Indra Nooyi's 'My life in Full'

 As someone who I've been following for a long time and been inspired by, and also being at this juncture of having to commit more to a family role while still not feeling like I've figured out a career, I was really looking forward to Indra Nooyi's book. I was looking for learning and inspiration.

If I have to get a net-net summary from this book so far.

1. Not confirming to what the society expects of you all the time and excelling in what you shine at. 
2. Hard work and intellectual acumen. 

3. Throwing oneself into solutions and results. 

4. Not judging the product you work for or the timings and effort you put in. Highest degree of work commitment and ethics. 

5. Coping mechanisms for family time.

6. A good support system - within family and out.

7. Cultural barriers and learning culture.

8. Paying loans, buying houses.

9. Maternity leave, care for family, self care.

10. Pay equity.

11. Success / Popularity and the distance it creates with people. Some people who will stay connected anyway. 

12. Communication.

13. Curveballs.

14. Rebranding a company that is perceived differently from the strategy it's leading. (A lot of people still think Yahoo is about email and I could relate to how Pepsi being compared with Coke was limiting what Pepsi was).

15. The challenge of keeping shareholders happy by increasing revenue with an old strategy while continuing to move the needle forward with new strategy.

16. Performance with purpose - how difficult it is to combine ethics/values to products. Nourish. Cherish. 

17. Perceptions should not run the company - the challenge of dealing with the pulls from people on the board and shareholders.

18. Design thinking with Steve Jobs. How products looked and where they were placed.

19. Spinning off and buying back - bottling. The importance of control

20. Great communication - brain and heart.

21. International brands and strategy. Traveling to China to understand how families functioned and how food was consumed.

22. Food science and Mehmood.

23. IT strategy - taking 2 months to understand the spend before going ahead. To know why you say Yes.

24. The challenges women face that all of us know about. 

25. The support a decent husband brings not only to the success of a woman but also the society. 

26. How shareholders think they can inform and influence the policies of a company and how it is important to be tactful at doing what's right for the company.

27. The importance of firing and hiring. 

Chapters 1 & 2 - The Indian story:

It's been a few hours since the book got delivered and I've read 2 chapters. I was really looking forward to her ideas for the future and steps towards balancing family and I'm sure I'll get there in later chapters. For now, it's important that she has discussed her roots so one can understand what about her roots were important in her becoming who she was.

There were parts about her life that were unique to her upbringing, some parts that I could easily relate to, and parts about her life I wish I could emulate.

The uniquely-her parts:

- She explicitly states her Brahmin upbringing in a joint family in a two storey house that her grandpa built, a structure of control, discipline, focus on education, a grandpa who made her read the newspaper, a men's hall , a women's hall, how her mom did the accounting and was focused on getting the food , the coffee across the family and the belongings saved for her two daughters' marriages. How her mom was not given an education but would have made a great CEO just by how she ran the family and politics. Although this constant branding of a flawed caste system irks me usually, for this book, I decided to put that aside and just observe what it is that's handed over culturally that works well for this brand. 

- She also makes a point about how even though Brahmin women were often very well educated, when it came to actually seeking jobs and excelling at it, they were often limited by conservative familial beliefs as compared to their Anglo Indian and other counterparts. 

- People walked in and out of her house to the main swing - and there were discussions going on always - about politics and society. 

- She had great mentors and she was often the only woman when she proceeded for higher education. Her mentors were introduced to the family - the nuns from school, her boss - they all visited her family and they had coffee and were connected to her parents/ grand-parents.

- She had a garden where she climbed trees.

- She came up in the Indira Gandhi era, who I've read about but did not quite live in that period. And she notes how that really changed the game for women in post-freedom India. 

- She was part of a debating team in school and then at MCC and that was a great experience in her life.

- She also mentions how her dad gave the entire salary to her mom so she could run the essentials of the family. And how when she started earning, she did the same, giving most of her earnings to her mom to take care of expenses. Her mom was someone who was very tight and disciplined in saving and the combination of this partnership seemed great - not something that would work if both parties did not handle it as responsibly as they seem to have. 

