Leave the Crown in the Garage Indra Nooyi , Pepsi New York City August 2017
'' LEAVE THE CROWN IN THE GARAGE '' What I ' ve learned from a decade of being PepsiCo ' s CEO
Indra Nooyi Chairman and Chief Executive Officer , PepsiCo
I took the helm of PepsiCo in 2006 and I feel so privileged and humbled for the role I ' ve had the chance to play . I ' ve faced many challenges over the years - as we all do - but with inspiration from family , friends , colleagues and other sources of wisdom , I ' ve learned many lessons along the way . Though it would be impossible to name all the lessons I ' ve learned , I ' ve come up with seven critical lessons for running a Fortune 50 company in the 21st century . These lessons are not restricted to budding CEOs . If you ' re a recent college graduate looking for career advice , or simply a student of life looking for inspiration , I hope you ' ll find these lessons equally useful .
1 ) Everyone needs a vision
As it is written in the Book of Proverbs , " Where there is no vision , the people perish ." The same can be said of any institution .
When I came on as CEO , I didn ' t want to completely change the direction of the company . But I also believed we needed to bring a new sense of meaning to the work we did every day . We called it , " Performance with Purpose ." I knew that ifwe wanted to continue to be successful in the 21st century , we needed to adapt our business to consumers ' changing preferences and offer them healthier food and beverage options . If we wanted to lower our energy and packaging costs and get a license to operate in water-strained markets , we needed to be more environmentally sustainable . If we wanted to continue recruiting and retaining world-class talent , we needed to meet the changing expectations of a new generation of employees . It was a philosophy that also pointed to a larger idea that ' s fundamental to how I see the world - the idea that companies don ' t exist in a vacuum . We should be responsive to the needs of the world around us . Performance with Purpose is our way of doing that .
So , that ' s lesson number one : Come up with a vision that not only reflects the direction of a company , but moves people , inspires people to make it a reality .
2 ) Think hard about time
A while back , The New Yorker published a great cartoon . The caption read : " Yes , the planet got destroyed . But for a beautiful moment in time , we created a lot of value for shareholders ." It not only made me laugh , it made me think about how important it is to balance short-term and long-term interests . So , my second lesson is to think hard about your time horizon . By embracing Performance with Purpose , we were , by necessity , focusing not just on the short-term , but the long-term . Not just on the level , but the duration of returns . When you focus on the level of returns alone , you ' re producing returns that , however high they may be in the short-run , are not sustainable . At PepsiCo , we ' ve adopted a different strategy , one that we believe balances both the level and duration of returns . As a result , we ' ve delivered good returns that have grown consistently and sustainably over a long period of time .
3 ) Ensure that culture change sticks The focus ofmy third lesson is the importance of persuasion . Right after I announced Performance with Purpose , I paid a visit to the Frito team in Plano , Texas . They were my