Memoirs of a CEO Who Ticked All the Boxes

« Une vie bien remplie », d'Indra Nooyi. Editions Fayard. 

Posted Sep 30, 2022, 10:00 AM

Indra Nooyi was the first non-white immigrant woman to lead a Fortune 50 company: PepsiCo. She was ranked by Forbes as the fourth most powerful woman in the world and is considered one of the best American business strategists of the 2000s. She recounts her childhood in Madras, in a house which included a “men’s lounge”, and where no woman never sat down – they just came in to clean up or serve coffee to visitors. Indra Nooyi “went up” to Calcutta for her studies, then joined the United States where she entered the Yale School of Management. Married to an Indo-American, mother of two daughters, she endured some humiliations – clothing in particular – during her first months in America, but quickly embraced the culture: “I believe in American history because it is my story. To an English Prime Minister who, in the country residence where he had invited her to lunch, asked her why she had emigrated to the United States and not to the United Kingdom, she replied: “If it had been the case, I wouldn’t be here having lunch with you. »

DUAL CROP “Barack Obama and Manmohan Singh had come to see where we were, and President Obama undertook to present the American team to his Indian counterpart. When he came before me – ‘Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo’ – Prime Minister Singh exclaimed: ‘Oh! But she is one of us!’ The president replied tit for tat and with a broad smile: ‘Ah, but she is also one of us!’ »

STEVE JOBS “I remember an exciting visit I made to Steve Jobs in his office at Apple headquarters in Cupertino in 2008. I had never met Steve before and he was incredibly charming. We started by talking about the vegetarian diet we both follow. […] Then we talked about design. For two hours, I soaked up Steve’s insights on the need to inject beautiful and authentic design into a company’s culture like a sponge. Design was for him a way of life and thought. It must find its place in innovation right from the start, he told me, and cannot be relegated to the back of the process. At Apple, design was everywhere. […] Users form an affective relationship with the design, it is emotional. He fascinates. ‘If you don’t show your support as CEO, he told me, there’s no point in going on this trip.’ »

METHODS “One day, I walked into the office of Larry Thomson (Chief Legal Officer) and, almost on the spot, fired him. He was left speechless. Ten seconds later, with a broad smile, I rehired him as head of the legal department. I realize that the process was a bit steep for Larry and that it may not be a technique for a CEO. But he later recognized that despite the initial shock, he understood that it was important that I ‘re-recruit’ him to this position. Let him be my choice and not a holdover from the era of my predecessor, who hired him. »

A busy life

by Indra Nooyi. Editions Fayard, 352 pages, 22 euros.

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