Indra Nooyi: Episode 1

Wisdom comes from observation, listening, watching, and very few people do that deliberately and then integrate it all into saying, "Huh, what did I learn from this meeting or this interaction or this experience or this article?" Welcome to Hidden Wisdom. We are so excited for our guest today Indra Nui. Rishi, tell us a little bit about Indra. Gosh, I'm so excited too. I mean, on some level Indra needs no introduction, right? Indra was the chair and CEO of PepsiCo for a long time. She's currently a board director at Amazon and serves on lots of different boards. She's the author of my life and autobiography published a few years ago. A real trailblazer, right? One of the first breakthrough women and women of Asian origin to break through into a Fortune 500 CEO seat. Super excited for this conversation. Unbelievable. And one of the things that I, you know, in learning about her journey, and most excited about is that I think she exemplifies what does it take to learn from every single person. The kinds of stories that she has told over the years really illuminate how she treats everyone as a teacher, how she goes deep in asking herself, "What can I, what can I learn from this person?" I think that perfectly fits with what we're seeking to explore with people. Yeah, she really does see the educator in everyone, you know, whether it's her parents, whether it's athletes, she comes across in her career, whether it's folks buried in the org chart in major, large company, she's running. And I think that's why, yeah, that's why I'm super excited about Indra's story, right? She's from Chennai, India, spent, you know, moved to the United States, spent some time in Chicago before coming to the New York area. And, you know, I've just been struck by so much of what Indra has said publicly over the years, but maybe most particularly that she says she thinks her mom would have been a great CEO. And just excited to unpack all the ways, the habits she's deployed to not leave to chance how she connects to the biography of others in her autobiography, really excited. Yeah, and not just for her own benefit, not just to say, what can I take from this person, but also what's a purpose that can unite us as well? How can my learning advance both of us, advance all of us, which to me is the mark of a true leader? That's right. And she's led with performance with purpose at her time as CEO Pepsi. So without further ado, let's dive in, Jeff. Friends, here we go. Indra Nui on Hidden Wisdom. Well, thank you, Indra, for joining our first season here of Hidden Wisdom. Jeff and I have collaborated for -- I've been collaborating on this for some time. And we could think of no no better guest to join our first season of Hidden Wisdom, talking with folks about the art and science of tapping the wisdom of people around them than Indra Nui. Indra, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me, Rishi. Although I must have a bit embarrassed because I never thought of myself as a wise person. So thank you for giving me this additional title, so I appreciate it. Well, we'll see where we get. And we seek a world here at Hidden Wisdom where the habit of wisdom seeing and wisdom seeking lives in the main. So we'll see how we do. But thank you again. I think for Jeff and I, we always enjoy first starting with sort of table stakes, definitions. Everyone's got their own take on wisdom, and you just hinted at perhaps yours. But how do you think about the word wisdom? What does wisdom mean to you, Indra? Well, very lofty work, first of all. I mean, when you say somebody's wise or have imparted wisdom, you feel like it's a superior being, right? But I also realize that it's a journey. I mean, everybody has something to impart to you. Everybody. It may be good wisdom or bad wisdom, but they all have something to impart to you. The challenges do you have the ability to integrate multiple points of view, experiences, whatever, and come up with your own perspective and your own point of view on something, which actually could help somebody else or help yourself. So you have to have the ability to integrate different perspectives, discern different noises that come your way, and figure out how to constructively integrate it to help yourself or help others. It's not easy. You know, acquiring wisdom or imparting wisdom is not easy because many people would like to pretend they're wise in reality they're not. And so if you really want to be viewed as wise and giving people, you know, imparting wisdom, the proof of the pudding is when they use that wisdom and something positive comes out of it. Okay, you might think it's great wisdom, but they implemented it and was a disaster. That doesn't mean the wisdom was bad. It's just that they implemented it badly. So this is a very complex topic, but I think wisdom is something that is a evolving a skill. You keep acquiring wisdom. You keep revising your points of view. You get wiser by the day. You feel less wiser in the world of AI. You don't feel advised. Just keeps evolving. Well, I love this notion of applied wisdom, which you've already hinted at, which, you know, I don't think I've spent enough time thinking about. But let's start with the who, maybe, when when you reflect on who the who's in your life that have proactively gone out of out of their way to offer you a kind of trajectory shaping wisdom, who comes to mind? You know, the first person that comes to mind is my father. When we were growing up, and again, I'm talking about 50s and 60s in India long, long, long time ago, my father said something so profound. I'd never forgotten through my entire life. He said, as girls, I want you all to be economically independent. I want you to never have to put out your hand and ask a man for money. You can ask your parents, but beyond that, never put out your hand and ask somebody for money because the day you do that, you've seated control of your life to them. And he said, be economically independent. Have the power of the purse. Make sure you stand on your own two feet. So our job is to give you the education, give you the wings to dream and fly, but I want you to be economically independent. Now, why that's very, very profound is because he's telling us this when we were pre-teens and teens. This was in the mid-60s in India. Unusual for a man to tell daughters this, to be economically independent. I've never forgotten what he told me because I always wanted to work because I wanted economic independence. And I think it stood me in good stead because I felt comfortable in my own skin. I never had to put my hand out to anybody. And I passed on the same lessons to my kid saying, the parents is okay, but you have to stand on your own two feet. So that was one piece of advice. The second one, which I think was more current and it's a well-known story is when I came home after I became president and my mother wouldn't listen to my big news and wanted me to go get some milk. And you know, understandably, I was mad that she didn't want to stop and listen to me and