My Life in Full - Indira Nooyi - Review

My life in full is a sparkling biography of how much an individual can accomplish despite humble middle class background rooted in a city of Chennai, India which is not known for corporate women leaders. From a US citizen perspective, Indira is a women of colour from a third world country and practically possess no chance of a seat in a leadership position in fortune 50 company, let alone the possibility of attaining the crown.   

Indira, true to the title of the book, narrates her entire life right from childhood days, born to deeply cultural brahmin couple who emphasized on education, her grandfather who stimulated her intellectual thought process, growing along with siblings who were exceptionally bright themselves, masters in IIM Calcutta, initial stint in an organization focused on wholesale textiles market, moving over for her second masters in Yale, meeting her husband Raj and driving through her experience in BCG, Motorola, ABB and finally her point of destiny which is Pepsi Co. 

At exactly half way mark is when Indira opens up the chapter that signals her entry into Pepsi Co as senior vice president in 1994. It’s a true inflection point and we can draw a parallel of watching a movie wherein the hero or heroine in Indira’s case, emerges at intermission stage to challenge the status quo of practically no female CEOs in fortune 50 companies, we can add any of Rajnikanth film's BGM and it will perfectly fit in.  

Pepsi, the second largest beverage company across the globe, with the unique accreditation of having sold the first capitalist product in Soviet Union back in 1959, welcomes Indira with open arms. Pepsi Co literally happens to be her home and number one priority until her retirement in 2018. Indira discusses the nuances of critical strategic decisions right from acquisition of Quaker Oats for $13.4 billion, demerging quick food restaurant business that contributed over a third of their revenue, the long drawn culture shift in implementing performance with purpose and many more path breaking initiatives. 

In 2002, Frito Lay, the snack ordering system crashed, which meant 1.5 lakh orders had to be processed manually. It was a monumental effort to climb with just human labour as the bug fixing work for the ordering system happened in parallel. There were many piecemeal technologies that were becoming increasingly unreliable and expensive to repair. A decision was made to set up state of art IT setup at the core of Pepsi co’s operation, it meant that the enterprise systems investment worked up to $1.5 billion spread over 5 years.

A 25 page technical document was presented to Indira for the second last approval which was already signed by twenty other officials under her hierarchy. Not wanting to be unsure of her decision, Indira spends the next 6 weeks cancelling her family vacation right through the December holidays and well into January devouring many technical books related to enterprise systems, process mapping, data warehousing and master data management. Post which she had framed her own list of questions for which appropriate answers were pulled from her subordinates and vendors. Only on being fully satisfied with the entire architecture, did Indira sign on the approval section. The episode highlights her deep sense of commitment and sacrifice towards her work. 

On large sections of her narrative, Indira is deeply disturbed by gender inequality in terms of pay parity, opportunity, conducive work environment and especially the impediments in career path due to post maternity child care duties. 

In 2012, Augusta National Golf Club which hosts annual masters golf tournament, withheld the club membership it traditionally grants IBM CEO, the reason being Ginni Rometty, the newly onboarded CEO was a women. The fact that IBM was the highest sponsor for masters golf tournament didn’t seem to have any bearing on male only membership rule. Ginni eventually got a membership but the fact that a CEO of a large corporation had to undergo a drill meant that the women who are lot lower down the rung are bound to face unfair practices. There were few other examples referred to as well that validates Indira’s gender bias standpoint.  

Being a staunch workaholic, Indira continues to take up other assignments post retirement that keeps her busy though her family has now taken the number one priority. On a final note, Indira makes a promise to both Preetha and Tara that whenever they choose to have kids, she will pitch in with nanny duties. 

True to her mother’s words, Indira has indeed left the crown in the garage.