Indra Nooyi quotes: PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi’s best content.
“My parents made us dream that we could be anyone that we wanted to.”
“An important attribute of success is to be yourself. Never hide what makes you, you.”
“Take a stand. Be known for your courage and confidence.”
“The biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict with each other.”
“Values make an unsinkable ship.”
“You have to have your feet firmly planted before you can let your mind wander.”
“If you really want advantage, you’ve got to be the first mover.”
“Dig deep. Be curious. Have an insatiable appetite to find out the back-story behind the story. Because, once you get into the details and really understand what’s going on, the quality of your decision-making will be richer.”
“In many ways, you’ve got to make a break with the past. If you don’t, you’re spending more time appeasing the heritage employees than making the necessary changes.”
“Diversity is a necessity, not a choice.”
“If you give up the guilt, that’s a huge load off your shoulders.”
“There is nothing like a concrete life plan to weigh you down. Because if you always have one eye on some future goal, you stop paying attention to the job at hand, miss opportunities that might arise, and stay fixedly on one path, even when a better, newer course might have opened up.”
“Market growth alone doesn’t give you enough tailwind. You have to create your own. The way to do that is by designing products for consumers that wow them.”
“Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader.”
“As a leader, I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however, I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future.”
“To be a CEO is a calling. You should not do it because it is a job. It is a calling, and you have got to be involved in it with your head, heart, and hands. Your heart has got to be in the job; you got to love what you do; it consumes you. And if you are not willing to get into the CEO job that way, there is no point getting into it.”
“The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson. I cannot just expect the organization to improve if I don’t improve myself and lift the organization, because that distance is a constant.”
“You cannot deliver value unless you anchor the company’s values. Values make an unsinkable ship. Code of conduct goes beyond legal compliance and every employee needs to be well-versed with it.”
“Just because you are CEO, don’t think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I’ve never forgotten that.”
“Embrace tough assignments.”
“Sit up, sit at the table and speak with confidence. That’s half the battle won.”
“I’m beginning to use certain words a little bit more freely and I am screaming a bit more, pounding the table… which is really not the way I was. But it is effective. It shows the passion that I have for what I’m doing.”
“It’s been a long time since you could talk about sustainable competitive advantage. The cycles are shortened. The rule used to be that you’d reinvent yourself once every seven to 10 years. Now it’s every two to three years. There’s constant reinvention: how you do business, how you deal with the customer.”
“We ought to keep pushing the boundaries to get to flawless execution. Flawless is the ultimate goal.”
“Every year in consulting is like three years in the corporate world because you have multiple clients, multiple issues – you grow so much.”
“I pick up the details that drive the organization insane. But sweating the details is more important than anything else.”
“When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response.”
“Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different.”
“I’m very honest – brutally honest. I always look at things from their point of view as well as mine. And I know when to walk away.”
“Most importantly, we want to create a company where every employee can bring their whole selves to work.”
“I wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.”
“If I hadn’t had mentors, I wouldn’t be here today. I’m a product of great mentoring, great coaching. Coaches or mentors are very important. They could be anyone – your husband, other family members, or your boss.”
“Let mentors find you. If you ask someone to be your mentor and they agree, they probably aren’t going to push you as hard as someone who is grooming you for the next level.”
“There will never be a replacement for that ongoing physical contact. But I don’t think blogging is meant to replace the face-to-face of friendships and meetings. Blogging is a way to keep in touch with a larger group of people on an ongoing basis, in a more efficient way.”
“Blogging and the internet allow us to engage in a lot more real-time conversations as opposed to a one-way dump of information or a message.”
“Blogging is a great way to provide tips and advice to each other.”
“One of the world’s biggest public health challenges, a challenge fundamentally linked to our industry: obesity.”
“Each and every one of us has unknowingly played a part in the obesity problem.”
“Not only do we have to change the food we eat… we have to educate people about what they can eat appropriately.”
“Most companies target women as end users, but few are effectively utilizing female employees when it comes to innovating for female consumers. When women are empowered in the design and innovation process, the likelihood of success in the marketplace improves by 144%!”
“Women helping each other – coaching, mentoring, and providing tips – is a great way for us to be our own force.”
“The glass ceiling will go away when women help other women break through that ceiling.”
“Performance with purpose.”
“Every morning you’ve got to wake up with a healthy fear that the world is changing.”
“At the end of the day, don’t forget that you are a person, don’t forget you are a mother, don’t forget you are a wife, don’t forget you are a daughter. Because in the end, no matter how much money you make and how much success you create, what you are left is family, friends, and faith.”
Now hear from another multimillionaire CEO, YouTube’s head honcho, Susan Wojcicki.
