3-in-3 with Indra Nooyi: Lessons Learned on the Future of Work

Over the course of my career and as CEO and Chairman of IBM, I got to meet such great people and learn so many great things. I’m excited to share and let others get to know the real people that I respect and admire.

In Part 1 of my conversation with Indra Nooyi, we looked back at how changes in technology and communication led to enormous changes during the course of her career. In this last installment of our 3-in-3 chat, Indra looks ahead to share her thoughts about the future of work, why we can unlock the economic potential of women by thinking like economists, and how she’d implement lifelong learning for workers by making it fun.

(This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.)

THE FUTURE OF WORK

Ginni:

Let's talk about the future. For many years, you were both part of and ran PepsiCo. When you think, very generally, about the trends that are going to change the future, what do you see changing as we go forward, either live or work? What changes?

Indra:

I think in the next 18 months, Ginni, we are going to have a massive series of experiments being done on what is the ideal future of work. Is it all hybrid? Is it all from the office? Is it a mix of both? Is it from co-working centers? Are people going to come by work group? How is this going to work? And how do we make sure we don't create two classes of citizens? One class is people who come to work, and the other is made of people who don’t. Or, the office workers who have a choice [to work from home] vs. the factory worker that doesn't have a choice because they have to come to work every day. So we’ve got to go through a period of experimentation to figure out what is the best future for work. That's the first part, the whole change that’s going to happen in terms of how and where people work from.

I think the second is: Technology is going to upend everything that we know. There isn't one part of life that's going to remain the same. The challenge for us is going to be: How do we keep up with these changes? Because every aspect of our life is becoming upended – some for the better, some for the not so better. I think how we put the human back in humanity, how we put families at the center of the future of work, how we think about the whole workday differently, and the workforce and the workplace differently, are going to be issues that consume us.

We're going to have to do all this thinking with a changing geopolitical environment where we are going from the world is flat to national boundaries being erected. We're going to have to deal with multiple conflicts. And we're going to have to deal with divisions in our own country. I think we are going into a period of tremendous uncertainty.

Ginni:

I do think experimentation will be needed. During COVID, it's a crisis; people work differently in a crisis. Now, as the crisis abates and it becomes long term, we'll see how productivity shifts itself out. To me, the word is co-create because I think you shape this and see where it goes over time.?

REACHING OUR POTENTIAL BY THINKING LIKE AN ECONOMIST

Ginni:

You say this in the book a lot and I happen to agree – this point that an economy could unlock its potential if it had more women at their full potential and working. So what would you advise anyone listening, especially as the pandemic has set a number of women back just because they are typically a caretaker, though not always? What advice for either a company or person?

Indra:

I would say talent is our single biggest competitive advantage. And talent means drawing the best talent from the entire workforce, not from only half the workforce. If you start out by saying, “I need the best talent in the entire workforce” – not excluding parts of the workforce because of different gender or ethnicity – you'll end up with a very different makeup of employees. At the end of the day, especially for knowledge companies, talent is everything. At a point when we have not yet embarked on the giant reskilling of all of our people for the knowledge economy, we have to draw from the best and the brightest.

If men in power don't come to the table and make it easier for young women to engage in these jobs and at the same time build families – because we need young family builders to pay in the pension plan and take care of the aged – we'll have a crisis on our hands. So I think if we think like economists, these should be no brainers. And I urge men in power, in particular, to think like economists.

Ginni:

That's an interesting point about thinking like an economist. That's a good analogy.?

SKILLS-FIRST HIRING AND LIFELONG LEARNING

Ginni:

I know you know I feel strongly on this, one solution is this idea of skills-first. Hire people for skills, not just degrees, and you’ll pull more people into the workforce who are actually quite talented.

Indra:

I think we should study to understand: What skills do high school students need to have to make them re-skillable downstream??

Ginni:

It’s lifelong learning for everyone, because of that same disruption you talked about earlier. If you're in tech, the half-life of skills is three to five years. You can't be in tech if you don't like to learn.?

Think about government programs that think that you should go to school full time to get aid as an example. That can't be anymore and you'll have to go back over your lifetime. If you really think, I don't think it's that hard to solve. We just have to think that that's the goal and then there's programs to change to make that happen. History's a funny thing – there was a time when Americans did not have high school degrees. Americans did not have college degrees. There are things that change that, laws that went in place. We just have to do the same again now for a different world. To that point, if you were running a company again right now – what would be a talent policy that you'd put in place to make a difference?

Indra:

I would actually put together systems and oversight to make sure that my employees are getting lifelong learning, and don't make it an option. I’d come up with interesting learning methods that make all this new learning exciting and fun as opposed to sitting in front of the computer and answering questions. I'd figure out how to make it fun, but I would make lifelong learning the core pillar of all people's development.