was more interested in my getting milk. But when she turned around and she said to me, I really don't care whether you've got big news for me, whether you've become president on the board of directors, I don't even know what that is. All that I know is one thing. When you enter the house, you are the wife, the mother, the daughter, the daughter-in-law, and you've got to learn to leave the crown the garage. Just leave it in the garage and walk in the house. To me, it was not comfortable with them. I was mad at that moment when I reflected on it. She talked about the balance between our and humility. She talked about the fact that power might be in the office or at home, don't wield that power because humility is what's going to keep your family together. So to me, these two lessons were profound in so many ways and came from my parents. And what's interesting to me is not everyone takes this advice from their parents as seriously. For some people, they do the opposite. They resist the advice. I'm a particularly if that advice, you know, maybe conflicts with other societal messages. And one of the things that is striking to me about both of those stories that you shared, and also so many of the other stories you've written about and talked about, is how seriously and with such earnestness, you take in that advice. You integrate that advice because I don't think that's a given that everyone would do that. Can you reflect at all about what leads you to bring that level of humility and earnestness when people give you advice that other people in the same situation might have rejected or resisted? Well, one is cultural because I grew up in an environment where we respected our elders. In fact, at our home, they would always keep repeating to us your mother, father, and your teacher are like God. You have to respect them. Take their input. They've lived through life. They have lots of experiences. Your teacher is the one who's teaching you and developing you. So I have incredible respect for your teachers too. They're like God. And so to me, when teachers or your parents give you advice, you don't dismiss it. You may not follow it to a T because the times are different, but you listen carefully to what they have to say because they've had lived experiences which will actually teach us a thing or two. It's interesting. Our kids don't take the advice, but as they grow older, they reflect back and they start to take the advice. So I think, From the time I was a kid the fact that my father mother at that age would tell us those things in conservative India to me was so advanced and gave us the wings to fly and dream big and not let anything stand in our way I think I never forgot that lesson and while the at the moment I was upset with my mother which told me to leave the crown of the garage the more I thought about it said to myself you know what she's a wise person because I have to make sure this family is taking care of along with my husband both of us do our respective roles but at that moment the family needed milk who the hell am I to question whether I should go get it or not and you know my position is not gonna get the milk it's the person that's gonna have to go get the milk so I learned to sit back and you know analyze my feelings and the message and then realize that you know don't react to this further moment think hard about the message being given then decide whether to adopt it or not but you know I adopt since then I so appreciate that and as I think you know Rishi and I are on this quest to understand how do people seek wisdom and one thing I just find fascinating what you just said is this cultural layer the layer to say that my culture says my parents are teachers and teachers are like God and this cultural set of beliefs and mindsets that this isn't you to seek and integrate the wisdom that people bring in I don't know that every culture would would necessarily encourage that but that's very powerful and our hope is maybe this can help shine a spotlight on what you know what was so valuable that that should be preserved or resurrected well and hopefully it's empowering as well because on the one hand culture is static but on the other hand we can create cultures we can create micro cultures and the attention you've drawn Indra Indra to the atmospherics of culture in enabling or disabling the extent to which one receives wisdom is interesting and frankly inspires me to think about my role in culture and tone setting could you talk a little bit about unspoken wisdom or wisdom you had to you know actively in your career and life seek and ask and and sensed was sort of in the room perhaps until you posed a key question part of what Jeff and I crave speaking of culture is advancing a culture where wisdom seeking active palpable noticeable wisdom seeking is is happening before our eyes and we name it as such curious what comes to mind when you have to uncover wisdom from someone else I should two stories come to mind and two specific examples that I lived through you know when I was in Pepsi go I knew when I long before I became CEO I studied every one of our businesses I knew every segment of our business globally and I felt like I was an expert on Pepsi until Steve Reineman when he was president called me in his office and said I want you to go and help free to lay redo his distribution system and my point is look I've got a full-time job I've got kids at home and the last thing I need is to go work on the free and laid distribution system and he would not budgie said I need you to work on that clearly he would have listened had I said I want to give up some of my corporate responsibilities I just want to so I went off and worked on that four days a week and then the other three days worked on my corporate responsibilities and what I discovered because of his big headiness and making me do that I say that in the nicest way is that what he was telling me is Indra you know how to work everything to the left of the decimal in tens and hundreds and billions of dollars that's what you've been doing all your life you know how to do deals restructuring all of that stuff but money is not made over there money is made also in the right cell of the decimal a penny on a round a penny on a bag and the right cell of the decimal is where all your big ideas actually take you know take root so when you go work on that free and laid distribution system you're going to get a whole different perspective as to what happens every day when people have to go put products on the shelf I have to drive a truck how we have to manage every penny of course and make it a prisoner every penny a prisoner as the sportsmen say and so when I did that project for about six months I learned so much about detailed implementation he taught me how to not just zoom out but to zoom in constantly think big but figure out how to land the planes and this notion of zooming in and zooming out is something that's the skill we have to teach a lot of young people today and critically important if you want to ascend to positions