- Her emphasis on family. I feel this was a living breathing thing until mom was alive and something I've not had a chance to build, but there's hope to turn things around. I have my own family, my child(ren) for whom I can learn to be social. And my birth family with whom I can always make new happy memories.

The parts I could identify with

- She also studied in a Catholic Girls school with anglo Indian teachers and nuns. The quality of education and communication and the exposure from these schools was well emphasized. Having studied in three schools, I do recognize the difference schooling/culture makes. 

- She too , came from a very controlling structure and so freedom meant a lot. The balance of the discipline and freedom - the push , the pull and the balance between the two was important in defining her life.

- The reference to buying uniforms at certain times, a simple life, few loose clothes etc, the need to rent out the second storey for passive income and accounting - these are all traits that I can somehow identify with, if not directly from my early life with a full family, atleast later on when I was transitioning to minding my own self. My brother and mother were both great at accounting and that too was an influence on me.

- She grew up listening to music - both Indian classical and English, took those occasional carnatic classes and had to fight outdated views of what it meant to learn a guitar in a conservative family. I remember how I was embarrassed when I first found a guitar teacher in 11th and then willingly gave up the class to avoid further hostility towards the teacher. I also remember in college when I was finally free to do extra curricular, some of the narrow minded comments I was getting but glad I did not have to pay heed to it. 

- She was curious, wanted to learn, travel.

- Her grandad made me think of my grandad.

- She said how she was surprised that the government even after all these years has not done anything about stopping brain drain. To me , it also seemed like she had access to a progressive microcosm, but after all these years those segments are still microcosms, not an India-wide reality.

The parts I wish I could have emulated

- I wish I was in Madras driving around in a car with a sibling and experiencing the melting pot that Madras was. The British history and the very own South Indian culture was an interesting mix to experience which I often felt I did not get enough of, even though I studied and lived my childhood there before Madras became Chennai. I wish I was free to experience the British council, the woodlands hotel and the arts and friends more - on my own. I wish I studied in one of the art school there like an MCC that she did, which again was a good mix of quality education, exposure and extra-curriculum.

- The part of her life that really stood out was really, REALLY the hard work and explorations - and her ability to take up challenges of various natures and just open herself to problem-solving and learning to be street-smart. She applied to IIM and Yale and was often having her ears and eyes open to the right opps. She interned early in her career in some of the tough roles, fully giving herself. In sales, marketing,  traveling to shops, selling clothes, selling sanitary napkins, understanding manufacturing. And in IIM learning good quants, and supply chain and all the fundamentals. All of this was truly foundational - traveling in the nights, walking in the road - in the monsoon drenched clothes and just developing the grit/confidence to face anything.

- Debate clubs, trying to be the best /topper , attending conferences / nation-wide science contests.

- I want a bustling , encouraging home for my child, one that fosters creativity and thinking. Love for education to be very important and a focus on trying to excel. I want to be social, as well as foster discipline early in terms of focus.

Chapter 3 - USA

There were so many parts I could identify with here. How the real college students from here were so different from immigrants. They dressed different, partied different, ski'd and socialized differently. So even though you are not rejected, you are not exactly the same. Also you had a loan and lived very cheaply not really affording the social life and proper clothes. She spoke about how she interviewed with a loose suit that she could not afford and was encouraged to wear the saree she was comfortable with and did just fine. She joined Booz Hamilton and the men mentored her well. 

She met her husband there and they decided on living together without really dating. And their marriage was a budget-restricted 1 hour ceremony in the basement with limited guests and nothing much they could spend more on. All of this felt very familiar while reading. In fact , the wedding I fuss about feels grand knowing the Indra Nooyi herself had adjusted to simplicity so well.

Did not socialize much. Did not know anybody. Were not invited - longest entertainment for the smallest money. 

Here are parts I wish I can learn:

She also learnt about sports outside of all the great knowledge and practical lessons she learnt from solving cases at Yale. I've always felt out of place when baseball was discussed and I still feel like this is something I need to learn culturally, like Indra wisely did. 

