Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo

Indra Nooyi was the former Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. The first woman of color and immigrant to lead a Fortune 50 company, she transformed the company with a long-term vision, pursuit of excellence, and a deep sense of purpose. She is also an alumnae of BCG in the Chicago office. We had a special guest host, BCG Managing Director and Senior Partner Matt Krentz, who has had a 40 year relationship with Indra.

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What were some of the things she took away from time working at BCG that really helped her in her career?

I joined BCG way back in 1980, in the Chicago office, and the Chicago office had just opened so we were among the first group of consultants to come into Chicago. I think what was fantastic about Chicago at that time, all that they told us was BCG values was do the right thing for the client, don't get involved in the politics, don't be political. The idea is not to provide the politically correct solution, the idea is to provide the right solution for the business for the client. So it was a high standard of consulting.

And when you approach every case with that high standard, you want to give it your best because you've been given license by your partners to actually do the right thing for the client. But Chicago was a memorable, formative experience for me because it taught me strategy, it taught me how to look at things objectively, always tell the truth, and it also taught me how to write in a compelling way.

If you speak the truth to people backed by facts, ultimately they begin to respect you as opposed to telling them what they want to hear, which may not always be the right decision for the business or the individual himself or herself. So I think that BCG taught me solid values, which I have never, ever forgotten, ever forgotten.

When she joined PepsiCo's leadership team, the top 15 leaders had no diversity. How was she received by that group, and what can leaders do to support diversity, equity, and inclusion?

I think PepsiCo is an environment where they actually welcomed me. And what PepsiCo's corporate levels looked like was what every company in America looked like, so PepsiCo was no different. In '94, that's what corporate America looked like. And so here you walk in, a colored woman from an emerging market. You're sitting in the executive boardroom and sometimes presenting to all of these senior executives and questioning what they're doing, because I had BCG training so I'm questioning what they're doing. And they're like... They're thinking to themselves, what the hell is she doing asking us questions about our performance or challenging our analysis? I can see that cloud over their head with these questions. Yet I'm seeing the CEO basically say, "Team, listen to her." So here's the CEO showing explicit support for me. So here's another mentor, Wayne Calloway, basically saying, "I brought her to shake this place up and you better listen to her."

There were some passive aggressive behaviors I noticed behind the scenes, and one almost caused me to leave PepsiCo. But I will tell you that by and large, taking the cue from the CEO, people were helpful. People were supportive. People wanted to help me onboard in every which way I can. So the first answer to your question, how the tone at the top is set is critical. And if you notice bad behavior, exclusionary behavior, behavior like rolling your eyes when the woman talks or talking over the woman or a diverse person, stop it right there. Many people say, "I'll talk to him later." In the heat of the moment, you've got to do it right then say, "Hey man, stop it. Can you just let her finish?" Or "Anything wrong with your eyes? Could I get you eye drops, whatever?" But you've got to do it in a way that doesn't offend Matt, but do it in a way that calls the question right there publicly so people stop the bad behavior right away.

It's demeaning when people talked over me. Even before I finished, they would start talking like, "Let's just ignore her. Let's keep going." Or I've seen so many instances of eyes rolling. She's there, she goes, like, oh my god. What can you say? I wasn't going to give up. I just go on and on continuing the way I did. And I just thought I had to suck it up. Later on, I found my voice. When I found my voice, it was so much better than when I didn't find my voice, but I was helped by Wayne. Roger, Steve, all of them. Without them, I couldn't have done it.

What does she think about the future of work?

One of the problems is that I come from the older generation that actually liked human interaction, that actually cherished it, that I thought cultures were built because of the human interaction. I thought decision making was way better when you bumped into people on the corridor and you could exchange ideas, or pop your head into a conference room and say, "Hey, I'm thinking about this. What do you think?" So I actually love that human interaction. At the same time, some flexibility to enable people to balance their home life with their work life is also important.

I think making a decision on the future of work and the workplace just as we're coming out of COVID is the wrong time to make a decision. I think we should try different experiments, different models of how best to structure the future of work. How much flexibility to give, when do people have to come in? What do you lose? What do you gain? I think we have to try a few experiments, and then decide what's the best resting point for the future of work, for different work groups, for different types of work that are going to get done. Keeping in mind, one thing the essential worker still has to come to work every day. Don't create two classes of citizens, with people who are knowledge workers or in-office jobs have infinite flexibility, but that essential worker, who doesn't get paid much, has to get up in the morning and schlep to work. So I think we have to be very cognizant of not creating two classes of citizens.

Who was a critical mentor in her career?

One of the things I'd say about BCG then, I'm sure it is that way now, they showed me what human capital management was all about. So in 1982, I'm a brand new consultant and Francois de Carbonnel had just stepped out from being head of the Chicago office and Carl Stern had come in from London. And Carl Stern comes in this flashy young man, everybody's in awe of Carl Stern. And at the same time that he comes in, I have to leave because my father's been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

I go to India, bring him to Chicago, and they tell me he's got less than six months to live. I don't know what to do, because my husband Raj was still in business school. I was the primary wage earner at that time, and I'm sitting here going, "I guess we'll figure out a way to live. We just have to do it." And then I called BCG and said, "My father is terminally ill and I have to take care of him. I'm sorry, I can't work until something gets resolved with my dad." And Carl Stern, who I barely knew, who barely knew me, calls me out of the blue to the house and says, "BCG has decided to give you six months off with pay. And we want you to stay with your dad and take care of him and be with him until whatever happens to him."

Now, I didn't know what paid leave was. The word paid leave didn't enter my vocabulary then. I would never have asked for it, because I was too new. I was an immigrant. I was afraid, and I didn't think BCG would even give it because it made no economic sense. But BCG viewed me as a human being, as opposed to just another pair of hands.

And the fact that they made that outreach and gave me that six-month paid leave, which I didn't take for more than three months, because my father died in three months and I came back to work. And the amazing thing is all the clients I was working on at that time put a halt to the assignments and said, "We'll wait for Indra to come back." So that BCG and the client base both stepped in to help me care for my father. I've never forgotten BCG. So I'd say BCG is not just a great strategy consulting firm, what they told me was that it's more of a human-oriented consulting firm. So my love for Carl Stern, my love for BCG only intensified after that experience.

You can provide profound value to clients, keep doing that work. It's noble work, but I will say one thing, in those days in BCG, we traveled all the time. Remember when we were in Wisconsin, five days of the week in Wisconsin, we came back home Friday night, family life was on the back burner. In today's world with all these flexibility tools and with BCG being so family-friendly, for heaven's sake, spend time with your families too. Please do. At the end of the day, family is all you have. Literally family, your faith is all you have.

So please, please, please, for all the high-powered work that BCG or any consulting firm throws at you, make sure you find time to go back to your family and put family at the center of your future of work, as opposed to making work the be-all and the end-all, and say, "Yeah, yeah, I'll get to family in the evenings."

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