PepsiCo Inc.

CEO LeadershipTraits, Behaviors, and Operational Style(s)      Indra Nooyi’sis a highly intelligent leader that leads with emotional intelligence wheninteracting in all business operations. She believes in not trying to pretendto be American, but to stay true to her personal belief in being moral andethically considerate of others. CEO Indra Nooyi is loyal to her organizationand highly respectful to leadership. She exudes confidence, integrity, andtrust that makes engaging in developing valuable relationship easy to establishand maintain. She respects authority and demands that others return the same.On the basis of the leadership grid, CEO Indra Nooyi is definitely a teamplayer and manager. She had established credibility throughout the world as aleader and follower in so many positions that she has held successfully anddesires that her organizational members will continue to follower herleadership in that manner.

      Her ability to strategicallythink and implement plans that will be beneficial to herself, the employees,investors, and the company’s consumers. She is highly motivated, humble,trustworthy, nonbiased, determined, hardworking, and has a keen ability toresolve conflicts in any situation. She has grown from a modest upbringing tothe third highest paid Chief Executive Officer in the country.

Her businessacumen has earned her approximately eight honorary doctorate degrees across thenation, a medal of honor, the CNN India award, and an award from the PadmaBhushan Indian award, which was awarded by the president of India.Organizational Circumstance:Indra Nooyi in the News      What hascurrently gotten the Chief Executive Officer, Indra Nooyi into the news of the WallStreet Journal once again, is her drive and determination. In a recentarticle published in May 2017, Female CEOs earned more capital than their malecounterparts. Out of the top ten highest paid S&P 500 companies, the firstthree top earners were women Chief Executive Officers (Lublin, 2017).

Indra K.Nooyi was among those that achieve this success for the first time in the WallStreet Journal compensation report in its twenty-eight year history. Although approximately 5 percent of the position of CEO in S&P companies areheld by females. While being outnumbered by 95 percent, Indra Nooyi, earned25.2 million in compensation, which landed her in the number three position fortop female executive earner in an S&P 500 company in 2016, up 13 percentfrom the previous year (Lublin, 2017).      Indra became PepsiCo Inc.’s CEOin 2006. During her first six year tenure as the organization’s top leader, shehad done a pretty decent job ensuring that PepsiCo’s numbers were steadilyincreasing since she took over (Colvin, 2012).

Even though the organization’snumbers looked good statistically, he investors of the company were givingIndra a great deal of heat. Because she was taking such a hit, she decided tomeet with the company’s top shareholders to see exactly what they were notpleased with the company’s performance. PepsiCo had experienced growth, hadpaid attractive returns to their shareholders, and had earned high-profitmargins during this period of time under the direction of her leadership. Withall of the heat that also came from the media and the Wall Street Analysts, itwas a time in Indra’s career that she resented (Colvin, 2012).

      PepsiCo’s CEO was in the processof transforming the organization from what she called a “North Americanfun-for-you company” into a globally recognized food and beverage giant thatshe felt could prosper the world (Clovin, 2012). During this phase in thecompany, this was a time where the nation was experiencing an increase inobesity, where the condition was making it way to being the number one healthissue not only in America but worldwide. Indra Nooyi thought that the abrasionthat she was receiving from their shareholders had to be one of the mostdifficult times she’s had to experience. Even in the midst of the transition,the company was delivering in the financial realm, but all in all, it seemed asthough the company was experiencing trouble.

       What PepsiCo was experiencingwas gradual growth that the shareholders were not accustomed to. Prior to IndraNooyi taking over the company, previous leaders would make unfavorable boldchanges that went against popular belief that just happens to be what thecompany needed at the time the changes were made. The shareholders were used toseeing the statistical numbers soar instantaneously.

When Indra took over, shedid deliver steady growth each year, but it was not what the investors wereused to seeing. For example, when PepsiCo acquired Frito-Lays the investors sawexponential increase immediately (Clovin, 2012). Indra Nooyi’s strategy wasworking in the way that she envisioned it to work. She desired to transitionthe company into an uncommon, but much needed direction and yet maintain thesteady profit margin increase simultaneously. Though the organization resultsreflected a positive outcome, the company’s investor’s patience had grown shortand they wanted to see Indra moved out of the top leadership portion. Herpredecessor was the only one that could understand her position and up untilthis point, he had chosen to remain silent.

He supported every decision Nooyihad made.      Remaining unmovable in herbelief and vision for PepsiCo in the midst of a situation that seemeddisparate, she knew that she had to work hard, long, and be more innovativewith the profitable result than her male counterparts. Indra recalled leavingthe investor’s meeting somewhat baffled because even though she had producedtremendous results for the organization, it still was not good enough. The WallStreet Journal Analysts had published an article stating that Nooyi’sdecision not to separate the company’s food and beverage lines were a mistake(Clovin, 2013). Now that Indra has been the CEO of this organization forover ten years, she has not fallen short of aggressively implementing her visionfor the company which is attributed to 63 billion dollars in revenue increasein 2016 for PepsiCo Inc. This is in comparison to the 40 billion dollars thatthe publicly traded company experienced in the first year of her take over in2007 (Snyder, 2016).Leader, Follower, andSituational (LSF) Framework      Indra Nooyi’svision was to address one the largest health issue in the world, which isobesity.

