A former boss of Indra Nooyis once set a herculean mission for an executive recruiter.

Find me an Indra Nooyi, Gerhard Schulmeyer pleaded with them. The recruiter had no idea what he meant, and so Gerhard contacted this former valuable employee of his, Indra Nooyi herself, and tasked her with creating a candidate profile.

But it was nigh impossible to replicate this extraordinary woman executive who would, much later, transform PepsiCo during her 12 years as CEO and Chairman.

Indra Nooyi shared more about this story and others in her interview with Growth Faculty on her memoir, _My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future._ Here's a short summary.

When asked what her qualities were that so impressed her boss, Indra put forward five:

1\. **I wanted to work very hard and provide an outstanding product.** I worked and worked so the boss would say Its complete, I dont have to do anything more with it.

2\. **I was very reliable.** If any of my bosses said they needed it on Friday morning at 10 oclock, it was on their desk Friday morning at 9 oclock, or preferably Thursday evening. They can take that to the bank.

3\. **I built bridges and consensus.** If I needed to talk to four or five other people, I made sure they all felt included in what I was doing and I would credit them for their help.

4\. **I would look at my work through the lens of the boss.** If he was going to present it to the board, I wrote messages in the margins, and gave him notes so I wouldnt need to tag along. $It was always a 'him', she adds$. This behaviour describes perfectly[ Liz Wiseman's 'impact players.'](https://www.thegrowthfaculty.com/blog/LizWisemanImpactPlayers)

5\. **I worked to make the bosss life easy**. I put the company before me, I put my boss way ahead of me, and my work spoke for itself.

Qualities to impress the boss

Indra adds that being such a valuable employee required an extraordinary commitment of time. She says if she was in the same career now, she would do half her work through Zoom.

The one positive lining of Covid-19 is the fast progression of these remote technologies, and theyre still progressing, she tells Growth Faculty.

[**_Free Download_**_: 10 Leadership Qualities That Will Help Solve Challenges in 2022_](https://thegrowthfaculty.ac-page.com/monograph-leadership2022)

How Zoom would so have helped

Indra talks about how executives climbing the womens ladder face many headwinds, but, having experienced many of her own, she says she 'won the lottery' with her progressive and supportive family and fair bosses.

Indra Nooyi shared behaviours of bosses that were tailwinds in her career:

Supportive behaviours of bosses

They looked at me as a talent, not as a woman.

They didnt speak to the men in a certain way and me in another.

They threw me the same challenges as the men and gave me the same unreachable goals!

They held us all to the highest standard. They made us feel like equal leaders.

They never rolled their eyes at me, and never talked over me.

They made me feel a valued member of the team.

Read also: [AT 80, WENDY MCCARTHY WARNS DONT BE TOO POLITE, GIRLS](https://www.thegrowthfaculty.com/blog/wendymccarthydontbetoopolitegirls) and [INTERVIEW: JULIA GILLARD AND DR NGOZI OKONJO-IWEALA ON WOMEN AND LEADERSHIP](https://www.thegrowthfaculty.com/blog/juliagillardokonjoiwealawomenandleadership)

They did the human thing in supporting me as a human being with a family.

Indra has good examples of this. When she was at management consulting firm BCG she was offered 6 months paid leave to look after her dying father. When she asked her boss why he did it, he answered it was the human thing to do. Both BCG and heavy electrical equipment firm ABB gave her 12 weeks paid maternity leave.

They viewed me as a person who can contribute to the company, as opposed to a woman who is a liability because shes going to go off and have kids, she remembers. So, my loyalty, as result, was very high.

Doing the human thing

Indra says the moment she was publicly announced as CEO of PepsiCo was a scary moment.

No longer can you say, Im number 2. No, you are 'it', she says. The media looked at me as fresh meat. For some reason they made me out as this exotic Indian being, that I would be coming to the board singing songsI had to withstand all of that.

People think becoming CEO is a fantastic opportunity, it is, Indra says. But, if you dont come to work every day with a fear in the pit of your stomach, youre doing yourself a disservice. Youve got to feel the weight of the job in you, all of the time.

Becoming CEO

When Indra took over as CEO she asked herself how she could future-proof the company.

You can either future-proof the company or de-risk it. I started with a look at the megatrends that would impact the consumer products industry. I wrote down the 10 megatrends, then went and talked about what we needed to do differently to continue to be a major player in this changing world, with these megatrends coming upon us.

The result was **Performance with Purpose:**

- Transforming the portfolio to include healthier products

- Having a major focus on environmental issues

- Creating a different environment in the company to bring the best and brightest talent in.

Taken together, the purpose reinforced performance, and performance funded purpose, she told Growth Faculty. It was a different way to make money, rather than giving away the money we made.

Future-proofing PepsiCo

Indra says that coming out of the pandemic there is an incredible moment of stillness.

We are a better humanity, and should put families at the centre of this because families are the core of society. If we have thriving families, we will have a society that replaces itself, we will have well-adjusted people.

Her framework for families to thrive includes:

- Paid leave for both men and women to **care** , whether that be for ageing parents, sick parents, sick children, as well as for the birth of children.

- There should be **flexible** work hours, and **predictability** of schedules for shift workers.

- **Childcare** infrastructure. It is critically important to think about 0-5.

Family at the centre of business

Men are predominately the ones in charge. So, Indra makes a plea to them to come to the table on gender equality.

If talent is what is going to differentiate the great companies from an average one, a great country from an average one, a great society from an average one, why dont you look at the entire population base as talent and draw from the best of that, as opposed to saying Im only going to draw from 50% of the population $which is men$ and single women with no families, she says.

Men need to come to the table

Indra Nooyi says her life has been a bunch of dualities.

- I grew up with **one foot on the brake and one foot on the accelerator**. The men were saying dream big and theres my mother was saying Hey, Ive got to get you married, in an arranged marriage, at age 18.

- The second duality was **power and humility**. Dont ever think youre a big shot.

- Third, Im a product of the **worlds largest democracy and the worlds oldest democracy**. I am the story of the American dream.

- Fourth, performance in purpose. I was all about **performance but** Im very driven about what is **good for society**.

- Fifth, I look at the **short term and the long term.** I look at things with a **telescope and a microscope**. I was constantly zooming in and zooming out.

These were the lessons I learned at the feet of my grandfather, Indra Nooyi remembers. He might have meant it at a smaller scale, I brought it to life on a global scale.

For more quotes from Indra Nooyi read our blog: [COMPELLING QUOTES FROM A WOMAN CEO: INDRA NOOYI, FORMER HEAD OF PEPSICO](https://www.thegrowthfaculty.com/blog/Indranooyiquotes)

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