of leadership because leadership is not just living in a lala land leadership is thinking big and implementing at the grassroots level so that was one example the second one was interestingly one that I observed with the CEO before Steve random and Roger and Rico he would keep asking us to go off and study things more and he himself would get deep into subjects and study them not to micromanage people but to micro understand issues difference between micromanaging and micromanaging and you know one day I just kept thinking why do you do this you know I'm there to take care of all the micro understanding why do you spend the time doing it this answer was you know the distance between a number one and number two is a constant so if you want to lift the organization the leader should lift themselves up and the day that distance between the number one and number two starts to shrink that leader should retire it means that leader is not a learning learning leader doesn't want to expand their base of knowledge so I keep asking these questions because I want to lift the organization that distance between the number one and number two is a constant to me that's that was another profound lesson I learned from a leader that I respected enormously so two CEOs that I worked for Roger and Nicholas Tehraneman taught me a lot about how to be a better leader myself only because I was willing to keep my eyes and ears open for the you know great lessons they were willing to impart to me the wisdom they were willing to impart to me and as I as I listened to that second story in particular there was a moment where you said I asked him why did you really want to get into this at such level of a detail and it was in the answer that you got this lesson about zooming in and zooming out and and micro understanding how do you not ask that question and I can imagine many people would just be annoyed why is he getting in my business why is he doing all this but do you you brought curiosity to it I was asking him because I thought that I'm doing it for him why does he have to worry is a CEO you can go think about other things but the reality was because he wanted to show the organization that he was willing to dig and understand and then he's going to let the people do the work but you know I'm going to lift you guys by asking the right questions by my my micro understanding I'm going to ask macro questions based on my my micro understanding it's an interesting leadership skill absolutely which you uncovered by asking him why he behaves the way that he does yes yes but again you're raising an interesting question because wisdom comes from observation listening watching and very few people do that deliberately and then integrate it all just saying huh what did I learn from this meeting or this interaction or this experience or this article I think wisdom comes from constantly keeping your eyes yours open and your mouth shut which is what I loved about your first story which is essentially it's sent you to the ground it's sent you to the front lines to say there's wisdom on the front lines about the desert things to the right of the decimal about how is a package loaded onto a truck or how is you know a route designed and that move that your CEO made forced you into getting to that wisdom right at right on the front line and I'm eternally grateful to them for making me do what they made me do and that I love your notion of micro understanding and you've just should add some powerful questions you've asked over the years it if we make just dwell for a couple more minutes on this notion of asking questions can you reflect a little bit on how you go about asking the right question at the right time with the right cut I think our audience is trying in part if if wisdom is a North Star tactically trying to get better at asking questions how does Indra newly think how have you thought about formulating questions timing questions and the like again this is a journey because depending on the level of the organization you're in you have the license to ask different level of questions okay so as I evolved in the company I could ask more difficult questions at a higher level and reading the room and knowing your role is very important you can ask questions offline at any level but as you evolve through an organization you have the license to ask it in public again you have to be careful if you ask too many questions just to make it look like you're so smart people are going to get turned off but at the way you ask questions and remove the business forward and help people make better decisions it's a good outcome so you've got to learn how to ask the questions in the right way and ask it in a constructive way so if people actually feel good about the question that you ask rather than being put on a defensive or you know this person just made me look terrible in part of my peers very important how you ask the question so it's a it's a it's a learned skill and I didn't have that skill I had to be taught that skill so yeah I actually George Fisher who was CEO and Motorola taught me that skill because I [BLANK_AUDIO] a question in a motor roller meeting that was between the eyes, you know, dead cat question. And I remember George, you know, there was a hush in the room and the plane back to Chicago, George pulled me in the back of the plane and said, "I need to talk to you." He said, "The question that you asked was not wrong, but you just made sure that guy never, that president never lets you back in the division because you made him look terrible in front of everybody else." So I looked at him and said, "George, why didn't you ask that question?" He said, "I would have had that discussion after the meeting with him. What in public that way?" And I said, "So what should I have done?" He said, "Let me tell you how I would have asked the question." And he gave me a whole role play on how I could have asked my question in a constructive way. I asked it in a gutcher way. He taught me how to ask it in a constructive way. Now, I've tried to use that for the rest of my, I tried to use it over my years in Pepsi Go. And as a CEO, it was a skill I had to learn. It didn't come naturally to me. So I was just used to few words, just give the message, hit them between the eyes. Now I'm realizing that impact is higher, greater. When you actually make them feel great that you asked the question. Yeah. The master class you just gave on how you were taught, how to ask questions and how to read the room and where and what setting was just priceless. Oh my goodness. But you know, it's interesting, you know, leaders have to teach their people. A whole leader has to teach their people. A secure leader teaches their people. An insecure leader takes the credit for everything people do. And so leadership is about personal security. That's a whole different topic we can discover at home. Also just the idea of being around, you know, when you're constructing one's career or calling, ensuring you're around people from whom you can learn, learn to ask