Welcome the whole self

REID HOFFMAN:
Welcome back to the Culture Commitment. You’re building momentum! So take a moment to shut down your peripheral tasks. For these next 10 minutes, let’s be here together.

So far, we’ve talked about culture as a way to get your people working at their best. When your culture is healthy, you’re creating the conditions for employees to thrive.

But there are other factors that also affect whether employees thrive… and they fall outside your control. Because every employee – every leader too – is a whole person, apart from their job.

That probably isn’t news. And yet, even the best cultures can fall short when it comes to work/life balance. Cultures where people really care about their work can develop a relentless pace that discourages taking time off. Or they might so prioritize open communication that the steady stream of messages and emails never really slows down.

Every leader needs reminding from time to time that their teams are whole people, with identities and responsibilities not listed on the org chart. And the best leaders not only remember this, but find unique ways to celebrate it, as you’ll hear in this story from Indra Nooyi.

As longtime former CEO and chair of PepsiCo, Indra made it her mission to shape the company into a workplace where employees could thrive. To do that, she had to model this culture herself. Our story starts in 2001, when PepsiCo was acquiring the legacy food brand Quaker Oats. Indra remembers getting a phone call from Pepsi’s CEO, Steve Reinemund. Let’s listen.

INDRA NOOYI:
I was working on the Quaker Oats transaction, and there was a lot of work to do. It was like 9:30 or 10 in the night, and Steve calls me and says, "Indra, I just want you to know that we're making you president of the company. And on top of that, we're going to put you on the board of directors.”

HOFFMAN:
Indra was overwhelmed. And she couldn’t wait to tell her family.

NOOYI:
I drive home about 10 at night, I pull into the house, I can see that my husband's car is already there. I opened the door, and there's my mother waiting at the top of the stairs in the kitchen. She goes, "I need you to go out and get milk." I said, "But I have big news for you." She said, "The news is going to have to wait, just go get the milk."

HOFFMAN:
Indra knew better than to argue with her mother. So she went back out to the store, her big news still swirling and came back home with milk.

NOOYI:
I put the milk on the counter, and I said to her, "Mom, you could have had my husband pick up the milk.” She said, "Well, he came in at eight o'clock and he looked tired, so I didn't ask him." I said, "Okay, I just wanted you to know I had big news to share with you. I'm being made president, and being put on the board of directors." And she said, "I don't care if you're going to be president, or chairman, or whatever you're going to be. When you walk into this house, when you pull into this garage, you're the wife, the mother, the daughter, the daughter-in-law. That's the most important role you can play. So for heaven's sake, leave the crown in the garage."

She was right. But I don't think she would have said that to my husband.

HOFFMAN:
Indra was observing a phenomenon so many women – and some men – listening will find familiar. As a wife, mother, daughter, and daughter-in-law, she was expected to take off her work hat – or, crown – and leave it in the garage.

But at work the next day, Indra would be expected to leave her wife, mother, daughter, and daughter-in-law hat at the door as well. And she wasn’t alone – but it sort of felt that way.

NOOYI:
I came into the workforce when there were hardly any women. At BCG, at Motorola, at ABB. I was in meetings where I might have been the only woman. I didn't have a woman mentor. I worked around very few women, so it was a very different time. As the years passed, as I came into PepsiCo, I started to see more women. But I didn't see them ascend to senior levels. Brenda Barnes, who was at that time head of PepsiCo North America, decided to leave to go spend time with her kids. So, here was the highest-ranking woman in PepsiCo along with me, leaving the company to go and spend time with her family. We have made family a source of stress as opposed to strength.

HOFFMAN:
This observation – that family could be a source of strength, instead of a source of stress – would be central to how Indra would lead PepsiCo when she became the CEO.

NOOYI:
When I took over as CEO of PepsiCo, I realized that I was being given an incredible opportunity to shape an iconic company. I also knew that for big iconic companies to remain successful, we needed the best and brightest talent, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, orientation. PepsiCo takes talent very, very seriously. Talent development, talent management, making sure that young people can balance family and work, because we look at this as something that's important for every country in which we operate in. So, we have a lot of family-friendly policies, whether it's flexible work hours, whether it's Friday afternoons off in the summer, come to work early on the other days, onsite or near-site childcare, maternity/paternity care, adoption, time off. So, we really have a menu of benefits that we put in place to make sure that we allow the best and brightest to come and contribute to our company.

