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How Leaders Lead with David Novak

#56: Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo Former Chairman & CEO—The Future of Work, Family, and Life

How Leaders Lead with David Novak

David Novak Leadership

Entrepreneurship, Business, Management

4.8596 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2021

⏱️ 73 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How do leaders navigate conversations about the challenges parents, and especially women, face in the workplace? The first step is to simply have the conversation and get the shared perspectives of men and women. In this special episode from the How Leaders Lead Insight Series, Ashley Novak Butler, the Executive Director of the Lift-a-Life Foundation, interviews her dad, David, and Indra Nooyi about Indra’s new New York Times best-selling book, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future. Indra shares her story about growing up in India and the support she had to pursue her career while being a devoted mom, and the challenges she faced that she wants to remove for women coming up behind her in business, including problems with HR, childcare, and even cobblestone paths. 0:00 | Show intro 2:16 | The story behind Indra Nooyi’s memoir, and why work-life balance is the wrong goal. 9:48 | Upbringing: What Indra and David learned from their families that equipped them for future success, and how to extend those benefits to others. 16:42 | Coming up next week… Rob Light, Managing Partner of Creative Artists Agency 24:39 | How to set expectations for juggling the priorities of work and family with your spouse in order to have a fulfilling marriage. 35:15 | The surprising link between Mom guilt and the perfection gene. 40:01 | Expanding the presence of women in leadership. 46:26 | Advice for dealing with condescending behavior towards women.  49:47 | How to protect your reputation and health in business. 55:10 | Insights on mentorship and advocating for talent in general and women in particular. 58:51 | How to improve human resources to better serve all talent, and the implications of how two different people viewed the same cobblestone pathway. 1:08:48 | How to help women re-enter the workforce. 1:11:07 | Family lightning round 1:13:01 | How to make work-family life work. 1:14:45 | Farewell Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources: The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go  Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each day Whichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the How Leaders Lead Insight series, and I have to tell you, today we have a very special

0:08.7

discussion coming up. It's a conversation about work, life, family balance. Now, I got inspired to do

0:16.5

this episode after reading my good friend, Indra Newey's book entitled My Life in Full, Work, Family, and Our Future.

0:36.5

Now everyone knows that Indra's the former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo.

0:41.7

And Indra and I both worked together before she became chairman and CEO.

0:46.9

And before I became chairman and CEO of Young Branch, we were both a part of PepsiCo.

0:50.6

And we loved it.

0:51.7

And we had a lot of great times together.

0:53.9

And I admire her very much.

0:55.7

I saw her firsthand in action, and she is absolutely fantastic as a leader.

1:01.0

And as I thought about it, I thought it would be fun and insightful to hear how we both think

1:05.2

about work, family, and diversity.

1:06.9

And with Indra, obviously coming up the ranks as an Indian female and me doing the same as a white male.

1:14.6

I've asked my daughter, Ashley, a working mom with three incredible children, if I do say so myself, as a proud grandfather.

1:23.0

I've asked her to join us and conduct the interview so that we could get a different and I would say

1:28.8

current perspective on this important issue. So let's get started with our conversation.

1:34.7

Indra, thanks for joining me and congratulations on your outstanding book. I love the title,

1:40.7

My Life in Full. David, thank you for having me on this podcast. And I have to tell you,

1:45.4

I was so excited about doing this because Ashley is going to be interviewing me. And to me,

1:51.1

this is the best thing that could have happened. Great, great. Well, you had the idea,

1:55.2

so I'll give you the credit. Let's turn it over to Ashley. Well, thank you, Indra. And thank you,

1:59.8

Dad. I really appreciate this opportunity.

...

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