better questions. Is part of one's wisdom seeking and wisdom seeing journey is really interesting. And I appreciate you sharing that anecdote from Motorola. And there you've been a student as well, of course, in India and the United States, including having gone to the school of management at Yale, just curious as we, you know, we've spent a few minutes talking about people and your approach to unlocking wisdom and people around you. Curious how you think about codified expertise, you know, formal bodies of knowledge or books or even your experience in business school, for instance, knowledge organized that has that has advanced your sense of wisdom in the world, maybe not in real time, you know, as you've noted, but perhaps later, even in surprising ways. You know, I don't know of any single book that has sort of enlightened main profound ways. I read a lot. I read everything I can lay my hands on, but I read long format, long purpose, not blurbs on social media headlines. So I actually dig deep into a topic and try to look at it from different points of view. And I really sit back and I go, what lesson can I take away from this? That's another thing I do often, what lesson can I take away from this? If there's a failure, I sit back and go, what can I learn from this failure? If there's something that went well, I sit back and go, what caused it to be successful? I think of myself, my team, the quality of the work we did. But everything to me is a teaching moment. The reason this is important is because, as you ascend in a corporation, the cost of failure is high. And you have to make sure that you use all of the wisdom accumulated over the years, bring to a decision, to bring to any issue that you have. That's why people put you there, and they know you have this accumulated body of knowledge that you can bring to your job. And so, there isn't any book, it's much more drawing from all the experiences. I mean, it's like my language model, a large language model, except that it's a personal model that's in my brain, okay? And then I use my brain as my AI tool to tap into all of it to say, okay, what can I derive from it? And that model is being constantly updated, because I feel like I haven't reached a point where I've reached, you know, exaltation. I'm still learning. I mean, that is that I'm on a wisdom podcast, because I feel I've got so much more to learn, so much more to expand my thinking on. I feel, you know, it's just starting to get a point for me. Yeah, we didn't invite you because we thought you had all the wisdom that it was to know, but more because you're a model of wisdom seeking, and constantly wisdom seeking. That's fine. That I am proudly. And yeah, just to come back to this idea of long form, some people might say there's a trade-off between breadth and depth. You know, if you go long form in that time, you might have been able to read 20 short articles and go, and can you reflect a little on why the choice deeper versus broader for you? Well, if it was a trade-off between time and breadth, you know, I may have read on it. I'm a speed reader. And I know how to read an article fast and retain it. Okay, that's very important. It's a very important skill that are people that read very slowly and deliberately. I read fast and quickly and register. So again, you need to have those kills. To me, when you read a long form article, especially a long form article, which actually looks at different perspectives, it's a priceless article because it gives you in one place. Different points of view. It's not, you know, one side and the other politically or otherwise. And it exposes you to more areas to go off and, you know, think about. And so sometimes you look at a footnote that you want to go off and read. Or these have links to other articles you might want to go and read. So I think these articles focuses your mind and makes you think about broader issues, as opposed to a headline that already has digested the article and gives you a point of view, which actually may have nothing to do with the article. Most headlines really have nothing to do with the article, they clickbait. And so I have real trouble when people just look at the headline and say, oh, now I got the issue. No, you didn't, the headline and the article first and nothing you do with each other. The article itself was just a fun tree. But if you let the role, long form article, you might have put out a headline where it says, hey, there are two sides to this issue. But now you're, you know, acquiring wisdom by reading all parts of the issue. I think many few people do that today. And I think even fewer people do that second step that you said, which is to ask myself explicitly, what can I learn from this? What's the takeaway here for me? What's applicable? I think that's very powerful combined. And I want to ask you, how do you do that? Do you, is that an explicit move? Do you do it right after you finish reading? Is it a conscious thing you're doing as you're going through? Do you take notes like how and when do you ask yourself? Because I think that's the powerful wisdom integration practice to use your words from earlier. As I go along, because sometimes you go, oh, this confirmed what I'm thinking or this challenged what I'm thinking, why was my thinking wrong? Or is this new body of information telling me that I'll be thinking differently? So as I go along, I'm revising my brain to say, okay, this is a confirmatory piece of data. This is challenging piece of data, challenging my thinking. This is new piece of data, which is giving me a new data point. So I'm constantly revising and updating what's told in my head. Because if I wait till it's all over and then start to do it, I'm already ready to go on to the next article, the next book or the next, you know, major summary or the major academic paper. So I'm revising as I go along. I just love this idea of in this age of AI and growing dependency on large language models, which are designed in ways to try and mimic the neural networks in our own minds. This idea of attending to our own neural networks, pathways, ability to over time construct pattern recognition that's productive and powering and wisdom seeking is just so inspiring. And a little bit about this question of taking stock of of where to aim. You've got you've clearly got a habit in the of wisdom seeking wisdom seeing how do you take stock of your blind spots where you'd like to aim in your learning in your wisdom seeking could be a present moment question, but it could be looking back even in your in your journey moments where you zoomed out about yourself and understood here's where I want to aim from a media diet standpoint, from a reading standpoint, from a learning standpoint, from a wisdom standpoint, what is that practice like? First, I married to somebody who reads everything, Raj, reads everything that we can lay his hands on. He reads long form. So he's very knowledgeable on many, many topics. So when we sit down to discuss topics or when we're with other people, we're having