A Nooyi look at life

My Life in Full: Work, family and our future

Author: Indra K Nooyi

Publisher: Hachette

Pages: 344

Price: Rs 699

Indra Nooyi made public her now-famous punchline – her mother asking her to “leave the crown in the garage” — much before the book was written. Yet, her autobiography, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future,  is quite readable because Ms Nooyi seems to know the art of writing about herself without being boring. Though some parts of the book appear to sermonise, she has tried to tell it all, the good, the bad and the ugly, and is refreshingly frank on the recurring theme of the book: The difficulty for women to have it all — “career and a family”. The book talks in detail about her struggles as a mother, daughter and wife in a workplace designed for men.  It’s the passages where she reflects on how tough it is for women in the workplace and her prescription for change that make her memoir worth reading.

The book holds a mirror to leaders on why it’s not necessary to put up a show of being a superwoman or a superman. So one of the most powerful global CEOs of her time has no problem in talking about her guilt feelings for not being a full-time mother to her kids in their early years, and how she thinks of those days with great sadness. She recalls her husband saying: “Your list is always PepsiCo, PepsiCo, PepsiCo; then your kids; then your mother; then, at the bottom, there’s me.” She would reply jokingly: “At least you’re on the list.” But she admits he was right.

The countless anecdotes make the book highly relatable. For example, she talks about how women themselves commented disparagingly on her looks and dress and that the media was more interested in celebrating her “exoticism” as a woman and Indian immigrant. My Life in Full is, thus, a vivid portrait of the miseries of a woman attempting to be “the ideal worker” — working into the night, dashing to airports at 4.30 am and skipping a neighbour’s funeral to rewrite a slide deck. On one occasion her younger daughter wrote her a note: “I will love you again if you would please come home.”

There are many heart-warming stories as well about those who lent a helping hand. For example, after graduating from Yale, she appeared for a campus interview in an ill-fitting suit that she had picked up at a bargain price.  After the interview, she met Yale’s director of career development, Jane Morrison, and told her about her embarrassment. She has never forgotten what Ms Morrison told her: “What would you wear if you were to appear in an interview in India? Sari, I said”.

“Wear them, Indra. And if they don’t hire you for who you are; it’s their loss. Just be yourself,” Ms Morrison said. But her concern was short-lived and the company made two offers and one of them was to her. This, Ms Nooyi says justifiably, is a living example of American meritocracy. It was clear that the company picked her because of what she said and what she could contribute, and looked past the outfit.
 

She has written glowingly about her mentors – all men – who supported her, not just intellectually, but also in making decisions that would change her life. Her two bosses at Mettur Beardsell, her first job after graduating from IIM Calcutta, encouraged her to go to Yale and even showed up with food and coffee as she stood in line for many hours at her visa appointment.

A moment that she can never forget is when she attended a meeting with President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when the former visited India. “That experience was surreal for me because President Obama was introducing his team and he said, ‘Indra Nooyi’s the CEO of PepsiCo’. And Prime Minister Singh just said, ‘No, but she’s one of us’. President Obama didn’t blink, he just said, ‘Yeah. But she’s one of us too’.” That incident, Ms Nooyi says, speaks eloquently of the duality inherent in her – of India and the US.

Then there are many examples of why leaders have to be in the trenches and not leave all the details to younger colleagues. That explains her relentless visits to the markets where the real action lies. And these trips can lead to transformational changes in how global corporations behave.  For example, her trips to the stores and analysis of the business made her realise that no PepsiCo product was consumed during breakfast as the company had no presence in the health and wellness segment. That, along with the general shift towards “Performance with Purpose” led to the acquisition of Tropicana and Quaker Oats.

The early years of an extraordinary woman comes out vividly in the initial chapters. Progressive thought, especially regarding the education of women, was a central tenet in their household, a space where intellectual curiosity, analytical debate and the freedom to express a point of view were encouraged. Her mother applied both – the accelerator and the brake. So, if watching movies was barred till the parents saw them first, she was allowed to be co-founder of an all-female rock band, living alone in Bombay while interning at the Department of Atomic Energy, or moving, unmarried, to the US to pursue a degree at Yale.

The only disappointing part of the book is this: Ms Nooyi seems to live by the principle that ‘If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.’ But overall, it’s an authoritative book by a CEO who added a new billion-dollar brand almost every other year during her 12-year stint in PepsiCo’s corner office. The fact that all that she has said is grounded in lived experience adds the required credibility.