Taken for Granted: Indra Nooyi says it’s time for leaders to care (part 2) (transcript)

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

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Hey WorkLifers, it’s Adam Grant, and this is Taken for Granted, my podcast with the TED Audio Collective. I’m an organizational psychologist, and this series is about rethinking assumptions we often take for granted about how we work, lead, and live.
This is my second conversation with CEO extraordinaire Indra Nooyi, who led a remarkable transformation of PepsiCo. We recently sat down on stage for a live conversation in the Authors@Wharton series that I host. Along with dispensing her trademark sage advice, she was a riot. So buckle up.

AG:
Indra. Welcome to Wharton.

IN:
Great to be here, Adam. Thank you for having me.

AG:
So excited to have you here. I've admired your leadership since the day I started studying leadership. So it's going to be a real treat to get, to soak up some of your wisdom.

IN:
And I've been reading your books and soaking up your wisdom all my time. So this is a two-person back-slapping society.

AG:
As a social scientist, it has bothered me for a very long time than in blind taste tests, Pepsi is clearly superior to Coke, and yet people still have more affinity with the Coke brand in certain ways. And one of the things I learned from your book is that you don't care. Why not?

IN:
Because at some point, you’ve got to sit down and say, how much money do you want to spend on getting the brand to win in the marketplace, head to head, as opposed to building out a portfolio, that's really in tune with where the consumer is going? There's no point taking a legacy business and putting too much money behind it to get to an end goal, which is questionable anyway. So you've got to know when to rethink the paradigm that you're operating in.

AG:
Well, I'm a fan of rethinking in many ways, but this seems like, this seems like blasphemy. Like how could you say we're okay with being number two in the market? What CEO does that?

IN:
Well, why are you looking at just one brand? That's the first problem with the way you look at the beverage business, Uh, but 25 years ago, the market used to be 80% sodas and 20% all of the beverages today, it's about 40% sodas and 60% other beverages. If you get locked into comparing brand Coke versus brand Pepsi, it's like, you know, yesterday's business when the market's going away from you and going into the future businesses. So you've got to look at the overall beverage business to the overall beverage business. And just for your information, Pepsi has lipped a nasty number one, Gatorade, number one, Starbucks frappuccino, number one, Aquafina doing pretty well. So you've got to really go with the times.

You know, the best example is: people say that the red beverage is timeless. The blue beverage is timely. I'd rather be timely than timeless.

AG:
Interesting. So we have some MBA students in the audience. Um, I am often critical of that choice of path, particularly if they did an undergrad business degree, wondering who needs six years of business education?

IN:
I agree with you 100%. Either you do an undergraduate in business and do your post-graduate something completely different, or you're doing an undergraduate and something which has a hint of science and then do your MBA. I honestly believe that you're right. Six years is too much.

AG:
Okay. But, but you do see value in an MBA if you didn't study business as an undergrad.

IN:
I don't know the MBA of today… [cross talk]. Let me tell you why, because I think the MBA education needs to be redone, recast. Uh, the MBA degree that I got versus the MBA degree that exists today, I think, needs to come a long way. So let me rewind, hit play, and come forward. When I went to the Yale School of Management and did a masters in public and private management, it was way ahead of its time, because what Yale was teaching, where back in 1970, it was that companies are rooted in society. They have a duty of care to every society and community they're part of. So we have to think of all stakeholders and think of the impact of every company on every constituency it deals with before it sets a strategy or financial objectives. Some years later, Yale went to an MBA because that was considered the only way to get in the rankings, which I have a real problem with, but then again Wharton does fantastic in the rankings.

AG:
We don’t care officially!

IN:
Well thank you. But then if you fast forward, now this whole ESG stakeholder theory purpose has brought us full circle back to Yale's original goal of, uh, you know, linking companies into societies. So I think Yale should never have walked away from, uh, you know, masters in public and private management. And when I went to school, one third of the cases were non-profit, one third was government political, only one third was corporate cases. So it was a great experience. I was studying about the metropolitan museum and when it was going through bankruptcy, how to recover. Those were fantastic cases, which sort of made you understand the other thing too, Adam, that bothers me, is in business schools, we teach people not to be siloed in companies, how you should break down silos. But I think business schools and universities are extremely siloed. So I think we have to rethink in business schools, how we redo the education so it's more practicing what we are supposed to be teaching.