HOFFMAN:
Indra leaned in to making these benefits even more robust. For example, she oversaw the creation of on-site childcare at PepsiCo offices. And family-friendly policies are just one way to celebrate your team’s full selves. You could also invest in continuing education and upskilling programs. Or offer “studio days” for employees to pursue passion projects or volunteer at non-profits.

These policies are powerful ways to communicate your culture to your team.

What Indra wanted to communicate was, “We see you as more than a cog in our machine. We see you as a full person. And we know how hard you work.”

NOOYI:
It's a youthful company, it's a fun company, but it's also a demanding company. Our performance standards are high, and people work extraordinarily long hours in the service of the company whether it’s traveling, being in the field, hours away from their families, hours away from their parents. As a leadership team, we all knew each other as people. And they would talk to me about their families. They would talk to me about their spouses, their kids. So I knew everybody's family exceedingly well.

HOFFMAN:
For Indra, it was natural to know all about her team’s families. But she took this one step further.

NOOYI:
Steve Reinemund would write letters to spouses and thank them when any milestone was achieved. But there was one particular incident where I went back to India after I became CEO and anybody who came to visit us, and a lot of people came to visit us, they'd walk up to my mother and say, "You should be so proud. You brought up this kid. It’s because of you that she is who she is, and congratulations, and kudos to you." I thought about this and said, "Wait a minute, I have never thanked the parents of my executives who gave me these extraordinary leaders that's made the company successful, that's making me successful.”

HOFFMAN:
Indra got an idea. She was going to write individualized, personal letters to the parents of her executives. And in some cases, she was going to visit and deliver the letters in person.

NOOYI:
I wrote letters to I think the parents of about 400 executives and met maybe 20 executives' parents in person. Parents loved it. In fact, many parents framed it and put it in their homes. One person said to me that they live in an apartment building. His father made a hundred copies of the letters, stood on the ground floor of the building, and anybody who walked in and said, "I want you to read this letter. This is from the chairman about my son."

HOFFMAN:
It was a genius idea that forged a deep relationship with employees. But it also gave Indra a secret advantage.

NOOYI:
It led to a wonderful relationship between parents and me. So if the executive went home and said anything negative about me, it was, "Uh-uh, she's my friend. Don't even bother." So it created a beautiful relationship between me and the families of my executives.

HOFFMAN:
Indra’s approach might have been unusual, but it was certainly authentic. In reaching out to her executive team’s parents, she was communicating to them that she saw them as whole people, with rich lives outside the company.

NOOYI:
When you come into PepsiCo, you can bring your whole self with you. We're going to create an environment where you can be a mother, or father, or sister, or brother, or a citizen of the community, and be an employee of PepsiCo. Because we'll help you find a way to balance it all.

HOFFMAN:
What I want you to notice in Indra’s story is how she didn’t just talk about team members bringing their full selves to work. She built systems that helped them do it. She even found ways to bond with employees’ parents!

Indra did more than acknowledge her employees as whole people. She celebrated them for it.

Now, to help you build the mindset of welcoming the whole self at work, let’s move to today's action item. It's simple. It's fun, and you can try it out at your next team meeting. It’s called “The opening question.”

This is a tactic used frequently by the team behind Masters of Scale. Here’s how it works: At your next weekly team meeting, pose a question that everyone answers in chat. I’m assuming, of course, that your team meetings are held over a video call that has chat. Then whomever is leading that week’s conversation – maybe it’s you – picks a few responses from the chat to highlight and discuss.

The questions themselves can be simple, like: “What was one highllight from your weekend?” or “How do you know it’s summer?” Or they could be related to your business.

These questions sometimes stimulate freewheeling discussions that turn into great ideas.

But the point of this action item is for everyone on the team to recognize and celebrate each other’s individual humanity. Every person you work with has a life outside the office walls or behind their Zoom backgrounds. Posing a weekly question is a practice that reinforces that one, delightful fact.

Need to come back and revisit that exercise? Look for an email from us with a recap of today’s Daily Practice and Action Item. Circle back to it anytime you need some inspiration.

Tomorrow on the Culture Commitment we’ll be talking about what happens when your culture turns sour, and what you can do to sweeten it. See you next time.