The Strategist
The long view, patient, analytical, playing several moves ahead.
Indra Nooyi reads as The Strategist because she scanned the horizon before the core felt pressure. At PepsiCo she initiated a long-range shift toward healthier products while the existing portfolio remained highly profitable, acting on cultural and regulatory signals others had not yet registered.
“Job. Don't worry about the other distractions. And you can be sure that three of us have the company's best interest at heart. And they all knew that I always put the company before me. I said we have the best interest of the company at heart, but we will keep you informed. But your job is to keep driving the performance.”
“I'm going to tell you those mistakes, but yeah, of course. I mean, we correct them, but yeah, we made mistakes. And if the mistakes were made is because I wish we had played out how that market could have evolved even more, or I didn't bring the bottlers in soon enough to talk about how they're going to carry it on that bottling system.”
“Have to stop it at that time and say, let's not just leave this discussion, let's really have a conversation about this because maybe it's true, maybe it's not. And sometimes it used to be issues related to her style or the way she dressed or how she showed emotion or how she gesticulated too much. Only because again I'm not criticizing.”
“Like an accordion, sometimes you end up adding a couple layers, and then you say, hey, wait a sec, how did this happen? Why did we drift there? Let's get the number of layers down. You know, there's certain levels of people have to have at least eight reports or ten reports.”
Only in America: “Indra Nooyi on Leadership and Innovation at PepsiCo | Only In America”
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