PepsiCo, Inc. is regarded as the second largest food and beverage business in the world, and a large part of the success of this multinational corporation can be attributed to its leader. Indra Nooyi, the Chairperson, and CEO is an inspiring and visionary leader for several reasons. First, she has been one of the first women outside America to become CEO of such a large multinational. Second, for over a decade, she has been featured on Forbes magazine’s list of the 100 most influential women in the world. Third, Nooyi has been known to be an employee-oriented and customer-oriented leader, with her innovative strategies inspiring and forging the way for women worldwide.

Being particularly attentive to PepsiCo’s customers’ needs and preferences, Nooyi uses every occasion to better understand and improve the rapidly changing beverage patterns. In a recent business trip to China, she toured different cities in the region for ten days, closely studying the strategic market for PepsiCo. In an interview with David Rubenstein at Bloomberg, she shared a funny anecdote that confirms her attention to customers’ preferences—every time she is invited by a friend, she tries to find a way to go into the kitchen and look at what products they use every day (also hoping to find some products of the PepsiCo group).

Nooyi is visionary in many of her decisions. In 2012, she decided to create a design team, headed by the Italian designer Mauro Porcini (former Head of Global Design at 3M), and assigned him the task of refreshing the company’s brand, rethinking the shape of the bottles, and redesigning the vending machines. That was a pioneering decision in the food and drink industry at that time (now such decision has been imitated by competitors) and even people inside PepsiCo were unsure about the this decision at the beginning. However, this audacious choice revealed to be successful as the company could improve the top land bottom line and become more appealing among custom- ers and restaurants. For example, the new fountain machine designed by the Design & Innovation Center, which enables customers to select their flavor coke from more than 1,000 combinations, has been a great success and one of the reason for which the restaurant chain Buffalo Wild Wings decided to switch from Coke to Pepsi in 2013.

Nooyi is a supportive leader who makes of women’s innate caring attitude a big strength of her leadership style. For example, she conveys a deep sense of gratitude to all her employees for the effort and energy they put in the company. To express this feeling, she sometimes writes gratitude letters to the executive’s parents to let them know how well their sons or daughters are doing for PepsiCo and to give them credit for such amazing achievements.

Notably, not forgetting her privileged condition of being a woman who has been able to break the highest glass ceiling in the company, Nooyi is fully committed to promote diversity and inclusion at all organizational levels. In 2010, the company launched a survey with women manager, who were good represented in middle-level management positions but very low represented in top-level positions to understand the reasons of such under-representation. Women confessed to lack self-confidence and to believe that men were more capable to make themselves noticeable in the com- pany and cultivate high influential networks, something they were less good in doing. In response to this, PepsiCo created a leadership development program for women, called “Strategies for Success,” aimed at helping women boosting their self-confidence and guiding them in rising up through the organization. In just two years, women’s representation in senior positions in the operation team raised from 0 to 33 percent.

When asked about her secret, Indra has no doubts: the family. She attributes most of her strength to her family and to teachings and example received by her par- ents. She recalls that in India, at the time she was an adolescent, the preoccupation of most parents was to find a husband for their daughters. Her parents were different in

many things, for instance supporting Nooyi’s decision to leave India for studying in the United States. Moreover, since her childhood, they sought to make her (and the sister) more confident and aware of their unique talents. A game that the mother was used to play with them during the dinners consisted of pretending that they became a President or a very important ministry of India and, every evening, they had to write a list of things that they would have done in such an important position. Albeit it was only a game, Nooyi confessed that it helped her a lot to boost her self-confidence and inform her leadership style and, probably, without that evening ritual she would have not been capable of achieving what she got today in her life- and being the so-highly loved leader she is.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

16-13. What leadership models/theories/issues do you see in this case? List and describe.

16-14. What do you think about Indra Nooyi’s decision to create a design unit at PepsiCo? Is it appropriate for the food and drink industry? Why or why not?

16-15. How do you think leadership is changing in contemporary society? What behaviors exhibited by Indra Nooyi indicate such change?

16-16. What did the case teach you about leadership?