serious discussions, I listen to what everybody else has to say and I realize I haven't read enough for, I may have jumped to conclusions too easily. The second is when I was running PepsiCo, I surrounded myself with people who told truth to power. Very important. So when you surround yourself with people who are very knowledgeable themselves who constantly upgrade their knowledge base and they can tell truth to power, they challenge you when You jump to conclusions too fast or you haven't thought through an issue. you haven't read enough or you haven't really dug into your experience space as much as you could have. And so I learned a lot from those people around me. So I didn't have a lock on everything. I'll be honest with you. For people who think leaders would think that they have a lock on all decisions and all, you know, outcomes, you're crazy. People around me taught me a lot. And then the third thing I would do is interact with a lot of young people, you know, at that time, it was a millennial because they have they were digital natives. We were all digital aliens. Okay, even before the days of chat GPT, if you keep your eyes and ears open to their perspectives, they taught us so much about how to approach the digital world, how to do advertising that's going to transform itself in the digital world. How do you think about shopping and e-commerce? Because to them, that's what they did. To us, it was like, oh my god, I mean, I don't have to go to the grocery store to completely different perspectives. So I think it came from surrounding yourself with people with completely different experiences and having the humility to listen to them. I think that's very important. Sometimes you surround yourself with those people and go, what do they know? In my case, it was, oh my god, I better listen to them. My kids, I mean, they were the millennial. So listening to them was very important. So I think it all comes down to, are you dug in your ways? Are you willing to own your mind and listen carefully? I love that. It makes me think about Doris Kern's Good Winds book team of rivals about President Lincoln's cabinet, of course. Can you talk a little bit more? Of course, love the idea of young people as being vessels of wisdom. But this practice of surrounding yourself, not just with the usual suspects, but the unusual suspects and difference. How do you go about that? One may think one's surrounding oneself in all kinds of settings, social settings, professional settings, customer settings, community settings, with difference. But there's a difference with leaving it to chance and perhaps being methodical about the surround sound, so to speak. Is there an approach that comes to mind? So when I was upgrading my team and I became CEO, I recruited for this. I recruited people who had experiences where they challenged status quo. The interview process, I looked to see what kind of questions they would ask. Right. So that's the entry point, but Rishi, unless I give them license to challenge power, they won't do it because they'll be silenced. So in meetings, I would actually go around the room towards the end of every meeting, making sure everybody spoke up. And if they said something that questioned my decision or what I was saying, I didn't tell them, you know, I find it offensive that you did that or didn't call on them the next time. I'd stop the meeting and say, you have a good point. Can you talk a little bit more about it? And is there anybody else who also feels this way? I don't think we should ignore that point of view. Sometimes people say, God, you're holding up the progress of this meeting. I said, no stop, guys, it's this only time. We can spend a little bit more time talking about this if we are going to get to a better decision at the end of it. So everybody felt that they had a say in the decision. But once we made the decision, we all went forward. But getting everybody's perspective was important for two things. One, they're all seasoned executives. Why can't I tap into, we go higher consultants? Why do we need consultants? I had seasoned executives around me. So tapping into their knowledge was very important. But the second is the only way you're going to build succession and leadership is if you allow them to also sit in the CEO's chair and look at issues from different points of view. And all of them felt that way. They all felt they could be CEO because they sat in the chair. And that is they knew that just because they asked a question and may have been a wrong question or question that didn't really go anywhere, there was no cost to it. And I gave them license to do it. So I built more loyalty than anything else. And so it was a great experience. And I think people who surround themselves with yes men or yes women are making a big mistake. I remember once, early in my career, I questioned one of my executives and said, guys, can't you just go with what I'm saying? Do you have to question everything? And they got me a bubblehead doll called the yes man. And every time I hit it, they'll say, what can I say when you write your right? Or how do you do it? And he asked me to have it with me. He was just embarrassing. I said, that's not what I'm talking about. He said, well, next time you want to just go along with you, we'll just hit this button to tell you, how do you do it? When you write, you're right. I just know never ever do that to me. That's hilarious. That relates to what I was going to ask you, which is that it is not common to see a leader not only surround themselves with people who might have differing views, but also to actively welcome that and encourage it and reward it in the way that you have. And so you may have just answered the question, but my question is, did that always come naturally to you? Or did you have to learn how to do that? And if so, how did you learn how to do what I think in some ways you could consider a countercultural leadership move? You know, actually, yes and no, because my bosses always sought my opinion. And I always told Truths to power for the longest time. And the fact that I could thrive in an environment where I could tell Truths to power meant that other people who worked with me would thrive if I allowed them to tell Truths to power. And my bosses who were my mentors, phenomenal mentors, very secure in saying, hey, she could take our jobs one day, but I'd rather hear her tell the truth so we make better decisions for the company than silence her. So I had the same feeling about my mentees, which is, tell the Truths to power. It would be great if you guys can all succeed me. So this is my way of leadership development and pulling you all up. It works for both of us. And you learned by example. Yeah, I learned by example, for sure. Could you say a little bit more before we shift gears and maybe talk a little bit about the more mystical sides of wisdom? But I'm struck by this notion of rewarding, recognizing even celebrating wisdom as a path to growing it. And maybe the word wisdom wasn't the word use, sort of in an organizational