At Yale she learnt from the best - microeconomics, strategy, how private , public and NGOs partnered. Network of classmates who had incredible careers. 

Chapter 4 - Management Consulting at BCG

- What are the value drivers of the business?
- How might they change?
- Strategic options to create value over time?
- Investments
- Organize oneself?

growth share matrix - cows, dogs, stars and question marks.

intellectual honesty

politics

Loss of sleep

Teaching ourselves and each other

Complex modeling

focus groups

cost and benefits

tiers of service / pricing

marketing plan

consumer analysis

revenue and profitability

Intellectual high and Physical Low

She traveled the world solving problems across orange processing, artificial sweeteners, tissues - studied patents, partnered with researches and learnt about every product/ company she consulted for.

She traveled so much with her luggage , she misaligned her shoulder. She even worked in the weekends crunching numbers after the week long traveling. 

She still sent some money back home every month - a $100

Both husband and her worked hard, budgeted and met like they have not talked in ages.

Live concerts. Yankees.

The lows and the family support, the job.

While doing all this , she and her sister paid for their younger brother's loans, and her dad needed surgery which was revealed late - at a time when phone calls were costly and there was no such thing as video call.

Paid family leave care to care for her dad in the US, where she returned in 3 months when she was given 6. Her dad died at this time shortly after she became pregnanct. Her brother and sister visited and they stayed closely knit as a family. They put their house on the market and moved to an apartment where her mom could walk to the stores and she was closer to work. She consulted while she coped with morning sickness, and the company she consulted for changed their menus to cater to her, and flew in employees to the final presentation so she did not have to travel elsewhere. She went to labor 1 hour away from the hospital , at -15 Celcius. She had friends and community who helped and stepped in during these situations.

3 months maternity leave with mom to back up. And then relatives/family support. Stopped feeding at 3 months. missed first steps, missed first words. 

Car crash. Reassess priorities.

Mentorship. Loyalty.

Chapter 5 - Motorola

Mom returned to Madras. Relatives who did not believe in the dual role that the earning woman had to play of feeding etc. Community. Montessori. 

Trusted care.

Closer to home

Recruiting teachers to stay up to date on businesses.

Gerhard - tough - mentor

Mentorship.

Innovation. 

Not thinking about money but wanted to see results.

Impatience - vice or virtue.

Learnt to speak with tack instead of throwing grenades.

Anxiety and frustration at work, but child time, shared dinners, trees grew.

Husband happy with his job.

ABB offer - move to Connecticut again? - better schools, wife's career fulfillment.

Raj decided to stay back. 

I stopped taking notes after this, but somethings that stay on my mind was her resilience and grit, her drive and it makes me wonder if she had enough of a work-life balance and what defined her drive.

Challenges with bringing up children and how she found systems around it.

So many adversities.

Her extensive traveling and work from morning to night.

She also spoke about bullying at her daughter's school.

She also spoke about how folks that knew her sometimes distanced away from her when she became popular.

That media would write controversial headlines even though she had a PR team. 

Last few chapters : 

How she was driven by purpose with whatever she did from sanitary napkins to Pepsi. 

Her experience in Africa with young girls who have been through too much and all they wanted was a hug , the experience of apartheid and nelson Mandela remembrance. 

Her experience networking with women and the subtle suggestion that to actually move the needle for women , it needs to happen at workplaces. The conferences meanwhile are good to keep the conversation going but may sometimes not be well attended. 

The mansplaining, the honeys and sweeties. The old man who she had to have useless meetings with who just repeated exactly the same thing she said. 

How she never retired. She was on so many boards. How her daughter came home during the lockdown and asked her mom how she thought she would relax during retirement but found her mom is always giving. And then soon enough her daughter took on her own projects helping first responders. How she did miss things like waving bye to children on their school bus, but also lived a life was meaningful with all the sacrifices.

I love the fact that she says it as it is. The good With the bad.

Her love for sports. The presence of golf clubs exclusively for men. How her husband just plainly refused to be a part of an elite golf club when it was not allowing women in it.