I’ve been following the career progress of Indra Nooyi for some time now because I believe she’s an outstanding role model for working women. For those of you not familiar with Indra, she's the product of a middle-class family in India with a stay-at-home mother and an accountant father. She speaks seven languages and arrived in the USA in 1978 for postgraduate work at the Yale School of Management. After working for the Boston Consulting Group, Motorola, and ABB, she joined PepsiCo in 1994.
At PepsiCo, she’s been actively promoting the concept of “Performance with a Purpose” in order to rally the more than 180,000 employees because she believes the employees “want to work not just for a commercially good company but also a morally good company.” As an example, she set a goal that by 2010, she wanted 50% of PepsiCo’s USA portfolio to be "good for you" products.
According to an article in The Costco Connection, the cornerstone of her leadership philosophy is what she calls the five “C’s” in success. They are:
- Competence: To move up in any job or in life you need to be skilled at something.
- Courage/Confidence: Even if you’re good at something, you must have the courage and confidence to speak up when you believe something isn’t being done right.
- Communication: You must be able to communicate what you are planning to do in a compelling way.
- Compass: You must have moral integrity.
- Coaching: Coaches and mentors are important to finding career success.
The article on Indra Nooyi, written by Richard Deitsch, is a must-read for all women who want to move up in their careers or are looking for an excellent female role model.
You can do it!
Lisa Quast
Career Woman, Inc. - "Your Future, Your Way"
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