context. But how did you think about validating behavior you wanted to see more of celebrating, recognizing this notion of truth to power is really powerful, ensuring people felt seen for the behavior that you were seeking to advance, just what was your approach there? Well, I want to be careful. You don't just reward wisdom. You reward input. I'm going to call it input rather than wisdom. Because you call it wisdom only when it led to a successful, until then it's just input. All right, you reward input when it's given in a way that is constructive and can be acted upon. Sometimes people try to be smart as and make a comment. And then just to showcase themselves, I hate those kind of people. Like the gotcha question that I asked a long time ago, although I didn't do it for myself, because I thought there was a problem and the word was presented, but it doesn't matter. It's coming across as a gotcha. I never want to reward those people because they are self-promotors. But if somebody asked a question a constructive way to move the discussion forward or change the trajectory, the discussion to a better place, and if that direction was implemented right in me, got some benefit out of it, that's wisdom. Till it actually results in change, it's not wisdom. I love the distinction between input and wisdom. And you don't know if input is going to have turned out to be wisdom until it plays out more. It's actually right. But because you don't know, you need to welcome and reward so much input. Because who knows which one is going to be the real piece of wisdom that got us to the breakthrough. No, Jeff, I want to be very clear. As the boss, I own all the failures. Successes are my people. So if I took somebody's input and I agreed to go into direction and didn't work, it's my fault. It's my intuition and my ability to synthesize that didn't work. So if it failed an implementation, it's their fault, but the decision itself was flawed. It's my fault. So I was very clear in my role as a leader. Because that's what gave license to people, to propose things, to suggest things, to challenge them. They feared that their input was going to be used against them. If it didn't come out right, that would suppress their input. Exactly right. Well, you know, here at Hidden Wisdom, we believe there's wisdom all around us in human form to be sure. And it's just been a half an hour talking within the renewing about ways in which she's approached tapping the wisdom hidden and sometimes more palpable and people around her. But we also believe that there's all kinds of wisdom around us in the natural world, in higher powers, perhaps in culture, in the way you've gestured back at ancient cultures as well. In this sort of blue sky portion of the conversation where we love giving our guest opportunity to reflect about wisdom, they may have felt transcendent wisdom from nature or from higher powers. What comes to mind is you think it looked back and even think about the present moment. Anything? Two things. Two things. I watched a lot of sports, and I watched sports stars, okay? How they play on a team. I remember when I was obsessed with Michael Darkwood and the Chicago Bulls. I mean, I'm obsessed with them. I was. And I watched Michael Jordan in a clutch situation and he could have taken a shot. Passed the ball up to Steve Kurt because he thought Steve was more open than he was. And that was the winning shot in Game 7 of the Utah Bulls finals. I watched that and when I got a chance to talk to Michael Jordan about it, he didn't even think twice he said, look, the goal is to win the game. It's not how many points I scored. The Chicago Bulls needed to win the championship. So team work was more important. And how you use the whole team to win is critically, critically important. And I think it's very important that especially in the corporate world where it's doggy dog and everybody is, you know, muscling each other out to get to the top. Because it's a pyramid, all organizations are pyramids. You all focus on the company winning, not how do I look? That's one. Second, Raj watches a lot of wildlife shows. And I watch two kinds of wildlife shows. First, I don't like those shows because they're too gory for me. But when I do see it, there's one wildlife show where somebody's killing others, even in their own herd to get ahead. Now I'm the king. I don't like people killing each other to declare themselves king. Then there's the other where monkey is helping another monkey up a tree. Some of the animals helping somebody up a tree before they go up to me. That's closer to human behavior that I think we should be practicing. How do we help each other up the tree? Yeah, naturally, knowing that we're all trying to get to the top, but at different points, different people are going to get to the top. So again, remember what I said, input is great. Input when it has a positive impact is wisdom. Input when it has negative impact to me is just bad. So when I see people doing destructive things to each other, that's the animal world that I do not want to emulate. I love the attention in the way you've drawn over the years to sports and athletics in particular. I think that certainly the older I get, the more wisdom I see in athletes, it's perhaps coded in ways where there's almost a muscle memory of what you're describing around Michael Jordan. And there's a muscle memory that I think we, those of us who don't live in the athletic world auto absorb. Jeff and I are both fans of tennis. And in tennis, of course, it's an individual sport. And so there's this sort of inner monologue constant and the ability to out suffer the other opponent is really one way to think about the sport. But centering athletics and athletic metaphors in human organizations, I think is a really is a path to ensuring we are capacious and three-dimensional in our approach to send wisdom sensing, if you will. I'm a big fan of the New York Yankees. And not mentioning names at all. In a clutch situation during playoffs or big games, there were players who'd come up to bat and swing for a home run. When all they needed to do was get a single or double to advance the players. And then there were phenomenal players who could have hit a home run. But when I had the singles and doubles to advance the players and make sure that the team won. To me, I hated those players who would come in a clutch and really try to get a home run because that's how they would look good. Because you fail more often than you succeed in hitting a home run rather than going for a safe single or double. And so that's what this is for the team. What do you focus on? There's a clear theme across multiple of your stories. Michael Jordan making the pass instead of taking the shot himself. The baseball player going for the single instead of swinging for the fences. Even the monkey helping the other monkey up the tree instead of trying. You know, it's all about putting the collective ahead of the personal. At the end of the day, that's all in the game for collective. There's not a game