When she took over the organization as the CEO, she desired topositively attack this concern that the Obama Administration had expressed, aswell as find PepsiCo Inc.’ place in globalization. Because Mrs.

Nooyiunderstood that snack foods and soft drinks do not receive the best mediaattention in the world due to the increase of obesity globally, her vision whatto refrain from splitting of the world largest food and beverage company. Shewanted to implement more healthy food options into the organization’s alreadyextensive product line in order to take into considering what our Nationalleaders desired for the health of our country (Snyder, 2016). From all of theaforementioned positions that CEO Indra Nooyi had the opportunity to serve in,she is no stranger to following those that are appointed over her, to includethe President of the United States.      She has always been arespectable follower. Some of her managerial behaviors come from being true toherself and trusting what she believes in. As a leader that is responsible formaking strategic decisions that affect herself, staff, shareholders, stockholders,and the customer as the end user of PepsiCo’s products, she makes it a point tonever forget that she is still a consumer (Snyder, 2017). She makes investmentsin the company’s portfolio by being a lifelong student, one that always putsherself in the position to learn more.

Finding the right balance between shortand long-term goals means that all things do not always get her attention, butmy implementing a balance between short and long initiatives, she has todistribute the right amount of energy to by prioritizing her affairs. Indra iscareful to conserve the personal affairs of the organization versusbroadcasting controversial media. She attributes this ability to theconservative upbringing in which she was raised (Snyder, 2017).      One of the hardest times thatIndra Nooyi had to endure in PepsiCo Inc. is when she had to go against themajority decision and stick with her strategic plan and vision.

By trusting thevision that she had for the company, she understood that she could not play niceto appease her colleagues. That meant, she had to choose to deliver some hard”Nos” over some easy “Yeses.” Indra overrode conventional thinking whileimplementing the new direction for PepsiCo (Snyder, 2017).

She explained, thatthere were times that she made decisions on the basis of trying to please thestaff members that had been with the organization for many years. In expandingPepsiCo Inc. into its global dynasty, she had to get to the point where she hadto break ties with the past in the company and embrace the new way ofthinking.

Mrs. Nooyi had the challenge of changing the members and investor’sold ways of thinking, in order to break down the wall of hindrances that keptthe company from being exceedingly great (Snyder, 2017).      Now Indra Nooyi exudes withconfidence at the age of 59. She has fallen in love with her organization andthe products that they have to offer to the world. She incorporated her designthinking into a successful business strategy, which proved to her staff membersand investors that she had the company’s best interest in mind (Ignatius,2015). At this point, she knew that she had every team member’s attention andthat they were ready to follow her into a competitive battle in the food andbeverage industry. (Ignatius, 2015). By learning how to follow leadership, suchas President Donald Trump and former President Barrack Obama, she knew theimportance of being a follower despite whether or not she agrees with all oftheir views (Kell, 2016).

This is one of the reasons she became one of the onlythree third executive female leaders that was invited to attend a businessforum with the new administration. She accepted the invitation to show theleaders at her company that leaders should know how to come together to achievethe greater cause in any situation (Kell, 2016).      In role theory, the situationalfactors affect the leader’s behavior (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2015).

Although Nooyi, had to endure the period where her investors and staff memberswere not supportive of her abilities to run PepsiCo Inc. with the vision shehad for the organization, she stayed true to herself and trusted her ownability. This proved to be a success instead of her stance becoming her publicdemise. In 2007, Indra’s ability to successfully lead PepsiCo Inc.

was evidentin the company’s performance and financial reports. Her behavior during thissituation was very conservative, but it causes her to put in long demandinghours in order to get the team members to trust her abilities. CEO Nooyi has ahistory of being ethical in business, which has contributed to the ethicalclimate in the company (Hughes, et.al, 2015). She places the ability tocommunicate effectively exceedingly high, and the CEO attributes her ability tocommunicate to winning so many of the company’s acquisitions through herstrategic ability to think and negotiate effectively. Because of her ethicalcharacter, her organization wholeheartedly respects her decisions and abilityto lead the company in the midst of globalization as it continues to succeed asone of the world’s largest food and beverage companies in the industry.My advice for the Indra Nooyi      To give advice to such aninspirational leader as Indra Nooyi is unimaginable! If I did have theopportunity to offer my advice to the CEO of PepsiCo, I would recommend thatshe continue to hold fast to her belief of being herself.

In the face ofadversity when most of the investors of the organization wanted to split thecompany, Indra was one of two people in the company who thought that the ideawas a horrible idea at the time. She remained fixed on her vision of keepingthe beverage and food company under one umbrella, as well as pursuing hermission of taking PepsiCo Inc. into a new direction. I would advise Indra Nooyito continue on innovating and dominating the food and beverage industry.      In a time where the world wasnot focused on healthier snack options, she refused the let the vision diedespite the odds that were against her. I would also advise her to seek out thepotential employees that could possibly be in the position that she use to bein when her co-workers did not believe in her abilities.

Groom theseindividuals to carry PepsiCo. Into the company’s next phase of innovation byallowing them opportunities to be coached by such an amazing leader, that sheis. Although Indra has soared to heights and achieve things that only somebusiness leaders can only dream of. I would advise her to always be willing tobe as honest and down to earth, as she is today, by continually taking the timeout of her hectic schedule to share her story in order to inspire the world,especially women in the workplace.