AG:
I think that's a valid critique and I would love to see us take steps in that direction. I think we we've taken some, we have a lot more work to do. Okay. So in my dozen years at Wharton, the proposal I've been most excited about that's gotten zero traction is to eliminate the two year MBA and only offer a one and a three year. The one would be for career accelerators who are going to go right back to their same industry. The three would be for career switchers to have time to do two internships and actually learn what they want to do moving forward, support or reject?

IN:
I would give them the book called Rethink and have them read it. That’s what’s badly needed.

AG:
You know, you never have any status in your own backyard, right?

IN:
Yeah, no, they're actually the association of MBA deans or the debate that this. The last time I spoke to them, I think it was in New Orleans. I told them they had to rethink the entire MBA and the time has come. And some of them turned the other way or said it was a great idea.

AG:
So maybe now the one year could be remote though.

IN:
It could be. Yeah. And the technology is progressing. I couldn't become a reality, which means no more buildings.

AG:
All right, well then whose names will go on? I don't know how that's going to work and I don't know how we fund this whole enterprise then, but that is the problem you could solve for us. Uh, one of the things that I think you were remarkable at, um, both during your consulting career, and as you moved into management roles was recruiting people to mentor you. Uh, people who are often were very busy, who didn't need more mentees, how did you do it? How did you get people to say yes, I want to invest inIndra?

IN:
I don't think I've ever asked somebody to be my mentor. People sorta picked me. And I think what I've learned over the years as mentors pick you, you don't pick them. And the reason they pick you is because they see something in you that it attracts them to you. And they think that if they were to mentor you, support you and accelerate your progress, they will also look good downstream. Every one of the people that are served as my mentor, supporter, promoter, whatever, even I will say I had a part in her development. Um, you know, I helped, uh, you know, move through these years of her life. And so I think you have to be careful about going to some stranger and saying, will you be my mentor? Which a lot of people ask me to do. Can't do it. The second is that if you are a mentee, supportee, whatever you are or you, or duty of care to them, So if your mentor is giving you advice, don't just listen to it the one year and let her go out the other year, process it. And if you're not going to take the advice, go back to the mentor and say, look, you gave me this advice on this issue. Let me tell you why I didn't take it. Let me tell you path B that I went down and let me tell you why I did that. So you have to give respect to the mentor. If you want to maintain the relationship, it's very important.

AG:
This is such invaluable advice on both fronts. I cannot tell you how many students I've had come into my office for career advice, and then they do the exact opposite of what I recommended. And I hear about it six months later, I don't care whether you followed my advice. I want to learn from what your analysis was. And I also want to be able to say, now I told you, so instead of waiting until you take the job and then call me a year later and say, I never should have gotten to that company. Oops.

IN:
But do you know people forget that this mentor mentee relationship is actually a two way responsible relationship. You know, cherish it.

AG:
Well, and on the first point, I think one of the things that's so powerful here is we hear frequently from our students. You know, I feel like it's an imbalanced relationship. Um, you know, I have nothing to give back to my mentor. Like what you're saying here is excelling, right? Succeeding is what you give back because then your mentor gets some credit for your success and also gets to see you go off and check.

IN:
If you do a good job, that should be, you know, psychic pleasure for your mentor, because it doesn't matter if you're working for that person, if you're doing a great job somewhere else, they look at you fondly and say, you know, I had seen her doing so well in that job because I trained her to think this way or approach things this way. So they take great pleasure in your progress, wherever you are, wherever they are.

AG:
Yeah. So you had a lot of supportive people surrounding you. You also had some people who did not necessarily see your potential. Talk to us about some of the biases you faced and how you dealt with them.

