Nooyi: Ganesha guides success

As one of the world's most outstanding businessmen, Pepsi's chairman and CEO Inde Nooyi has many footnotes.

She is known as the strongest woman in business today. And she is, because PepsiCo is the largest U.S. company by market capitalization led by a woman.

She is known as an effective manager with a high degree of business acumen—she was one of the most successful CFOs before becoming CEO. Yet business acumen is only part of her leadership skills.

She is also known as a rebel who dares to risk the world. Any woman who takes the risk of being single all her life—like Nooyi who left India alone to study in America—can be called a rebel. Any CEO who sings in a corporate auditorium—as Nooyi once did—can also be seen as daring to take the plunge. But these are also superficial descriptions that offer little insight into her leadership.

All of these footnotes, while appropriate, are far from sufficient. Perhaps the best way to understand Nooyi's personality qualities is to study the Hindu god of Ganesha. Images of the Hindu deity adorned her home and office, and its many symbolisms are easily captured in the leadership of her convert, Nooyi Nooyi.

The Elephant God is deeply loved and often quoted. He is known as the "God of Good Luck" and "God of Success". A devout Hindu, Nooyi prayed a lot. Her good luck and success can be said to come from those characteristics represented by Ganesha.

Education

The elephant god is a symbol of education, and Nooyi's parents began to cultivate the concept of education when she was a child. In the Tamil Brahmin community where she grew up, parents would always compare their children's academic performance with each other. Nooyi didn't have to know how the other kids were doing—her sister was always at the top academically. Her sister was always number one, and she was only number three. So Nooyi learned to study hard throughout his life. Nooyi graduated from Madras Christian College, majoring in mathematics, physics and chemistry. After that, she earned two master's degrees through hard work, and is a pioneer in a certain sense in both fields. First, she obtained a master's degree in financial marketing from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Calcutta. At the time, the college was one of only two universities in India that offered MBA education.

After joining Johnson & Johnson, Nooyi was assigned to oversee a new production line. The difficult job made Nooyi feel that she was not ready enough for business, so she decided to go to the US for more in-depth study. She was accepted to the Yale School of Management. It was an unusual decision for a woman from a conservative South Indian family. As she later explained to the Financial Times, it was believed at the time that it would make her "one of the most unfit for marriage". She still persevered and earned a second master's degree, this time in public and private management.

The elephant god holds a rose wreath in one hand, implying that the pursuit of knowledge should be continuous. Nooyi's hard work also continued. Later, at PepsiCo, she did her best to learn the tough hotel industry and study tough competitor Coca-Cola.

Not only that, Nooyi demonstrated the ability to learn from different sources. As a sports enthusiast, she studies the games of the Old Bulls in the NBA and the New York Yankees to learn about the teamwork skills shown by these championship teams.

Knowledge

The Ganesha represents knowledge and is called "the destruction of ignorance" in some Hindu scriptures. Throughout her career, Nooyi has demonstrated this trait in strategic thinking. Her experience at Boston Consulting Group, Motorola, and then Chief Strategy Officer at ABB has honed this trait. She was very skillful in helping ABB set its strategic direction and got Welch's attention. Welch then tried to persuade her to join GE.

However, Wayne Calloway, then CEO of PepsiCo, offered her a job she couldn't refuse. As she told BusinessWeek, Calloway told her, "Welch is the best CEO I know. But I need people like you, and I'm going to make Pepsi made just for you. The place."

So Nooyi became PepsiCo's chief strategy officer, a position that was well-suited. She set out to revamp the soft-drink maker's financial structure. In 1994, when she joined the company, PepsiCo had a combined turnover of $31 billion from three business areas—soft drinks, fast food and restaurants—but net income was only $1.75 billion, with modest profit margins. She traveled from city to city, researching the hotel industry in depth and studying competitors. After research, she looked over the entire hotel industry and found that this field is not suitable for PepsiCo, and the company must get rid of this industry.

Having knowledge is one thing, but being able to impart it and persuade others to act. Inde Nooyi demonstrated a knack for communicating his strategic knowledge. She conducted a full analysis on the board, summarizing various countermeasures. In an invitation to India's Economic Times to speak with Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of Infosys, she recalled the process: "After the whole analysis, it was very clear that only breaking up the restaurant business would The best option. The process was thoughtful and back-and-forth."

After selling the restaurant business and reducing turnover by $10 billion, Nooyi purchased more strategically aligned industries—breakfast drinks, sports drinks and Breakfast food - to drive the turnover up again. She actively learned from Coca-Cola's experience in breaking up its beverage bottling business and helped Pepsi do the same.

During her days at PepsiCo, she demonstrated a strategic acumen that can only be described by almighty—from analysing business details in detail, to understanding how those details relate to the company's financial health, to Take a look at the big picture of the entire industry and convey your ideas in a persuasive way.

Financial data is the more obvious evidence. In 2007, Pepsi completed more than $35 billion in sales and a profit of $5.6 billion. In other words, since Nooyi joined the company, she has boosted the company's profit margins by nearly 300 percent.

Wisdom

Veda is an ancient Indian scripture, and the word Veda itself means knowledge and wisdom. In traditional Hinduism, knowledge and wisdom are closely linked and complement each other. Nooyi's leadership philosophy also pursues a balanced relationship that complements each other: reason and emotion, health and wealth, purpose and process, play and work, family and work.

Nooyi admits to being a workaholic. Workaholics typically struggle to achieve a balance between family and work, but Nooyi trains her family and colleagues to help her.

In a "CEO Lecture Series" at Dartmouth University's Tuck School of Business, she revealed some details: "So, how is this balance achieved? You have to go out and get everyone on board. . You are a mother of two young children, but to be a good parent you need help from others."

She cited her extended Indian family as an example. "My husband and I needed a family member to take the kids when we were traveling. So we looked among siblings and other relatives in the extended family to see who could come. That meant you had to be extra nice to everyone in the family. That That's what I learned in this family—how to work with this big family and call them when they need help."

When she was traveling, her daughter Tara would call her office The secretary said, "I want to play Nintendo, can you help me and ask Mom, can I play Nintendo games?"

Indre Nooyi said, "My secretary has a checklist. Did you finish your homework? You eat Fast food? They're all trained to go through this list and say, 'Okay, you can play Nintendo for half an hour.' The secretary training also includes calling my daughter and saying, 'You still Are you playing Nintendo? Half an hour is up.' Then she'll leave me a voicemail saying, 'I agree to Tara playing Nintendo.'"

This episode may sound trivial, even odd . But for Nooyi, these are all important. She knew that her seniors were in poor health. Calloway was diagnosed with cancer in 1996. Nooyi's mentor and boss, Roger Enrico, had a history of heart disease, which led to his retirement at the age of 57. Before Yin Ruijie left, she gave him a karaoke machine. Inde Nooyi herself, a former guitarist in a rock band, is widely known to sing in the corporate office and has karaoke equipment at home.

“Whatever you do, have fun. Work takes so much time in your life, and what’s the point if you don’t have fun?” she said.

Inde Nooyi, a former strategy officer, is just trying to improve the bottom line of his quality of life. In the process, she worked hard to overcome the difficulties in her leadership journey. The image of Ganesha is shown with his right hand pointing upwards, holding a thorn stick that can help him drive people on the eternal path and remove obstacles in the way. The lasso in his left hand is his tool for capturing all difficulties.

The vanity of the leader himself is included in these difficulties. Vanity can get in the way of important duties like buying milk for the family when he gets home.