Business

Connect With Your Team

Lesson time 06:05 min

Using her experiences, from the top level of a global corporation to riding on truck routes with her delivery team, Indra stresses the importance of engaging with your front-end workers when strategizing for your business.

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Topics include: Using her experiences, from the top level of a business to a ride-along on the truck routes of her delivery team, Indra stresses the importance of engaging with your front-end workers when strategizing for your business.

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

[MUSIC PLAYING] - As a leader, you should be out in the field all the time with your customers, with your marketplace, with your channels, with your salesmen, with your manufacturing people. You're going to accomplish nothing sitting in the office. There's about 30% of your time you have to be in the office, because it's obligatory. You have to do your meetings and your investor calls and your board meetings. But beyond that, get the hell out. Walk, walk the market, meet the customers, meet people who make a difference to the business. Zooming in is not an easy thing to do, because to zoom in means you're willing to spend the time understanding every function and every part of the company that's going to be impacted by your zoom out idea. So you've got to understand your company cold. You've got to understand how any decision made at the top translates all the way down to the front line. So I'd say for myself, when I first joined PepsiCo as head of corporate strategy, I spent the first few weeks on a route ride. I actually went on trucks with the route salesmen in our food service business and Frito-Lay and Pepsi. So when you get to the distribution center at 3:00 in the morning, the truck is already loaded. But I wanted to see how the truck was going to be loaded. I'm not interested in getting in the truck after it's loaded. So I go the previous night to see how the truck was being loaded. Is it being loaded by customer? Is it being loaded by product? Is it being loaded by product size? How is it being loaded? So I need to understand salesman's productivity. He had a map which showed him the route, which was optimally planned in the headquarters in the fulfillment center to say, if you follow this route, you will finish it in the least time and have the most time to be with your retail partners. So he'll say the first stop is the 7-Eleven at the corner of 25th and Vine. And I expect to be there for about 30 minutes. So we'd go to that store, open the trunk, and there are five boxes up front that says 7-Eleven. Takes it out, puts it on his trolley, we go into the store. So I look to see what's the planogram and how do they actually leave the shelf. Did they pick up all the empty boxes, et cetera as they left? They rotate the stock properly? Did they give enough time with the store manager to talk to him about what's going on in the store, what's going on in the business overall? So we need to have all these conversations. And while we're there, we should keep an eye out for the consumer too. Because after 6:00 o'clock, people start to come into the stores. Look and see, what are they buying, what are they eyeing, how do you attract them to come into your aisle? And when you go to multiple stores in a stop, you see convenience stores, you see grocery stores, you see big box stores, you see everybody, you get a sense for how your business is conducted. So it doesn't matter how senior you are, learn the bus...

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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