314. What Does a C.E.O. Actually Do?

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4.6 • 32K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2018

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

They're paid a fortune — but for what, exactly? What makes a good C.E.O. — and how can you even tell? Is "leadership science" a real thing — or just airport-bookstore mumbo jumbo? We put these questions to Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Indra Nooyi, Satya Nadella, Jack Welch, Ray Dalio, Carol Bartz, David Rubenstein, and Ellen Pao. (Part 1 of a special series, "The Secret Life of C.E.O.'s.")

Transcript

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0:00.0	So I have one grape about chip bags, especially for the single serve.
0:09.4	It seems to me very suboptimal to have the only opening at the top where you kind of have
0:15.3	to jam your hand in there and you can't really see what you're getting.
0:19.0	Wouldn't it be better to have a bag that just laid out all the chips on the package like
0:22.6	a nice picnic blanket or something if you ever thought about that?
0:25.4	But imagine that you're walking around eating your bag of chips which a lot of people do.
0:29.8	How would that work?
0:31.5	If you open out the lace too much and a gust of wind comes by, you're going to see a lot
0:35.2	of chips flying.
0:36.2	We have to worry about all these little practical things.
0:41.0	That's Indra Noi.
0:42.1	Good morning.
0:43.1	Noi is a CEO of PepsiCo.
0:46.0	So when it comes to little practical things to worry about, she has a lot of them.
0:50.8	PepsiCo has more than 260,000 global employees and over 100 brands and trademarks including
0:57.7	22 that each do at least a billion dollars a year in sales.
1:02.7	Those include Pepsi of course and Gatorade and Trappacana and Quaker Foods.
1:08.3	There are also seven separate billion dollar chip brands.
1:12.2	Lays, ruffles, Doritos, Toastitos, Cheetos, Friedos and Walkers.
1:18.3	So I'm out in the marketplace almost every week looking to see how our products looked
1:22.8	like on the shelf.
1:24.4	Not from a CEO lens, more from a consumer lens because at the end of the day, I'm not
	...

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