Business

Assess and Use Megatrends

Lesson time 09:20 min

In this lesson, Indra shares her “outside-in” approach to developing a blueprint for a business, and explores how you can use megatrends to guide your own strategy.

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Topics include: In this chapter, Indra shares her ‘outside-in’ approach to developing a blueprint for a business, and explores how you can use megatrends to guide your own strategy.

Indra Nooyi

Teaches Leading With Purpose

Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo, teaches you to think big, be brave, and make purpose-driven changes at work.

Preview

- You know, even earlier in my career, every job that I had, I felt that company was my company. I didn't look at it as a job. I looked at it as a calling. And I'm talking for all of those who aspire to be something much bigger in the company. Go and say, this is my company. I want it to be successful in the future. What do I need to anticipate? What do I need to know about the future? And go off and make that happen. Become an expert yourself. You'll be amazed how people respect you for that skill. Typically, what happens in any company is they take their portfolio of products, and they say, this has to grow 2%. This part of the portfolio has to grow 5%. And typically, goals are set by the finance department working with the CEO. And then, what happens is, you have a myopic view. You just say, how am I going to grow my business 5%? That is a perfectly good approach if the world was not changing in profound ways. Because if you start this way, maybe you'll eke out a year of growth. Suddenly, you'll find you're up against a wall. So any time you have to develop a blueprint for your business, start outside, and marry it with inside-out. Don't start inside, and then justify it. Start with the broad view of where the world is going, where competition is going, where consumer tastes are going, where whatever in your industry is headed towards. And get different alternatives and coalesce down to the few scenarios that make sense, then work backwards, and then set goals for your company. Somebody might say, how can I get a precise idea of what the world's going to look like in 5 to 10 years? You can't. So what you do is you get ideas from multiple people on what are the big megatrends that are going to impact your business. But you have to be careful to separate short-term trends and fads from a megatrend. A fad is something that is happening today at a point in time. There's a reaction to it. It's usually a boom bust. If there's no time series, it's usually a fad. If there is a time series, it's a megatrend. A megatrend happens because it's been happening over time. It's picking up speed and is going to pick up even more speed, because the data is changing. So you've got to decide how broad want your looking-forward lens to be. Don't get too broad. Be relevantly broad. Get points of view from different people. Just like I've described in the previous lesson, when I started this megatrends work, which led to performance with purpose, we looked at many long-term global changes and assessed which 10 were relevant to the consumer products industry, and more importantly, to food and beverage in particular. I got a points of view from scientists, from futurists, from consumer experts-- everybody's input, and looked at all of the megatrends, pulled it all together, then brought a bunch of experts in the company to debate and discuss it. Because megatrends requires taking a stand about the futu...

About the Instructor

Ever wonder what it takes to be the CEO of a Fortune 50 company? Indra Nooyi didn’t set out to become the first woman of color to do so. She simply (and tenaciously) focused on big ideas. As the former CEO of PepsiCo, Indra transformed a global industry. Now she’s teaching you her transformational approach to leadership. Learn to simplify complex problems, persuade others to buy into your vision, and discover how leading with purpose can improve your life beyond the boardroom.

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Indra Nooyi

Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo, teaches you to think big, be brave, and make purpose-driven changes at work.

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