IN:
But, you know, again, the time that I came into the corporate world, there were no women in consulting, maybe two women in BCG, Chicago, which is where I was. And the only other senior woman was in Boston and I'd never met her. So there were no senior women in BCG Chicago, and um going over to client organizations, I don't believe I ever saw a woman in a client organization. So you enter rooms and there'll be 50 people in the boardroom or a conference room. And you'll be the only woman. And half of it was my problem Adam, because I walked into these meetings, all these meetings, and said to myself, I'm sure they're all thinking, what is she doing in this room? You know, she’s so different, comes from an emerging market, woman on top of that. What is she going to contribute to us? So right off the bat, I dug a hole for myself and I said, I've got to dig out of this hole because I've got to prove to them that I have a right to be at this table. And so I would over-prepare, I would have every number at my fingertips. I mean, I was like a walking computer which didn't exist then. Then I was the laptop I was in... I was at... in those days, none of those existed remember. So I would prepare, I would earn a seat at the table. And as you mentioned, like, clouds are pretty interesting. And so they're looking at me saying, who is this person that you brought into the room. Uh, to advise CEOs of big companies and consulting? And so I had to get them to overcome all of those, uh, negative screens and view me as just a brain sitting behind a table. And after the first couple of meetings they would always turn to me first. And so I think I benefited from the fact that people are willing to look past the superficial stuff and get to the crux of the matter, which again, I'd say only in America. and I was a beneficiary of all of that. So the fact that I was the only woman in most cases, I probably experienced, less biased than many people experienced today because people actually wanted me to succeed to say, it's a novelty, let's see how we can have her succeed.

AG:
So this idea that you were going to prove yourself and you had something to prove, I think you're preaching to the choir here, our own Samir Nurmohamed who's I think sitting right here. Um, has done some brilliant research on underdogs and how, when people underestimate you or when people doubt you, if they're not credible, that fires you up and it leads you to say, you know what, I'm going to show you. Where it's much harder is when the people above you are credible, where they've accomplished a lot, where they're very senior and they're questioning you and who are you going to trust? Like, you're your own confidence that you can do it, or this very senior person who thinks you can't? How did you deal with, with being an underdog or being underestimated in those situations?

IN:
At the end of the day? I can only rely on my competence, my knowledge. So, like I said, I was over-prepared. Let me tell you how I prepared. If this was the assignment I was given, I always levitated and defined my assignment with that much bigger, because I wanted to understand every linkage between what I was given to, how it was going to impact the enterprise as a whole. So I always zoomed into my assignment and zoomed out to see how the impact is going to be measured across. So whenever anybody talked about something, I said, just a minute, uh, it's not going to help the company because if I took what I was doing, cause what person A and person B was doing, the combination that I'm suggesting is way better than the combination you are looking at. Uh, but maybe I'm missing something, you know, in my young, in my youth, I'd say, I'm right and you're wrong. I'd be black and white. And in your face, I was taught how to communicate in a more gentle way. So I'd say things like, well, maybe I'm not understanding what you're doing. And in my head, I'm going, you're wrong. But can you tell me, can you help me understand what I'm missing? Uh, and then at the meeting they say, you're wrong. I'm the boss. Forget it. But a day or two later, they'd come back and say, I think you were right. And I, you know, they, they call me the dog with the bone because if I had decided that I was right, I'd come back at this reconceptualize in five different ways. I wouldn't give up, because at the end of the day, If I had done all the work and I thought my solution was right for the company and I felt others had not done the kind of work, it behooved me to keep coming back to the issue to the leader. They showed me compelling analysis to disprove me, or you accept what I said. So my CEO's would always call me, she's a dog with a bone. Don't argue. Cause he's not going to give up if she believes she's right. I think you need that kind of conviction in something you do.

AG:
What if you're wrong though?

IN:
If they can, if they have better facts to prove that I'm wrong, I'm willing to completely accept it. Because remember the goal is not personal showcasing, the person... The goal is what's right for the company, but you got to match me with facts and figures. Don't just say my gut tells me that gut works, but gut works when it's backed up with some facts and figures.

