Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo Chairman and CEO & Doug McMillon, Walmart President and CEO

Let's see, good afternoon at Walmart, we tend to answer each other, in a little while we will have some time to talk, so please think about what you might want to ask us. I'm so excited, Indra, that you're here. Here I think: They told me I couldn't come back unless I brought you with me and I said I would come back only if you were going to come back with me. I want to start with perhaps the most important question and that is. When you were in your college and playing cricket, what position did you play in college?

First of all, do you know what cricket is about? I don't, and it still won't make a difference. What I tell you. I'm not really very interested either, okay, go ahead, what position did you place here? I opened batting and bullying, does anyone know what that means, it's really cool, high leadership, high, actually, I think so, yes, look, I was the captain of the cricket team. That was my point: she is a leader. I have known Indra for a long time and I was thinking about what words I would use to describe her and some of them would be visionary, competitive, tenacious, supportive.

Indra makes things happen. She has natural leadership. characteristic that you have used not only to lead PepsiCo and in your previous roles, but also influenced Walmart greatly. I appreciate it, Doug, but let me congratulate you. Doug and I have known each other for a long time and I have always referred to Douglas, not just Doug McMillon. I've named him Doug McMillon Walton because he represents the best of Walmart, the values ​​of Walmart, and believe me, even though we are a generation apart in age. Doug's mistake, I'm not sure, is much bigger. I've learned a lot from Doug, the way he operates his great company and is repositioning himself, so I think this is a two-person Back-slapping Society and I'm its founding member, so as we think about what these people might be interested or benefit the most the first thing that comes to mind is change and I know your business well enough and I know what you are thinking well enough to know that you are facing a situation where the world is changing very dramatically people are changing the environment in which you operate is changing and you are trying to position PepsiCo for the future, so maybe let's start by talking about what you see that convinces you that PepsiCo needs to change and what is it?

What are you trying to achieve during your term? Well, there are so many questions, Néstor, than one, but let me try. I think today every company, CEO of every company, looks at the environment and the type of investor you expect. You are this duck that just swims through the water and in the past these ducks swam furiously underwater just to keep going. Now it's like you have an oar on steroids because the pace of change is enormous. that you have to row even faster just to make small movements and no one is going to give you a break and tell you that you can slow down or that you can stay in place for a while.

What is changing? I will talk about the food and beverage industry. because in some way our interests intersect there, all aspects of the business are changing what healthy food is is changing what people want to eat and drink is changing how products should be labeled it has not been defined there is no authority that defines it Supply chains are globalizing however, traceability and safety standards have not been established, there is an NGO in every corner, so there is someone who is calling our attention and we do not do things well, but then there is no standard at all.

We have to look at it in terms of what we need to do well in the future. The retail environment is changing, whether it's with the rise of Walmart in the '90s and 2000s or now with the hard drive and the rise of e-commerce, everything in the world is changing and then here in Silicon Valley, everyone The better and brighter people we want in our companies are being recruited by these startups, making it difficult for us to recruit the right talent to run our companies. I'm talking, I'm talking to all of you, so I think what's happening is we're facing unprecedented change in our business. models and we also have to globalize, but the world is a difficult place right now, we have economic volatility, macroeconomic crises in many places and political unrest, so I think that companies like ours really want to continue operating.

You almost have to change your model all the time and you know Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum talks about this and says you always have to be in beta, it sounds wonderful as a set of words, but when you actually have to practice. In the company it is quite scary because it does not motivate a small group of new companies or a small group of employees who think the same as you, we have 260,000 employees and when you decide to do a kind of zigzag you have to tell them. What are you going to do, why are you doing it, how is it going to impact them and why does everyone have to come along with you on the given journey, let me give you examples of when we decided to change our product portfolio to go from a predominantly fun product line to you to include more, better for your good, for your products, different profitability, a very different product line, closer to agriculture, change the model of the company where our employees went, what is it doing, why do we have What to change We are doing quite well selling these products, why do we have to change?

But the leader's challenge is to look around the corner and make the change before it is too late. I remember in 2007 or 2008 I went to see the investors. and they looked at me and said why do you have to change your wallet? We're Americans, we'd like soda and chips, your job is to sell more soda and chips and I sat there and was amazed because every trend I was seeing indicated that the consumption of these categories was slowing down and I looked at the investment and I said: Have you changed your eating and drinking habits? and that person said yes, but forget me, I'm not your normal cotton consumer.

