroom dancing I stink in it I decided I want to be good at it so I go for lessons and ungodly hours in the morning and normally less than 45 minutes but I'd do two lessons at a time and the sport kid shows up early in the morning gives me the lesson and I'm making progress so my bucket list is to learn nobody outside is allowed to see me dance but I want to dance in the mirrors or surrounding the studio without in the range okay that sounds great okay you know what you won't wait don't left feet any other bucket lists oh let me let me ask you some Patti wants me to ask you this yeah it's a Patti question so you've been involved in politics tangentially and you've been you know people talk about you've been talked about for the World Bank etc would you entertain any of that see the problem is that go into politics you are working the political system as opposed to doing the job I'm used to doing the job and so it won't work for me because I don't want I if the day a president gets elected to me all of us serve the entire public so if I'm allowed to just do the job yes but if I have to work in the political system I just don't know how to do it but Patti I'm not even a most powerful woman what am I doing here you know for the palace balance in MPW always I have to tell you the toughest thing about stepping down was that I'm not going to be on the list anymore I'm the rest of burette Babic I think we had a question from my three or less we had a lot of questions yes sorry senator nepali of the grief when you were at the top of percy regrets regrets when i was in the top you know the regret that I always have which I don't know if I'd have done anything differently but I definitely have regrets is that I watched videos of my kids and watch pictures of them as they grew up and I go where did where did those days all go even though I was there I wonder how the days went so fast and so here's the funny part I come and contact a lot of women who gave up their jobs to be with the kids and then when the kids leave the home they have deep regrets that they give up the job people like me didn't give up the kids but we were not there all the time and I have some regrets for not being with them so there's a bundle of regret that just goes around let me just let me just ask you let me ask you that very difficult core question though but can you be a kind of their dedicated mom and be a CEO of a fortune 500 company we have to make it happen because let me tell you why we keep talking about the tippy-top women come into the workforce in large numbers in levels two and three the pipeline is not leaking it's broken because they're leaving in such large numbers because we don't have a care system that works we don't have flexible work all flexibility was done I mean I've not been talked about because the job has been set up for the nine-to-five job has been set up for a time when the man went to work when the woman stayed at home we have to redefine the future of work not from an AI and automation perspective but on flexibility and care we have to redesign housing there's just so much that has to be done but I challenge you guys something sometime in 2021 the book will come out because I don't want to be in the political election cycle well it comes out clearly some people will take umbrage to the fact that I'm saying women have to be in the workforce there would be criticism this is where I need this sisterhood to step up to support me okay please cuz I'm not somebody asked me today at the board room meeting why are you taking this on as an issue you could have written about a lot of other things I just felt I had to pay it forward I know what I went through and in so many forums women ask me this question how did he do it with a lot of pain some even have tears and I felt it was my job to do something that evoked a national discussion on this topic so I'm gonna take it on the road symposium go to the hill talk about this issue as a significant so andr I don't have a question I introduced yourself oh I'm Betty del Bianco from Celeste oka and I don't have a question I have a request because an area Stevens and I here we're talking about we've seen you speak a number of times at this conference and you one time told the story about the day you were appointed president Pepsi and you came home and your mother telling you leaving the gold and I have and ivory told that story so many times and I'm proud I'm sure I've like bungled the details over that over time I would just love love if you oh you have no God okay so this is way back in 2000 and when I became president of the company I was working very late because we were integrating Quaker Oats and so and by I think it was 10 o'clock or something Steve Raymond who was going to become CEO called me and said Indra we're gonna appoint you president and put you on the board of directors I said okay I better go home and tell my folks this is what's happening I left the office at 10:00 I came home pulled into the garage went up the stairs and my mother was waiting there for me and I said mama I got big news for you she said the news is gonna have to wait because I need you to go ahead and buy milk and I said okay but explain to me why you didn't have the help go get the milk I forgot when did my husband get home she said about 8:00 what did you ask him to buy the bed he looked tired okay you're laughing because you get experiences right so the guy's tired she didn't ask you she waited for me to tell it all she stayed up the sport is lieutenant clock til I showed up so you know you don't ask any questions of your mom so you go get the milk you dump it on the counter and say I got big news for you I'm president I'm gonna be on the board of directors and all that you wanted was to talk about milk and she said let me explain something to you you can be President Board of Directors I don't care what that is I don't even know what it means but when you enter this house you're the wife you're the daughter you're the mother of the kids you're the daughter-in-law just leave that crown in the garage life will be good so I mean in that and we have to finish out because I know you have to get to a plane but how much of this we always talk about policy and structures and unconscious bias and all this but how much of it is culture that keeps women from moving to the top you know in a family if everybody brings their crown into the home there's gonna be chaos okay so my point is if the only price I have to pay is to leave the crown the garage so be it because I have my crown in my head I don't need a physical crown you know yeah so my point is okay fine I'll leave the crown in the garage inside I'm thinking to myself I got the crowd of people there but outside I'm the best spouse I'm the best everything I keep my mouth shut I've learned that I have one mouth in two years and so I learned to speak carefully at home carefully just say the right things don't think you have to you don't want your kids and your husband to think they're your employees yeah very important and how many of us are guilty of that very important off to Singapore you go stop is everybody gonna be here when the book comes out Thank You Donna start a dialogue it's full of solutions start a dialogue and let's let's make it our book not my book you know I'll just use my you know 12 years to see and write the book I'm gonna throw my head heart and hands into it but it's a book for us so let us figure out how to do it together right great thank you

Channel: Fortune Magazine

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Keywords: Journalism Franchise, Fortune, business, wall street, finance

Id: vRy-_w4cvT8

Length: 25min 5sec (1505 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 16 2019