AG:
ideally formed after the facts of…

IN:
Ideally formed after the fact, but I tell you many senior leaders are prisoner of the past. So their gut comes from what they've been doing all the time in the past. And if this, if the world is changing, the situation is changing, you've got to change and then they don't know how to change. So they always rely on my gut tells me, this is what you got to do. Then you start to have doubt saying, oh, you're a prisoner of your past. Let me see how I can help you.

AG:
So then you take over PepsiCo and you have this bold, massive vision to reinvent the business essentially, and say, we don't want to adjust, you know, give people sugar water. We don't want to contribute to an epidemic of obesity or poor health. Um, we actually want to make people healthier. Was that, was that a challenge to get people on board with that vision or had the world changed enough that people were starting to come around?

IN:
Can I just reframe that question a little bit?

AG:
I know you're not gonna agree with that characterization at all. Correct it.

IN:
So please let me reframe the question to say that, um, the portfolio was made for a time when that's what people ate and drank. I came and said consumer tastes are changing. I want to take what I call a fun for your portfolio and make it better for you and good for you also so that the consumer had infinite choice. They could eat and drink whatever they wanted. And all that I wanted to make sure was the better for you and the, and the good for your choices were not more expensive, tasted bad or were not available. So they all had to be vigorously available, affordably priced, and high quality. That's all I wanted to make sure. Um, you know, I had to do that because that's where the consumer was going. And again, when I became CEO, we did a piece of work on mega trends. What are the big mega trends that will impact PepsiCo over the next decade or two? And then future back, if you work on it and say, what do I need to do today to cater to these trends? Because it takes a while to get the R and D and all of the disciplines in place, uh, the product launches the innovation. Uh, so that mega trends work was my true north. And once I got the board to buy into the mega trends, it was very easy for me to devise the strategies and the plans to address the mega trends. So it was relatively easy. And now to selling it to the rest of the people in the company. And the question is, what words to use, as this is about? I think I'm using the words that speak to people's heart is more important than speaking to their minds. And so performance with purpose was born. Uh, and how do you continue to deliver performance? Because Pepsico is a performance machine by doing it the way to ensure human sustainability, environmental sustainability, and talent sustainability. And that was purpose nourish, replenish cherish. So when you put all of them together, it spoke to the employees and we got most of them to buy into it. The few that didn't we had to work on that.

AG:
It was, I thought it was such a compelling example of what our own Drew Carton would study around creating a truly vivid vision that people can, they can see the future, they can taste it, they can touch it as opposed to a bunch of abstract words. How did you get there? Because we know from Drew's research and so many people get promoted on the basis of their abstract, strategic thinking skills. And then it becomes very difficult to tell the vivid story and really lay out the narrative for who we're going to become and what our products are going to look like. So how did you develop that over time? Did you just wake up one morning and say, ah, nourish, replenish cherish? My work here is done.

IN:
Wow. God. So remember when I was president of the company, going back to 2000, I was still managing all of the corporate functions. I mean, I had 16 reports or something like that at every corporate functions, I had 16 that reported to me. So I was already thinking about the future of the company and there were some very interesting findings. Nobody consumed a PepsiCo product before 10:00 AM in the morning. Because we didn't have a breakfast product. We didn't have a breakfast beverage. Tropicana was our first acquisition that got us into the pre 10am part and the one, our, how was prior to 10:00 AM people need consume by and large good for your products. So it was a healthy day part and we needed our brands in the morning. So all of a sudden the real start to move say we were to get that day part filled in Quaker roads. Cayman Quaker was actually, we were more excited about the Quaker trademark and Gatorade because it gave us an inroad into the morning day part. So once we filled out the morning part, day by day, you start seeing what is do we have to do to keep this company healthy and growing. So as you're going piece by piece by piece, you realize exactly what you have to do. And at that time they got a letter from some coastal senators in the eastern seaboard to all of the companies in the consumer space saying that too much plastic is washing up on our shores. How are we going to address this? You know, I took it personally because I said, this is our seashores. So we have to do something about it as opposed to let the others worry about it. Everything became personal for me. So we started to think about all of these issues and say, we have to do something. We have to do our part to make the portfolio healthier overall because obesity is becoming a big issue, addresses issues like plastic. And I grew up water distressed in Madras. There was no water in Madras. And the fact that we had a plant in the outskirts of Madras, going deeper and deeper into the aquifer and taking out water to make Pepsi bothered me. So I realized we had to get much more water efficient. So the whole, uh, nourish replenish cherish was personal to me. And I concluded on something there, Adam, if I may, if you want to execute purpose and all of these years, do you think we're talking about formal purpose? Either the CEO feels of deep down inside because of a lived experience or they're a convert because they've seen it all. And now say, boy, I've got to do something different or the third group do it just because there's an external force. And if you take away the external force, I believe a large number of CEOs won't do a damn thing. And that is a problem. And we have to bring them back to business schools to teach them how to run companies the right way.