I said the problem is that many consumers are like you. You have changed your eating and drinking habits today that same investor tells me why you can't go faster why it is so slow to make a portfolio change it is because people like you carry the burden for me you didn't let me go faster because I always criticize what I was doing, but you know, that's the reality, so I think we're in a world of unprecedented change where companies, CEOs, the DNA of the company has to change and we all have to change at some point. in which short-termism abounds. everyone wants results today and you know the tolerance you have for making large scale change doesn't exist and I'm sure you're facing the same issues that have been discovered and I mean I see it in action at Walmart so tell them .

Tell me a little about what you're going through. I wanted to ask you the questions. Oh, I've had enough. I already have another one. I think it's very similar. I mean, you know where you are and you develop a vision of where you need to be. and trying to get from here to there is the hard part. I feel like the vision we have collectively is getting better all the time, but turning around and moving an organization that's over 50 years old and that was built for a purpose with 2.3 million people. It's a big part of the challenge and the last time I was here I admitted that I envy those who were going to start because you can write your culture on the wall or your values ​​on the board and you can go in whatever direction you go. creating something instead of changing something and changing something feels harder and then I told anyone who wants a big challenge to let me know when we're hiring you at Walmart.

A person called me to let me know that it is difficult and I think. that these people are smart enough to realize that, but let's learn mmm-hmm, you mentioned that you know you're looking at what you think the company should be you didn't get to this position knowing everything that Now you know how you can Learn as an individual and use the knowledge you are gaining to shape the future because, as you know, strategic planning cycles have disappeared, now your strategy is being shaped hourly, not yearly. The lesson I've learned, Doug, is that if you simply rely on the traditionalist strategic planning cycle or the standard dependent set of consulting reports, you're actually doing the company a disservice and our CEOs and leaders need to be students of for life and not just students.

In the sense of attending courses or reading a book or two, you should learn to read widely, explore the market, observe trends in the market, make connections that don't seem obvious, and start painting pictures of what the future could be, and then look at the consumer behavior. I'll give you an example from ten years ago or maybe 15 years ago, if you came to PepsiCo and looked at all the drinks that were served on the side tables when we had meetings, most people would do it. They consumed drinks with high sugar content about ten years ago, the trend changed.

I mean, maybe 20 years ago they drank high sugar drinks. Ten years ago they switched to diet drinks. Okay, but five years ago they drank more bottled water. Now, the point I would like to make. For my boys, isn't it? They don't need to hire a consultant to tell them where the trends are. You just have to look at our side table. Remember how many faces we used to have: a regular sugary Pepsi versus a diet Pepsi versus bottled water Now, if everyone drinks bottled water or zero-calorie drinks, why do we think we're not representative of the consumer very often?

I think what happens is that we separate the consumer from the consumer within, we are the consumer. and the more we can bring the two together and say that the two of us are representative of the external consumer, I think it would be better for us to go out and you know, our children play with other children, we see other families and when they moderate certain products that we sell. In terms of what kids are given, that's a trend, okay, so we have to look at all of these things and too often, I think as leaders, we think that what consultants tell us or what What certain reports or certain books say is the gospel, is actually not us.

We have to become our own data collectors, data analyzers and then shape creators and I think that's the hardest thing because the people who are rewriting the rules have to create the shapes and people don't like that because they have a model. traditional way of how things work and They hate people who have to disrupt the status quo and I think we're both disrupting the status quo greatly and you know it's hard but fun, sometimes it's hard to take off your business hat and be a customer or a consumer and I admit it when I'm working like yesterday I went to Palm Springs and visited a super center.

I put on and put on my Walmart badge and I walk into that store and I have a certain mindset the weekend I went shopping because we needed milk and some things at home and my vision of that is more than Walmart of course this is not stupid I mean, but I just experienced out of stock differently, everything you know felt different and I stayed objective and being in the moment is something I think I need to keep working on, whether in the example app or in the store. I did market tours every weekend for the first few years I was CEO.

I took pictures of what I saw in the store and downloaded them. my people and saying that their talks are here, this does not look good. I mean, I would probably go to marketers within a two three hour radius of my house and then I realized that every division in the US had some people waiting. office to get my emails responded to quickly and I thought it was a terrible way to run a company where the CEOs were on the market and you had a SWAT team sitting in the office waiting for the lousy photos to come in, so I stopped send the pictures, but I still do it.

