A life well-lived

Former Pepsico head honcho Indra Nooyi’s story in her own words. In a memoir (My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future), is replete with her characteristic candour, and humour, what stands out is the secret of her success: In a world full of copies, she had the courage to be an original. This is her life, and this is how she tells it-in full

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Indra K. Nooyi served as the Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2019. Her smart strategising, insight into consumer behaviour and wisdom on managing a vast, global workforce makes her one of the world’s most sought-after advisors to entrepreneurs, companies and governments. She is also revered as a role model for women & immigrants and celebrated for her empowering messages on inclusivity. Nooyi has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour and the US State Department’s award for Outstanding American by Choice. She has received 15 honorary degrees, including an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Yale University in 2019. She is married to Raj Nooyi and has two daughters, Preetha and Tara.

“One foggy Tuesday in November 2009, after hours of meeting in Washington DC with the top US and Indian executives, I found myself standing between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of India. Barack Obama and Manmohan Singh had entered the room for an update on our group’s progress, and President Obama began introducing the American team to his Indian counterpart. When he go to me-Indra Nooyi-CEO of Pepsico-Prime Minister Singh exclaimed, “Oh! But she is one of us.”

And the President, without missing a beat, responded: “Oh! But she is one of us too!”

The introduction to the memoir, in a nutshell, explains the importance of being Indra Nooyi-a household name and familiar face in more ways than one. Amongst the world’s most admired CEOs, the first woman of colour and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 Company and redefine it with a unique vision and strategy, Indra Nooyi’s life has been an epic waiting to be narrated. And who better to do the honours than the lady herself?

An inspiring story, replete with anecdotes and peppered with good humour and large doses of honesty, it is every connoisseur’s idea of an enriching autobiography.

"On the CEO floor of Pepsico when I arrived, no one was expected to be a deeply engaged parent, let alone a great mother and wife. Dealing with teachers, doctors, groceries, cooking, cleaning laundry, gardening, houseguests, birthdays, holidays was just not their area"

The early years

Nooyi takes us through the events that shaped her, from her childhood and early education in 1960s India to the Yale School of Management to her rise as a corporate consultant and strategist who soon ascended into the most senior ranks.

The product of a traditional yet supportive Brahmin family from Chennai, Indra all through the work, comes across as the quintessential maverick who would defy the mores- with intelligence and with good reason. So, whether she was going through the paces of putting together Chennai’s much-loved all-female rock band (believe it, it’s true.), savouring the taste of independence in Mumbai while interning at the Department of Atomic Energy, Indra’s choices depict surety of purpose from the very beginning.

Valuable episodes from corporate history

What’s more, the book is also full of nuggets about the history of corporate India and how it handled the social norms of the time. An example of this would be her stint at Johnson and Johnson in Mumbai as their product manager for India’s launch of Stayfree feminine protection. Her research had to be intelligent, thorough, and sensitive, given the awkward conversation and taboos around menstrual hygiene products at the time. “In India at the time, packaged products to handle their monthly periods were perceived as unnecessary and expensive… My bosses were all men, and I had to routinely explain my research and progress. These were delicate conversations for me, but the men listened intently and had constructive suggestions. They knew this was the job.”

However, advertising feminine personal products were taboo in India at that time. They could only talk tangentially about the experience of using them. We had to go to colleges to explain the benefits to young women. We also had to convince parents, especially mothers, to pay for this “freedom” for their daughters which wasn’t always easy. And there was an additional issue: these products were never displayed in a store or talked about and presented to customers wrapped in a newspaper. India had no self-service stores in those days. Despite all these hurdles, we introduced Stayfree in two to three test markets in less than seven months, I felt like my efforts had paid off.”

"If you had the opportunity to call up your past self and offer a piece of wisdom, what would it be? This picture was taken around the time I first arrived in the U.S.-I was green, full of ambition, and nervous about what my future would hold. They say the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second-best time is now. To this version of myself I would say: plant the tree. When you take on something, give it everything you’ve got. Be yourself and if people can’t accept you for who you are, it’s their loss"

The American dream as never before

Moving to the US to pursue a degree at Yale, Indra was strengthened by her parents’ support. Fortunately, the support continued when she married her husband, Raj-himself a successful and top-ranking executive. For a job offer she badly wanted to take up, he agreed to move with their two daughters from Illinois to Connecticut, a far from common action, back then. “Raj’s selflessness,” she writes, “was all the more remarkable because he was taking on the conventions of the time.”

An endearing aspect of the narration is that she is completely candid about the fact that an upward professional trajectory meant making difficult choices about being a mother and a wife. She reflects on these choices, sometimes with regret-particularly, about engaging the right nannies for her elder daughter. Some let the kid watch too much TV, instead of engaging with her through books and art, while others couldn’t stand the pace of keeping up with a child in elementary school. Indra connects with her female readers instantly as she writes with candour: “As my pregnancy progressed, I went from brutal morning sickness to intense fatigue-working, travelling and trying to live up to the expectations of being a great executive, mother, wife and daughter. My mother living with us brought great advantages, and over time, some difficulties. She had her own way of parenting Preetha. Sleep times and dining times were fairly lax, and TV watching was equally random. Raj wanted a little more routine and discipline in Preetha’s life. My mother, on the other hand, kept reminding us that she’d raised three kids and knew what she was doing. I didn’t want to make her mad. Raj was right to organise Preetha’s life a little more. I couldn’t change my mother. I tried to intervene, with little luck. There was a lot of tension in the house.”