AG:
Well, I know a highly rate business school that would be very glad to have that class if you were to teach it!

IN:
Uh, I think your next book should be on that. Another bestseller, a New York Times bestseller. Every, every list it's a bestseller.

AG:
It’s a valiant effort, but I think Indra is somebody who's actually led a fortune 500 company is much more qualified to deliver that particular message. Uh, so what, what would you teach? What would you say to those CEOs? I know you're doing a lot of this work as part of the b team. Um, but what do you think is the most compelling message to start opening their minds?

IN:
You know, um, one of the things I made, some of my PepsiCo senior executives do, I said to them, look, if you're going to talk about obesity, don't talk about it from the offices, go out into the communities and see what's going on. Look at markets where people are obese, look at how they live. Look at what happens in diabetes clinics. You know, this is in spite of the fact that only 2% of the calories came from beverages from our beverages. So it's not that I was worried about just our beverages. I think it's a broader societal issue and there's a downstream cost to society and all companies have to work on it. So I took the bold step of addressing the industry association and saying, it's not one company that has to do something. All of us together have to act in unison to improve the food supply. And so we committed to the healthy weight commitment foundation, committed to take on one and a half trillion calories. In reality, we took almost 6 trillion calories out of the US food system, uh, in a matter of about four years. And so I think that industry working together with a very clear idea of where we need to go can actually make a huge difference. And, um, uh, too often, I think we've got to bring CEOs together and say you're better suited to solve societal problems than governments are because you're all engines of efficiency.

You're big. I mean, as I've always said, companies are a little republics, and 160 billion put us up there. So you look at the statistics that way you go big companies are little republics, they are engines of efficiency and effectiveness. They ought to be able to move mountains faster than a political system can. So why not us band together to get to the right, uh, you know, change.

AG:
Well, I love that vision. Um, the metaphor calls to mind though, another challenge, which is too many of those little republics are run by miniature dictators who are, are basically power hungry and trying to get their employees to sell their souls and work nonstop and not care about their families. This is another huge issue for you. I think the, the challenge is where to start, right? So are we going to re-imagine organizations and say, forget the nine to five workday, forget the five day workweek. Like where, where would you begin if you were rebooting?

IN:
I think the pandemic is forcing us to rethink everything. You can't take what people are saying today as the answer, because we went from, uh, everybody going to work, everybody in lockdown, we're trying to figure out what's the resting point. We don't know what it is. All right? The first CEO comes and says, we're going completely flexible. Office space is going to come begging. And there's a game theory principle here, which is everybody has to see everybody's going to come back to work and then quietly exit the office space market. So I think people are waiting to see how to feed us commercial office space market.

AG:
Wow. I had no idea that was happening.