The market does it and I organized it like you. I'm going why Gatorade is out of stock when it's 75 degrees and why we don't have a second delivery or why we don't. a second delivery or fried-lay products when we have a holiday weekend and now I'm learning to agonize internally and then throw myself at people on Monday, it's hard. I gotta tell you, you hate things, but you know when you do that, you really experience their business from the eyes of the consumers or the eyes of the retailer because I know how much they care about other people, so when I go to the Walmart in Norwalk or I look at this shelf and I see that there is no stock, I feel for you as I feel for me, if there is stock.

By the way, yes, let's talk about design for a minute. A month or two ago we were talking on the phone and you tried to take me to Italy. Your milk was in Milan, Milan Design Show, which seemed like a surprising invitation to me. Don't get invited to Milan too often, give me a mr. great wine tell me why you went and why you thought I should be tooThere, do you know anything about the Milan design fair just from what you told me on the phone? Okay, let me tell you, a few years ago we started a design. capacity within PepsiCo, what do I mean by design?

I have to tell you a little story before I introduce you to the design circuit when I first became CEO in 2006, when I looked at our products and after that packaging, I looked at how we put things on the shelf I thought they were singularly good and in some unimpressive cases and I thought we needed a pinch of Design Thinking in the company, so I gave all my direct reports, about 16 of them, a photo album, a blank photo album and a camera. and I said that for the next three months I want you to go around taking photographs of anything that you think constitutes design, anything could be a pencil, it could be a paper clip, it could be a teapot. anything, anything you want, just fill out this book for the next three months and give me a copy to give it to me so I know what the problems are that I have to deal with in terms of design thinking.

Here's the surprising finding that half the people didn't make. I didn't deliver the book at all. I have the executives, the few that did deliver it, some of them had their wives fill it out for them. Two executives hired a professional designer to fill out the book and told me they did, but the few that I actually filled out the book, I still have with me as a reminder of how bad we were. It was a horror because what they thought was designed was not what the design was, so now let me tell you what is designed for me.

Design is something that you incorporate into a product or service or offering that romance is the consumer and draws them to the shelf or the product or the service or whatever, it is how you think about the shape of the product, how it is presented, how it is talk about him. not just the color of the package, everything in terms of the experience that really appeals to the consumer and we never think about design that way, we think about it like the yellow on the Lay's bag, should we put an extra swirl of red or should we put an extra emoji on the Pepsi bottle, so our definition of design was very, I hate to use the word, but primitive and I was part of that group, so we all went to design school and learned everything about design, no in terms of the package. but even the design of the product, example: when you eat Doritos, how many of your Doritos consumers here?

I love it, so you know, when you eat Doritos, when you get to the bottom of the bag, a typical guy would take the bag of Doritos and just do this right because you kind of eat the crumbs in that way that women don't do. Women try to be very delicate by putting their hands and taking the last of the Doritos, but then you leave about five percent of the Doritos in the bag. That's fine, but because there are little crumbs that taste delicious, but in our package design, why? Why don't we come up with a product design for Doritos that is completely different than what a woman might put in a purse so it doesn't wrinkle and you In fact, I can eat it in a more delicate way, but until the last five percent I'm using the Doritos entry to solve real-world problems, right?

Doug is good, Doug, I have a Jenni, if I solve the problems you get more sales, so it's At the end of the day, it's a real world problem. I'm concerned about one thing: growing my sales at Walmart, but leaving that aside, so that's an example of how design thinking is carried through to the design of the product itself, and the other is when you think about a machine. food service in the past, you know, with the standard machines and now with the new Aspire machines that we have, which are slowly being rolled out, you can have almost 4500 variants, but the machine looks like a beautiful iPad, but even more or now in an aesthetic appearance. in a nice way and so you bring design into an everyday experience that was pretty boring, so that's what design thinking is doing to PepsiCo.

We have amazing designers that we hire in Milan every year, they have a design week where everything from furniture to lighting to everyday products, you see the best of design from the best designers displayed all over Milan, all over the city. It becomes a design, a kind of design bazaar, it's just a phenomenal experience to go there and see what's going on. the last few years I said three years ago I visited Milan for the first time from a design perspective. Two years ago we started building a Pepsi design experience where we actually had a large warehouse where we converted design experiences with PepsiCo products so that I had an experience called Fizz, it looked like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Do you know how to make your own soda with all kinds of seasonings? It was a fabulous experience. We drink Lipton pure leaf tea. How can you serve tea in an authentic way in almost like a coffee shop in a tea house, what can you do with the Gatorade bottle? The new sensor bottle that athletes can now drink from and it will, in a sense, detect your saliva and tell you exactly what additional electrolytes you need to put into your body. So we show you some. of things in a very encouraging way and what was wonderful is that the big design magazines wrote that there were two standout exhibitions in Milan this year from a consumer perspective, one was Nike and the other was PepsiCo, so I thought that landed It was Brady did you miss a great one next year next year that's great progress?

