Kool-Logic: Performance with a Purpose

When she talks… Everybody listens.

She has a record to warrant it.

“If she gets an idea, she goes after it. There’s no stopping her.”

No, she doesn’t drink the others’ Kool-Aid, she has her own Kool-Logic: Performance with a Purpose.

“You give a team of people a set of objectives and goals and get them all to buy into it, and they can move mountains.”

According to BusinessWeek, since she started as CFO in 2000, the company’s annual revenues have risen 72%, while net profit more than doubled, to $5.6 billion in 2006.

So when Indra speaks….  everybody better listen.

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Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi, Fieldmarshal Rational, (Tamil: இந்திரா நூயி) (born 28 October 1955) is an Indian-American business executive and the current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo, the second largest food and beverage business in the world by net revenue.  According to Forbes, she is consistently ranked among World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. [Wikipedia]

She is a natural leader by Temperament.

Fieldmarshals are bound to lead others, and from an early age they can be observed taking command of groups. In some cases, they simply find themselves in charge of groups, and are mystified as to how this happened. But the reason is that they have a strong natural urge to give structure and direction wherever they are – to harness people in the field and to direct them to achieve distant goals. They resemble Supervisors in their tendency to establish plans for a task, enterprise, or organization, but Fieldmarshals search more for policy and goals than for regulations and procedures.

They cannot not build organizations, and cannot not push to implement their goals. When in charge of an organization, whether in the military, business, education, or government, Fieldmarshals more than any other type desire (and generally have the ability) to visualize where the organization is going, and they seem able to communicate that vision to others. Their organizational and coordinating skills tends to be highly developed, which means that they are likely to be good at systematizing, ordering priorities, generalizing, summarizing, marshaling evidence, and at demonstrating their ideas. [Please Understand Me II]

She received a Bachelor’s degree in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics from Madras Christian College in 1974 and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta in 1976.  Having worked for Johnson & Johnson and Mettur Beardsell in India, she convinced her parents to let her go to America to attend Yale University. She was admitted to Yale School of Management in 1978 and earned a Master’s degree in Public and Private Management.  In the US, Nooyi had summer internship with Booz Allen Hamilton,  worked Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and then held strategy positions at Motorola and Asea Brown Boveri. In 1994 she joined Pepsico, appointed to CFO in 2000, CEO in 2006.

She was just recently awarded the John Wooden Global Leadership Award for 2012.

‘As early as the mid-1990s, while serving as chief strategist of PepsiCo, Nooyi saw consumers turning to more nutritious products. In response, she spearheaded the acquisition of Quaker Oats Co., giving Pepsi a heavyweight sports drink (Gatorade) and recognizable health foods like Quaker oatmeal. Later, she purchased Tropicana so that Pepsi could add a prominent fruit juice to its lineup. Meanwhile, she convinced executives at Pepsi to abandon their foray into fast food by selling Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. As a result of Nooyi’s efforts, by 2006 only 20% of Pepsi’s sales came from soft drinks compared to 80% for rival Coca-Cola.’

Performance with a Purpose

Watch Indra have a smack-down with the Inspector Guardian, Warren Buffet.  Notice, she gets in the last word: strategy.

As a leader, I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however, I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future.  — Indra Nooyi

10 thoughts on “Kool-Logic: Performance with a Purpose”

  1. Good article but what chances would Indra Nooyi have to be identified as a Rational Fieldmarshal if she weren’t in a position of power?

    1. Not unless you knew her personally.  The interesting thing about Coordinating Rationals (NTJ’s), that Fieldmarshals are less likely to be get to the top, because they are more impatient than the Masterminds.  Once they see a block from above, Fieldmarshals will move to another organization, diminishing their chances to get to the top spot.  The Masterminds are statistically the most significant type for top leadership (their type is rare, but a signficant number of CEO’s are Masterminds.)  Of course, Supervisor Guardians dominant by their sheer numbers.

      1. I wasn’t informed about this statistic. In fact is a surprising since Fieldmarshals(ENTJs) are the temperaments most driven to lead. But my question is about how likely would be a person to be identified as one of the 16 role variants if he/she does an activity that is not likely for that role variant(a CEO or General to be identified as a Composer(ISFP), an artist to be identified as a Fieldmarshal(ENTJ), a firefighter to be identified as a Counselor(INFJ), etc).

        1. Very few people know Temperament, so 99% have no idea /therefore will not be “identified” as a particular type. The MBTI labels are even worse, most can’t remember their letters, and a few have announced to me as being ESPNs  — that does alot of people good 😉  The Indicator and the Sorter are on the average 75% correct, which means the 1 in 4 are incorrect.   And yes many people do tend to think they should be what others think (there is a paradox here) they should be.  The vast majority are clueless, they naturally assume *everybody* is like them, whatever THAT is.  Typing can be difficult.  Take two “artists” Paul Gauguin and Vincient Van Gogh.  If one does a little homework, Gaugain can be readily “identified” as a Composer Artisan.  Van Gogh is a bit harder, but if you know about the man enough (like his life story), it becomes fairly evident he was a Healer Idealist.It must be noted that we don’t use the Myers-Briggs letters for our analysis.  Keirsey Temperament and MBTI types correlate but they have a different theoretical basis. 

        2. But to answer your question directly “how likely would be a person to be identified as one of the 16 role variants if he/she does an activity that is not likely for that role variant?” — I have no precise idea on that.  Remember, there are Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.  I won’t lie to you 😉

        3. I know personally a professional Volleyball player who is a Fieldmarshal Rational.  Jack Kemp was a professional football quarterback, and he was a Fieldmarshal Rational.  Jean Jacque Rosseau, Composer Artisan, was a “philosopher.”  Temperaments can be in domain not conducive to their type, the frequency is the question.  I know Idealists are found in the darnest occupations, they have no right to be in, but they seem to manage and sometimes survive very well, thank you.

  2. Aren’t Idealists inclined to the arts?

    I don’t get why it’s almost exclusive to the Artisans as their dominating field.

    My impression is that Idealists are into “imaginative arts”(film, theater, acting, some music, etc.) while the Artisans mostly pursue “concrete arts”(painting, pottery, jewelry, etc.) although I’m sure both of these two tend to overlap each other.

    This is something that puzzles me – that Keirsey didn’t seem to give the Idealists credit as being artists/visionaries in one way or another.

  3. That comment above is supposed to follow the posts that talk about temperaments being in positions they’re not naturally suited for.

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