IN:
I'm a retired CEO, please. Don't forget that they're not retired CEOs think, but really think about it. Okay. Sorry. We get better with age actually. No, I think what it is is it is not possible for everybody to say a hundred percent come back to work because people have got a taste of caring for families, having some flexibility. Technology has accelerated to a point which allows hybrid working, flexible working and to make it work effortlessly. The issue is going to be our frontline workers, people in manufacturing, people in retail, people who are driving trucks, people in care jobs. They don't have flexibility at best we can give them predictability. So we should be careful not to create two classes of citizens. One group that has to get up in the morning and get to work. And another group that rolls out of bed and looks at Zoom. So we can't allow that to happen. So we have to figure out how this is all going to work. I think this is the challenge for the next 12 to 24 months.

AG:
I think so, too, if you were running a PepsiCo today, where would you start on that?

IN:
You know, it's interesting. One thing I won’t do is create hoteling systems in offices, because if you're going to go to work, you need your personal space there because you're living home, which is, you know, kids running around, you're the center of all the work required to be done. If you go to the office, you want peace. And now if you're sitting in a hoteling system where it's not your place, you're plugging your computer wherever you want and start working. It doesn't feel quite personal to me. So hoteling, which was in effect in the last few years, may have to be revised into some workspaces. Um, I think it'd be impossible to hire and retain the best and brightest without some flexibility. Uh, I think it'd be impossible to retain, hire and retain young family builders and women without some flexibility. Uh, and so we're going to be writing the rules of the future of work quite a bit in the next two years, but I just hold that and all of these committees on the future of work, some of which I’m a part of, don't just talk about robots and cryptocurrency and technology, but also talk about role of women, role of families. How do we go back and rewire the social infrastructure of the country? Um, you know, how do we do that? I hope all of that is part of the future of work.

AG:
I hope so too. Which begs the question. What are you up to now?

IN:
The moonshot is to set up a care economy. But beyond that, I sit on the board of Amazon, which is, you know, a lot, a lot of fun. I'm learning a lot. I sit on the board of Phillips Memorial Sloan Kettering, the international cricket council. I teach up at the military academy in West Point. So my plate is full. I'm having the time of my life. The only thing I'm missing is my quarterly earning stretcher. That was a joke.

AG:
It almost looked like you were savoring that for a second. So I watching Amazon, given that you sit on the board, um, I almost did a touchdown dance when Jeff Bezos finally, after two decades committed to being Earth's best employer, not just Earth's most customer centric company. Why did it take him so long? And what can we do to accelerate more leaders down that path?

IN:
I don't think, look, I've been on the Amazon board for two years, and long before Jeff articulated being the world’s best employer. I think it's very easy to put out a set of words if you don't have the programs to go behind it, it’s a problem. Um, I think what Amazon is constantly looking at is if you say we're going to be the Earth's best employer, what does it mean? And can we deliver on that? So the company is consumed by that on customer centricity, they figured it out. On the employer piece. Everybody's focused on that. What does it mean? And is it an absolute number? Is it a relative measure? How are we going to make sure that, I mean, the pay, Amazon was always one of the highest speed, minimum beads, you know, $15 Amazon committed first. And educating its employees, giving them the opportunity to go get a college degree, major commitment. They're raising the wages again. And so Amazon is trying to figure out what's the basket of pay and benefits that their workers need to remain happy at Amazon. And so I think they have all of the work done now and they’re implementing it.

AG:
So you’re saying the talk followed a little bit of the walk.

IN:
Um, I think the talk, the public talk followed a little bit of the walk, which is, I think, the way it should be.

AG:
Yeah, I think so too. So we're gonna, um, we're going to go to some audience questions. I've asked a few, but there are more coming. Um, before we do that, can we do a lightning round?

IN:
Sure.

AG:
All right. It's up to you. Whether you want to give a word or a sentence or something in between, uh, first question is who is the living leader that you admire most?

IN:
Lin-Manuel Miranda.

AG:
Okay. I have to follow up: why?

IN:
The fact that he can rap the way he does. Oh, I keep trying it. I can’t do it.

AG:
You've tried?

IN:
I've tried. Doesn't work.

AG:
All right. We'll ask for a demo tape later. Okay. Secondly, um, a company whose culture you really look up to, but you're not on the board of,

IN:
That I'm not on the board of, um, Patagonia.