At this point, she reflects on a larger issue- the importance of multigenerational living and learning to work it to advantage. “Mothers and fathers have an extra set of hands when they need them, and children and grandparents connect. This model also works for caring for our elders and allows for young adults to rely on support from the home base when they are venturing out in the world,” she says. Though far from easy and saddled with unintentional outcomes such as tensions between generations and fights between couples, there is a need and possibility to make it work given the rapidly ageing population globally and a real need to support young families. “Doing this well-with inventive architecture and development and connected with community infrastructure- could be a real boon to working families in ways that reduce the pressures but capture the wonderful benefits of living together,” she says.

Pepsico and the upward trajectory

The Pepsico Years are particularly engaging for the vivid picture she paints of the company as well as of mid-90s America. “By 1994, Pepsico was the 15th-biggest US company, with annual revenue of $25 billion. It sold drinks and food in more than 150 countries and employed 450,000 people. Advertising campaigns for Pepsi and Diet Pepsi were huge”.

White American men held 15 of the top 15 jobs at Pepsico when Nooyi entered. Similarly, the men climbing up the corporate ladder, reaching for bigger titles, salaries and board seats could travel more, work more, study in the evenings and spend hours mingling with clients, competitors and friends. They could pack up to go wherever the company needed them to, with wives and children on board. “On the CEO floor of Pepsico when I arrived, no one was expected to be a deeply engaged parent, let alone a great mother and wife. Dealing with teachers, doctors, dentists, groceries, clothing, cooking, cleaning laundry, home décor, gardening, houseguests, birthdays, holidays and vacations was just not their area. Importantly, the men I worked together with didn’t judge one another on how their work and family lives came through.”

Gradually, she steered the iconic American company towards healthier products and reinvented its environmental profile despite resistance at every turn.

"By fixing the issue of child care, we will create a massive advantage for every community and company. Unto that end, just about everyone needs to come together, from the federal and state governments, the private sector and experts in early childcare education"

In her unique way, Nooyi has managed to wed business to community welfare and ethics

Retaining female talent

Sharing in much detail as to her learnings and challenges along the way, Nooyi makes a clear, actionable, urgent call for business and government to prioritise the care ecosystem, paid leave, work flexibility and a detailed, persuasive argument for how improving company and community support for young corporates will unleash the economy’s full potential.

On childcare, she argues, it’s about time that time and effort is devoted to this critical arena-as nothing much has changed from the time she and Raj went on changing nannies till the right fit was found-35 years ago. By fixing this issue, we will create a massive advantage for every community and company, she says. Unto that end, just about everyone needs to come together, she writes: from the federal and state governments, the private sector and experts in early childcare education to private companies. Wherever possible, companies should add on-site or near-site childcare for their employers. If the number of children doesn’t sustain that investment, companies should work with others to pool childcare services either near offices or in residential clusters, she says.

In her time as the CEO, she clearly walked the talk. Pepsico increased paid maternity leave to up to 12 weeks and wherever possible, added on-site or near-site childcare, on-site medical facilities, private space for breastfeeding and a Healthy Pregnancy Programme. She also helped create the company’s first flexible global work arrangement. “Employees were grateful that we didn’t cut these programmes when it came to cost-cutting. Our organisational health scores improved a lot: 82 per cent of Pepsico employees answered that they were satisfied with the company as a place to work by the time I left, up from 74 per cent when I took over,” she writes.

Performance with a Purpose

She also started to transform Pepsico. To that end, she researched and brainstormed before finally deciding that the way forward was to rethink the company under the umbrella,Performance with a Purpose. She went to add three imperatives to her work ahead: nourish humanity and the communities in which the company operated, replenish the environment and cherish the people in the company. The first goal-nourish-required them to focus on human sustainability. They had to feed people and societies responsibly and contribute to healthier drinking and eating by urging customers to make informed food choices. There was one big hurdle: taste. Everything Pepsi had built was on the premise of taste. And here she was proposing to reduce the fat, the sugar and the salt. This was a complicated technical challenge but in a typical Nooyi style, she chose to focus on the opportunity.

Replenish meant ensuring environmental sustainability by rethinking their use of energy and water in their packaging and recycling systems, showing farming partners how to use less water in agriculture and also cut greenhouse emissions alongside. This required them to be innovative, open-minded and embracing out of the box ideas. From solar power to using hybrid and electric trucks, updated bottle washing and irrigation methods; the list of ideas to explore and implement was indeed long but Nooyi and the team were up to the task.

Last, but not least, was Cherish which was all about ensuring the talent stuck on and enjoyed their work whilst feeling empowered and taken care of. However, the word Cherish sparked a debate and some controversy. “It was too soft, too feminine to a business imperative, I was told. One colleague commented, in a note to me, that the word prompted audible groans that accompany eyes rolling back in heads like slot machines. Well, I guess it struck a nerve,” she writes tongue-in-cheek.

All in all, Nooyi’s work is for anyone who wants to know how change is brought about: thought by thought, action by action. And how little things add up to the big picture in the capable hands of one outstanding woman.