Indira Nooyi an Admired Personality

In todays information-oriented society, research and development, particularly information research,

has become an important activity for business companies, who want to know more about the
consumer market, people who consider consumption as embedded and part of their everyday lives.
Initially, commercialism of goods and services through advertising mainly focused on extent products
and services that people need; nowadays, persuasive messages are extended through advertising,
informing people about the goods and services that they should and ought to know and buy for
themselves. Selling these products and services through persuasive advertising messages, however,
are the products of advertising research. Consumer research looks into the motivations and
personalities of an individual in terms of consuming or buying a particular product or service, later
turning this information into strategies geared at gaining a particular segment of the market.Pepsico
could achieve it because of Nooyi.She is among the Top 100 most influential people in Time
magazines 2008 list. She is also number 5 in Forbess most influential women in the world, number
1 in Fortunes 50 most powerful women and number 22 in Fortunes 25 most powerful people in
business . The lists go on and on. To those familiar with her work and style, this should come as no
surprise: Even before she became the CEO of PepsiCo Inc. in 2006, she was one of the most powerful
executives at Pepsi and one of the two candidates being groomed for the coveted CEO position. Born
in Chennai, India, Nooyi graduated from Yales School of Management and worked in companies
such as the Boston Consulting Group Inc., Motorola Inc., and ABB Inc. She also led an all-girls rock
band in high school, but that is a different story.To start with, she has a clear vision for Pepsi, which
seems to be the right vision for the company at this point in time. Her vision is framed under the term
performance with purpose, which is based on two key ideas: tackling the obesity epidemic by
improving the nutritional status of PepsiCo products and making PepsiCo an environmentally
sustainable company. She is an inspirational speaker and rallies people around her vision for the
company. She has the track record to show that she means what she says. She was instrumental in
Pepsis acquisition of the food conglomerate Quaker Oats Company and the juice maker Tropicana
Products Inc., both of which have healthy product lines. She is bent on reducing Pepsis reliance on
high-sugar, high-calorie beverages, and she made sure that Pepsi removed trans fats from all its
products before its competitors. On the environmental side, she is striving for a net zero impact on
the environment. Among her priorities are plans to reduce the plastic used in beverage bottles and
find biodegradable packaging solutions for PepsiCo products. Her vision is long-term and could be
risky for short-term earnings, but it is also timely and important.Those who work with her feel
challenged by her high performance standards and expectation of excellence. She is not afraid to give
people negative feedback, and with humor too. She pushes people until they come up with a solution
to a problem and does not take I dont know for an answer. For example, she insisted that her team
find an alternative to the expensive palm oil and did not stop urging them forward until the alternative
arrived: rice bran oil.Nooyi is well liked and respected because she listens to those around her, even
when they disagree with her. Her background cuts across national boundaries, which gives her a true
appreciation for diversity, and she expects those around her to bring their values to work. In fact,
when she graduated from college, she wore a sari to a job interview at Boston Consulting, where she
got the job. She is an unusually collaborative person in the top suite of a Fortune 500 company, and
she seeks help and information when she needs it. She has friendships with three ex-CEOs of PepsiCo
who serve as her informal advisors, and when she was selected to the top position at PepsiCo, she
made sure that her rival for the position got a pay raise and was given influence in the company so
she did not lose him. She says that the best advice she received was from her father, who taught her
to assume that people have good intentions. She says that expecting people to have good intentions
helps her prevent misunderstandings and show empathy for them. It seems that she is a role model to
other business leaders around the world, and PepsiCo is well positioned to tackle the challenges the
future may bring.Nooyi says that diverse skills and people of different personality traits are required
for organisation to sustain.Pepsico practices integrity and diversity. Nooyi shies away from the
extremely formal atmospheres one would imagine permeates the corridors and office cubicles at the