AG:
Hard, hard to disagree with that one. Um, okay. If you were now going to have the challenge of running any company, which company do you think you'd be most excited to take the helm of?

IN:
Oh. God, most excited. I think a healthcare company because the healthcare industry needs such radical reinvention in so many ways. I don't know if I can pull it off, but I would give it a good shot.

AG:
if you were going to take any class in business school, what would it be?

IN:
Take the class?

AG:
Now, yeah.

IN:
Um, data analytics.

AG:
And finally, your best tip for dual-career couples, you had a pretty complicated situation with your husband's work and yours taking you to two different states and cities and sometimes even multiple countries. What did you learn from that?

IN:
First married the right guy, very, very important and early on in your life. Make sure before you get mad at just make sure both of you understand it's an equal partnership, not, you know, you're going to do all the work and your husband is going to be along for the ride and also make sure the husband's family in the Indian context, make sure the husband's family is supporting you, because if they would pressure on the son, you've lost it. So in my case, my in-laws are bigger supporters than even I expected. They, even today, my biggest supporters. So I had the lottery of life on this husband

AG:
Okay, so, marry for good in-laws

IN:
Check them out too, is what I'm saying. Check them out.

AG:
There is nothing that you don't do diligence on!

IN:
I had to!

AG:
All right. Let's uh, let's take some additional audience questions here. How did you become comfortable in your skin in a large company?

IN:
You know, you're never comfortable. There's always an unease. And even now, after having lived here for 42, 43 years, having been CEO, been in all the halls of power, there's still that unease. And, um, maybe that's what propels me to keep doing better all the time, but, um, I'm comfortable-er than I used to be, but, uh, you never get fully comfortable. And the big piece of advice I'd give to you. Maintain your authenticity, maintain your roots, maintain what makes you, but don't come to a different culture than expect everybody to accept you for a hundred percent of what you are. You've got to blend in, too. You've got to blend in, too, um, the one story I tell you is that when I first came in here in those days, the first question they would ask in a recruiting interview is about the ball game that happened. The previous night sports was the language of business. So how was that a touchdown or what'd you think of this playoff game? Everything was about sports. I can say. Can we talk cricket now? They don't even know what cricket is. They think is the most boring game. You know, I remember one CEO telling me cricket. Oh yeah. You talk about cricket. I'll go shopping and come back. He thought it's the most boring game, which is okay. You know, if you're not used to it, can be.

AG:
Had they ever talked about baseball? Please!

IN:
Remember cricket is five days without an outcome. Alright. So let's just be clear. Here may puts baseball to look like the fastest sport, but I love baseball. So no, no comments about baseball.

AG:
I love it too. I'm just saying it's really boring to watch.

IN:
If you fall in love with the New York Yankees, you’ll love baseball.

AG:
We're going to have a problem there because no one should love the New York Yankees. Let’s go back.

IN:
And so, um, um, you know, sports was the language of business. I went to school on sports. I studied everything I could about the Yankees. I said, I'm going to go to become an expert on one team because I didn't want to just mouth off a couple of things that happened the previous day. I said, I'm going to have a real dialogue with you. So I come back and say, maintain your authenticity. Don't give it up, but you've got to work hard to fit it because I made the choice to come to the United States. And I think that if I made the choice to come here, it behooves me to integrate in more ways than people expected me to.

AG:
Well, I think we could have also done a lot more to make you feel welcome and included from reading some of the stories.

IN:
Oh, early days. Those are the early days when there were not many people like me, but I will tell you that we all have to do enough for immigrants who come here willingly to also integrate.

AG:
Who's the leader that was the most intimidating for you to come face to face with?

IN:
You know, not for the wrong reasons though, I mean, when I met Vladimir Putin, for example, you know…

AG:
No, I think there are good reasons!

