A Glowing Star of the Women in Business Online Community
Nooyi Exemplifies the Best of Women in Business
The current CEO of PepsiCo Inc., Indra Nooyi, is a beacon of business success, professional power, and forward-thinking practices. Some call her strategies and style the “future of leadership.” She has been one of the women in business with the Women in Business at the Front of a Leadership Revolution buzzing about her for a few years now.
Corporate leaders look to her to try and imitate her success in continuing to grow Pepsi’s profits during the economic downturn. She is turning heads for championing ideals like maintaining integrity to one’s own cultural and personal beliefs while still acculturating to the corporate world, developing human and environmentally sustainable business practices, and the importance of emotional intelligence on the part of managers and leaders. She is proud of being a practicing Hindu, of having successfully climbed as high as one can on the corporate ladder, and of having successfully preserved her relationships with her two daughters.
These are phrases that sound decidedly unfamiliar in a business context, especially coming from an incredibly powerful CEO. Her success just goes to show what she has said for years and women’s networks have been advocating for just as long: current ideas about what it takes to be a successful and effective business leader are woefully two-dimensional, and changes that allow for more flexibility will benefit businesses.
Nooyi’s mantra for Pepsi has been performance with purpose, the idea being that companies should represent the people who work for and run them, and those people should prioritize having a purpose, some goal about how to improve the world. The philosophy has three main points; first, provide products and follow a business ethic that respects human sustainability, meaning will ultimately benefit customers, not kill them. Second, support and engage in environmentally sustainable practices. Third, take care of employees so that they have a quality life and as a result are more productive.
Another way to think of her contribution is to make a values-driven approach to business accepted and even respected. This is an ideal that the women in business online community has been helping women to professionally integrate into their ideals since its inception. Indra Nooyi’s leadership qualities set her apart both as a woman of inspiration and as a member of the business community with a lot of lessons for others to learn.
