Former CEO of Pepsi Indra Nooyi’s memoir is an inspirational story of how a lady made it to the prime in male-dominated corporate America. An excerpt describing her 1st day at Pepsi…
Wayne Calloway, the tall, redheaded CEO, was precisely the laconic leader I’d met in my interview. But he was also a fierce competitor, a former college basketball player who rode Harley-Davidson motorcycles. He’d served in the US Army just before joining Frito-Lay as a salesman. PepsiCo was recognized as a talent academy, exactly where increasing executives took on difficult assignments and either sank and left the firm or swam and moved up. Wayne was focused on hiring and people today development. He was determined to double income each 5 years. So far he was succeeding.
Wayne believed PepsiCo necessary me more than GE necessary me. He was astute. I had a uncommon international point of view and practical experience that would assistance his bottom line. He also sensed, I assume, that a lady was lengthy overdue in his executive ranks.
White American guys held fifteen of the prime fifteen jobs at PepsiCo when I walked in. Almost all wore blue or gray suits with white shirts and silk ties and had quick hair or no hair. They drank Pepsi, mixed drinks, and liqueurs. Most of them golfed, fished, played tennis, hiked, and jogged. Some hunted for quail with each other. Many have been married with children. I do not think any of their wives worked in paid jobs outdoors their houses.
I am not detailing these qualities to focus on these certain guys. My colleagues have been wise, inventive, devoted people today and shouldered tremendous duty and tension. They constructed a beloved enterprise. The reality is that PepsiCo’s leadership mirrored practically each senior-executive suite in corporate America in 1994. Even the most achieved girls have been nevertheless milling about in middle management. The quantity of female CEOs amongst the 5 hundred most significant businesses that year was zero.
Importantly, the guys I worked with didn’t judge one yet another on how their work and family lives came with each other. They have been lots competitive but also caring and supportive of one yet another by way of crises, which includes divorce, illness, or troubles with their kids.
None of this crossed my thoughts when I met them. I was effectively conscious that I was an outsider: I was nevertheless the eighteen-year-old girl at IIM Calcutta the Indian immigrant in the polyester suit at Yale the vegetarian, expectant mother in La Crosse, Wisconsin. At BCG, I had been inside numerous industries, but I’d never ever encountered a female client. I didn’t assume it was odd to be in meetings with dozens of guys and no other girls. At Motorola and ABB, my world was engineers, scientists, robots, and machinery. I’d never ever had a close lady colleague with a job like mine and had never ever seen a lady in a workplace who was senior to me.
When I got to PepsiCo, I was warmly welcomed. My new workplace was on the coveted “4/3”—the firm nickname for constructing 4, floor 3–down the hall from the CEO and the rest of the prime executives, and it had 5 significant windows, a sign of status in the organization’s informal rule book.
I was presented a affordable spending budget to furnish my space, while I didn’t devote it all. I chosen a utilitarian cherrywood veneer credenza and a desk that came in a flat box, a conference table with six chairs, a white board, and a flip chart.
That June, about 3 months soon after I moved in, 4/3 was abuzz. Pizza Hut USA, with 5,one hundred restaurants, stated that it would likely miss profit estimates for the second quarter and that the outlook was pessimistic for the rest of the year. The final results for Taco Bell, KFC, and a couple of other of our consume in chains also looked shaky.
Missing profit guidance was a important crisis: PepsiCo shares have been probably to fall, and they did. When the news got out, the stock plunged 15 %, and 3 occasions the regular quantity of shares traded that day. Wayne acted rapidly. Within days, he produced a new part-CEO of worldwide restaurants-and convinced Roger Enrico, a shrewd veteran PepsiCo executive who had stepped back to recover from a heart attack, to take the job.
I met Roger later that week when he walked into my workplace. He didn’t smile. “Hi. I’m Roger Enrico,” he stated. “Normally, I would have interviewed the new head of strategy. You’re the first one who was hired without my input.”
“Hi, Roger,” I stated, cheerfully. “I’ve heard so much about you. I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you.”
“I need to know everything about the restaurant business and exactly what the hell is going on in our restaurants,” he stated. “I’ll see you in Dallas in ten days. You are now my chief strategist. Dettmer approved it.”
That was the complete conversation.
He left.
So now I had my original corporate method and preparing job, reporting to Bob, and a second job, chief strategist of the restaurant group, reporting to Roger. My work was about to double no one discussed my spend.
Excerpted from My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future by Indra Nooyi, by permission of Hachette India
My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future
Indra Nooyi
Hachette India
Pp 328, Rs 699