of tennis. This is a game of team sports. What is it that draws you to this theme of putting the collective ahead as opposed to the individual head? I have never seen an example in the business world, in the corporate world in particular. We're putting the individual ahead has resulted in any glory. I mean, business is a team sport. It is not an individual sport. And did you one last question kind of on this theme of nature and sport? Were you intentional? Or did you find ways to expose your teams over the years to sort of metaphors from outside the business world when when trying to cultivate a kind of culture? You speak often about performance with purpose, of course. It's the kind of frame I could imagine finding its way into team locker rooms as well. And so I'm just curious, bridging your teams into ensuring that they were aware of the athletic world or the natural world. Was that something that. You always lend them in real life, for example, I dated them as you were transforming the portfolio. Guys, every child in the world should be your child. So we should be feeding the world what we would feed our children. Every farmer in the world has got to be viewed as your family member. So we have to make sure farmers remain viable because we buy so much agricultural produce. We have to make sure they get a fair wage. So they were all filled with Inranui metaphors. You know, I think the value of that rishis that it brings ideas home to people. It's sticky when you use those examples. That was my hope. And I tell them every child in the world is your child. They were cringe, but the fact of the matter is. Like, don't sell screens. And then in Silicon Valley, tell the Nanny is not to give your children screens. Right. To me, that one just drives me up the wall. You know, and what it makes me think of in the rest is just this notion of wisdom at its best. You use the word sticky. Is memorable. It indoors. It finds a way into a corner of your mind and sustains and perhaps evolves, but you don't forget. And one of the things I think we'll track with our guests over this course of this first season is this idea of where they're pulling wisdom from. But perhaps as you noted with your father from decades ago, right? So it's interesting. If you keep your ears and eyes wide open and your mind opened ideas, I think wisdom is everywhere, everywhere. Wonderful. Well, we've covered a lot of ground. We do like to finish each episode with what we call not a speed round, but an anti-speed round. A chance to give each one of our guests kind of an open mic opportunity to reflect on the following. What kind of wisdom are you currently seeking? We've already spent a lot of time with you offering wonderful advice to our audience about seeing and seeking wisdom. And finally, is there a favorite, you know, you've offered lots of nuggets, of course, but any other favorite quotes, lyrics, proverbs that come to mind before we wrap up here? There's one, you know, observation I've had in my life is that a lot of leaders I meet, a project courage, confidence, I mean, bravado, luster, call it good, bad, whatever words you want. But to me, that courage and confidence is not based on competence. That's really a blustery leader. And so to me, wisdom comes from competence. Current confidence, all of that are just window dressing or frills around the competence. And so if leaders don't really focus on building a base of knowledge, reading, viewing, understanding, multiple issues and building that foundation, they have no business projecting confidence and courage. Okay, to me, that is something people should understand. That's why I keep saying, when you zoom in and zoom out, make sure you have that body of knowledge that foundation you're building from. Critically important. And I think more and more people should realize that today's world in particular calls for leaders to become, you know, students again every day. They've got to learn, they've got to go back to school almost every day. No, no leader today was prepared for today. World is changing, that was geopolitically, technologically, every which way is changing. And we all have to lead companies and lead our life saying, hey, we may come and go with transient in this world. Life goes on. And this is why I keep coming back to a poem by Tennyson that I learned as a kid. He was writing about the brook, you know, the little brook that flows through towns. And it's a beautiful poem because every time he talks about where it's flowing and whose farm is going through. It's just beautiful, it just evokes wonderful memories. The refrain of the song says, of the verse says, for men may come and men may go, but I go on forever. Men may come and men may go, but I go on forever. I think we ought to keep that in mind, people might come, people might go, but corporations have to go on forever. Life goes on forever. Society goes on forever. So whatever you do is transient. And so what you've got to realize is that this entity has got to last forever. You have to run the company for the duration of the company, not for your duration. And so constantly you've got to think about judicious balance of short term and long term. I do make sure CEOs may come, CEOs may go, but this company has to go on forever. about that all the time? Well, what a moving way to finish and conclude this conversation. Indira, we've gained so much first Jeff and I in real time through this conversation, have gained so much. And in particular, I think this idea that to realize the poetry of wisdom, you need habits of prose actually. And you've drawn attention to both sides and your career has been a testament to that. So we can't thank you enough Indira for joining this first season in wisdom. Thank you for having me. I hope you enjoyed it as well. Wonderful, both podcasts really. So it's a fascinating topic. Thank you for inviting. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Wow, Jeff. That was a remarkable conversation with Indira Newley, former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. What's on your mind as you reflect on her approach to wisdom seeing and wisdom seeking? I mean, talk about someone who just epitomizes our mission, you know, literally from growing up in a culture that said, listen to your teachers. Your teachers are godlike how that inked still in her a level of humility, a level of desire to to earnestly take in whether from her parents or her mentors or to her point really everyone in anyone that there's something to learn from. And she just, I think, lives that so beautifully. Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things I took away most specifically perhaps is this idea of insisting on a kind of excellence around inputs so that then we realize a world where wisdom manifests and wisdom can be absorbed, right? Not leaving to chance, one's ability to see, seek, and wisdom, not just for yourself, but the collective, right? Which you drew me to. So in many ways, I think Indira helps us see that the practice of wisdom seeing and wisdom seeking doesn't just live in the individual. It lives in kind of a body, lives in community actually. Yes. And it's not just like, oh, yeah, there's wisdom. Let me grab it. You have to do the work. You have to put in the work. You have to read the long form of the article, not the headline. Not only do you read the long form, but you're asking yourself constantly, what am I taking from this? What can I be learning from this? And that's that's work. That's that, you know, that's to her point of like, I respect components. That's putting in the work to actually learn the stuff. And then out of that foundation, be able to distinguish what's an input versus what's a piece of wisdom as well. And I think there's a there's a kind of no shortcuts part of what I take from her around wisdom seeking as well. That's right. And I think, you know, you called attention to this early in the conversation, the idea that many people in her seat may have repelled some of the some of the life and trajectory altering wisdom that was coming her way. You know, for instance, around around this notion of independence that around this idea of reading the room and asking the right question at the right time, this idea of company and collective before self, this idea of seeing seeing something sacred in Jordan passing the curve or packs into when the when the NBA finals. I think that what you what what the conversation with her scream to me is it's an always on operating system actually. And I'm really grateful. Yeah. And we I think we got some glimpses into some of the pieces of that operating system that are very practical in terms of specific wisdom seeking practices, whether that's reminding oneself. There is something to learn from everyone, whether it's the art of the question, which she gave us that masterclass in, you know, at one segment in the conversation, not only what's the right question, but when do I ask that question and to whom do I ask that question? And how many questions do I ask before it becomes too many questions? There's there's a whole art of that. The wisdom seeking practice that she shared around how to reward dissent and how to reward pushback. And I thought also what you know what the very first thing that she started with I thought was a fascinating practice, which is the idea of integrating wisdom. That's right. It's not just there's wisdom. Let me take it in and just abide by that. It's actually let me take it in and think critically about it and have it sit next to four other things that I've also thought and then ask myself what do I really take from it as well. And so this idea of reflection and integration as a wisdom seeking practice or maybe as a wisdom meaning making practice was fascinating as well. Yeah. And you could sense her inner monologue, you know, always on. And this particularly this question of what have I learned? What can I take away from this experience or this meeting or this person, this conversation, this episode, this chapter of my career? And you know you asked her to kind of unpack what that habit looks like. And it appears it happens in real time in the margins of the experience as the experiences unfolding page by page. And I think that for me that's what I'm taking away that perhaps one approach to turning on the muscle memory that is so alive in athletes, right, is the muscle memory of we talk about journaling, we talk about gratitude. But maybe there's a there's a there's a similar practice around what did I learn? You of course, Jeff, I've pioneered this this notion of learning full. This is the year of learning full experiences. And I think in there is a shining example of of ensuring or reflecting on what was learning full about each and every experience. And it's something I'm definitely taking away. I love that. It's like we always we all have a tape running in our heads at every moment in our life. And it feels like her tape is a tape of what am I learning here? What's the takeaway? What do I think? What do I really think? How does that sit next to this? And in this learning full mental state that's that's constantly going as you say, I think is a very strong takeaway as well. Yeah, and it would be easy to regard that as sort of this, you know, as as a kind of optimizing, you know, but I think what I took away from her was that it's a back end process, right? Of course, part of it doesn't should entail being judicious the front end around how one's spending one's time, how you're structuring one's day, one's month, one's quarter, one's year. But I think I think for me, she drew a attention, you know, maybe that may be her metaphor of the right side of the decimal, just being tuned to no matter what turbulence occurs in one's day or on one's trip or in one's, you know, particular career chap or there's a learning there and not leaving to chance one's reflection on that was absolutely interesting. Yeah, this idea that there is learning on the right side of the decimal. Yeah, that many people would dismiss that as well. That's just a penny or a tenth of a penny or a hundredth of a penny. But that's where the learning is. It's not just on the left side of the decimal. Yeah, you know, that metaphor is something maybe we run with later in a later conversation, but I think this idea that the right side of the decimal is sometimes lost in in a culture that emphasizes the left side of the decimal, right? Not just not just literally, but perhaps figuratively. And so love her attention to to the zoom in to the micro and really grateful for the conversation and and all the ones to come for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I'll just toss in one last reflection. We didn't go in the direction of the spiritual at some level in the sense of like, what am I learning from God or higher power? But this idea that team above self purpose drives performance. It's not performance just there is a kind of an interconnected foundation to everything in the value system that I heard from Indra as well, which I think itself is spiritual in its own nature. And perhaps is a spiritual underpinning of there's learning everywhere because if I don't know everything, if I value the people around me, if we're together in this for a higher purpose than just and convincing ourselves, of course, we've got to learn from each other. Of course, we've got to look to each other. Of course, if I am Michael Jordan, I've got to learn what is my teammate's strength and how can I pass to him and capitalize on that as well. And so there's something there there was something in that zone that that was interesting to me as well. Yeah, and regarding it as sacred. Yes. And not not as something kind of just merely earthly. Yeah, actually is it is an interesting thing to play back into the culture. And this idea of team before self is sacred, is profound, is spiritual. And you know, maybe we can maybe we'll have some athletes on at some point where we where we hear them reflect on a lot of these buzzwords of athletics, maybe in a spiritual way. So more to come. More to come. I love it. [Music]