PepsiCo. head quarters. She sings, she walks around barefoot, and makes it a point to attend to her
familys telephone calls even during critical business meetings. Not one to dispose of her Indian
heritage, she is known to have spiritual leanings and wears a sari with as much ease as she dons a
business suit. In other words, her general attitude is not stereotypically in tune to the ideal manner
in which a CEO conducts themselves. On the contrary her conduct and demeanor appears to suggest
the very opposite of stiff, formal correctness. Being comfortable, and being true to ones self without
compromising on principles seems to be the pathway she has adopted for herself, and judging by her
success, it seems to be working wonders for her company and personal credibility. Nooyi relies on
inductive thinking to develop her strategies in line with her vision for the company. I don't think I
could have gotten here without a strategy consultant background because it taught me inductive
thinking. It taught me how to think of the problem in micro terms but also to zoom out and put the
problem in the context of its broader environment and then zoom back in to solve the problem she
says. Nooyi recommends not sitting on your laurels just because you have attained a high rank in the
professional sphere. A tireless worker herself, she gets only 5 hours of sleep a night, and continuously
educates herself, re-evaluating her decisions and ensuring that she is keeping the best interest of the
company and its employees in mind. To her, her employees are like an extended family, and she
ensures that their needs and concerns are addressed so as to ensure the overall running efficiency of
the company. Nooyi is a tough negotiator. Nowadays the negotiation skill has become a more and
more popular leadership trait, it is a trait related closely with many other kinds of personality traits,
such as self-confidence, fluency of speech, creativity, and sociability.Nooyi helped the PepsiCo
purchase the Tropicana Company for $3.3 billion from the Seagram Company in 1998. Tropicana is
the biggest orange juice company in America that time, while the PepsiCo was not a top company
with its beverage markets no more than 25%. Nooyi knew that the last year's stock sale of the
Tropicana was $2 billion and this year the Seagram Company announced $4.1 billion for selling it.
But at last, the Tropicana was acquired for $0.8 billion decrease by the PepsiCo.And Indra Nooyi was
the chef dealmaker of that acquisition. Before the bidding, she communicated with the former
Tropicana president Ellen Marram, who has the dream to build the Tropicana a customer oriented
great company. So Nooyi shared her "stomach and intestine cleanliness" and "grow green" plans with
her, and also they talked a lot about the religion and some health issues and environment issues. After
that communication, Ellen Marram and Nooyi together had a dinner with current president Mr.
Rodkin. And then, Nooyi herself communicated with Rodkin, who really wants to make some
achievements to consolidate his position. Nooyi showed her opinion that the selling price was too
optimistic, because the recent hurricane damaged its market value and the stock price would keep on
lower. And then they together came to a proper way of acquisition. Two weeks later, the Seagram
Company announced the success of selling Tropicana to PepsiCo for $3.3 billion.Nooyi also helped
the PepsiCo acquired the No. 1 breakfast food company Quaker Oats for $14 billion, and this became
one of the amazing business story that small fish eats big fish. After that, PepsiCo purchased the edgy
beverage maker SoBe for $337 million and this price beat the one submitted by Coca-Cola again.
And recently, there comes out the big bang news that the PepsiCo is planning to acquire the Nestle
Company, the Swedish largest company. And Nooyi showed her attitude towards it that everything
can be possible in some proper situations.In these negotiations, Nooyi first prepared all the useful
information and then grasped the interest of the other side quickly. She controlled the whole process
of the negotiation, and others are all infected by her self-confidence, her passion speech, her
motivation to achieve, and her leader's temperament. Rapid changes in current world combined with
information overload result in an inability to "know" everything. In other words, logic and reasoning
will not make you pass all the situations. And the fact is that more and more leaders are learning to
the value of using their intuition and believing their own instincts when they are making some
decisions. And so it is with Nooyi.It was the the first year that Nooyi joined PepsiCo, the company's
restaurant chains suffered stagnancy problems. Then the management team including Nooyi got
together to find out a good solution. During these days, Nooyi worked seven days a week, and at one
day, Nooyi suddenly woke up in the middle of the night and wrote down different versions of the
company on a paper, and later she summarized a method that is to spin off the fast food restaurant

chains. Because the method mostly came from her intuition, when she explained this method to the
management team, the most words she used were "I think", "I believe", and "I suppose". But she
insisted on her intuition all the way.
She believed the best way for PepsiCo is to become a pure healthy packaged and bottled Food and
Beverage Company, while the fast food restaurant is in the different area. So she suggested that the
PepsiCo should only focus on one area. Her suggestion was crazy and full of risk, and no one could
make sure whether it was a right decision. After several months' discussion, the company finally
accepted Nooyi's decision. After the PepsiCo divested its restaurant chains, most analysts argued that
it was a negative decision. But five years later, the PepsiCo successfully increased its annual revenue
from $24 billion to $33 billion, and ran over the market leader Coca-Cola.
This decision which is mostly coming form the intuition of Nooyi successfully pointed out the right
direction and changed the destiny of the PepsiCo. And as we know in the business world, not all the
decisions are well-founded; sometimes the leaders have to believe their intuitions. Since Indra Nooyi
has such strong strategic intuition, she can be a much greater leader than the others.