IN:
No, I have to tell you, he was about the most welcoming person, but he has a habit of keeping your waiting for three or four hours in the meeting, um, and so when you meet him, you know, that you're meeting somebody who has total control over a country. He was amazing to us, but, um, it was a bit scary. Um, especially when you're in, he's never in the Kremlin, he's in a separate building. And so it felt a little intimidating. Um, anybody else I felt intimated by? No, no. Even Putin was like a, oh my God. So this is the great Putin. And, you know, that's sort of a thing, you know, the rest of it. But remember, you're going there, you're giving them jobs. You're making investments. So you have a little bit of an upper hand. So any, anywhere you go, you're going in with some swagger.

AG:
Well, you know, you've made it when you have the upper hand on Putin.

IN:
Yes. But this way you're not terrified. You have a little bit of swagger. Okay. That's all I wouldn't take out. I wouldn't take out the word terrified. Totally, but I'm not scared to death.

AG:
And then a favorite question that I like to ask every one of our authors who visits, um, is there a piece of bad career advice you got at some point?

IN:
Huh, bad career advice that I got at some point. People have said I should have stayed in consulting. That was bad advice because I think there's a time to get out of consulting. Um, when I was leaving Motorola to come to ABB, there were some that felt going to ABB was going to work for an individual while staying in Motorola would have been working for an institution because I was following one person from Motorola to ABB. Um, I followed my heart and my gut, if it said follow the individual, because he's such a great mentor, such a great supporter. Had I stayed at an institution, I don't know where I would have been. I think about that often. So um, I don't think look, people can give you all kinds of bad credit advisors, how you process it and what'd you do with it.

AG:
It's been such a delight to have you here. One of the reasons I became a professor is I think I'm unemployable, cannot imagine having a boss or working for someone, but I would work for you. Uh, and that is, that is a mark of the respect I have for you as a leader, um, from a competence perspective, but especially, um, how deeply you prioritize the wellbeing of the people who work for you and also who, who, who are affected by your products. I think that's so rare. I think that's something we need more of in the world. And I think you are the role model that we need many, many more leaders to follow.

IN:
Thank you, Adam.

AG:
So thank you, Indra. Then in closing, I would love to give you a chance to give some advice to our audience.

IN:
Okay, um, as you embark on your job, put your hand up for the most difficult assignments. Nobody remembers you for doing and maintaining an easy assignment. Put your hand up for the most difficult assignment. Give it your all. Second, focus on the job at hand. Don't keep thinking about the next job and the next job. If you go into a company and say, I want to be a CEO in 15 years, guaranteed, and you’re not going to be CEO in 15 years because you're so obsessed with your career track. You forget the job you're doing. Third, every company has politics. Understand the politics do not play in the politics because the worst thing that can happen is you're labeled as political, which is a dead nail. So please do not embark and playing the politics. Just be cognizant of the politics. Fourth, for the women in the audience, former sisterhood support each other. One of the biggest issues we have as women is that I don't believe the sister would have women support each other enough. If you see behavior that's not acceptable, work together to call it out right away. It's critically important that at a time, and I think Wharton has more than 50% of women, I read the stats and congratulations to you all, but we want all of you to stay in the workforce. We don't want the best and the brightest that Wharton is graduating to drop out of the workforce. Not because they want to, because the workforce does not accommodate that. So I think it's very important. The sisterhood gets together and talks about what needs to change in companies. And finally, think hard about time. We have so little time in this world and how you spend that time, how you balance the time, how you work your life around that time is going to be one of the most critical things that you do going forward.

AG:
Thank you, Indra.

IN:
You're awesome. Thank you, thank you.

AG:
Taken for Granted is part of the TED Audio Collective. The show is hosted by me, Adam Grant.
Our team includes Colin Helms, Eliza Smith, Aja Simpson, Michelle Quint, Banban Cheng, and Anna Phelan. This episode was produced by Cosmic Standard and mixed by Jacob Winik. Original music by Hansdale Hsu and Allison Leyton-Brown.
Next week on TFG...

AG:
You wrote at one point that economists are like plumbers.

Esther Duflo:
Well, plumbers are really helpful. Uh, my father kept saying that, uh, the best for me to marry would be a doctor's or a plan boss, because you always need these people near you. Finally, I found neither.