I would like you to visit a design studio sometime phenomenal designers we have a long way to go Doug a long way to go but we We're making progress yeah I think we're going to care you know it looks like what's happening in the trade retail is that the needs that customers have are increasingly being outsourced to the Internet, whether it's mobile or voice or whatever comes in the future, so people are We're not going to have to think about keeping stock Pepsi, yes, it's just going to happen and we're going to play a role in that process through our supply chain, but they leave it up to something like a Pepsi if we keep thinking about it. like cola which was invented in 1893, it's like being the custodians of a utility that is not the business we are in cystis, how can you bring excitement to this category again and again because it is a traditional brand, so Are we doing multiple things across the range? of craft soft drinks low sugar offerings trying to make Pepsi more than making my own drink at home so we are playing with Pepsi in many ways 1893 the new Cola that we launched as a craft soft drink is doing very well where is the brand my own Pepsi , which is selling, is adding an interesting consumer base and Pepsi offerings with lower sugar content, but great taste will hit the market.

Will they all be as successful as the original Pepsi? Probably not, but they will slow the decline of a category while we. launched all kinds of new drinks on top of that, so the emotional component is not just the executive utility aspect of their product, because Pepsi is not a drink, it's an experience, it's a brand, it's timely, I would say, because it defines culture, it defines Sports defines music and I still remember that a famous music producer in California told me one time, when I met him, he said: you know, I don't have any young music artist that is worthy of a contract with Pepsi , that's a big statement to be worthy of. of a contract with Pepsi because being associated with Pepsi that launched so many young faces was a great thing, whether it was Michael Jackson or Britney Spears, Madonna or Christina Aguilera, and they all achieved their success working with Pepsi, they were known as Pepsi stars and that's why he said: I don't have young people who are worthy of a contract with Pepsi, so the Pepsi brand is absolutely associated with moments that define the culture and therefore we have to figure out how to make the product in tune with the brand even more as consumers change, you can probably pick up some of the themes, but what happens is that as companies grow and grow, they start to specialize within the business and it replicates what you've done before, so that at Walmart we have logistics specialists, merchants, marketers, lawyers and they all specialize and you end up with these silos that in some cases are designed to continue doing what you're doing and then a disruption happens and you have to figure out how to take a company older and larger company and change them again. to be more entrepreneurial move quickly and change it and you can hear those themes in the story of interest and it's the same in our story and I think a lot of what we believe right now is that we are going to help transform the company that uses technology we can hire talent we have our talent we can invest and do a lot of that but over time what will differentiate us and ultimately allow us to win and have a role to play in society is still humanity is still our culture is still our people, but Getting from where we are now to daring will require a cultural shift as well as advances in technology, and that's an interesting business challenge to take on when you're at our scale.

I think the big question for all of us is you know a lot has been written about you need to preserve the history and heritage of the company as you make the change. Sometimes I wonder if it's a drag. I'll tell you why, because yes, you should respect the legacy that you should respect. the culture, be aware of where you come from, but I will speak for myself. I would say maybe I was too respectful of the heritage and the culture because what happens is when you have companies where people are with the company for a long time and PepsiCo has a lot of long-serving employees, they came to PepsiCo young, they leave. the company and then when they leave the company, they still stay attached to the company and are talking about PepsiCo all the time, at some point.

They have to make the break, you know what I'm talking about, they still think they're part of the company, they're running the company well, so this book club should stay happy, but I don't think you should leave them. You run the company and in many ways you have to break with the past because if you don't, you spend more time appeasing traditional employees and their traditional voices and you're supposed to say guys, we don't have time. We have to make the change correctly and guess what is going to be painful, but the sooner we make the change, let's do it and the only thing I learned again, I would say that maybe I was a little more patient than I should have when you know you have to make a change and people don't come, you wait a bit, but then at some point you have to say enough is enough, you know that every three weeks there will be a series of retirement parties. you're out because if we don't do that again, the people who have been in the company for 20 or 30 years tear you down and they create a kind of environment where they say "oh, the old days were great" and people start to believe that there are still those good old days that could exist and really can't and I think if I had to do it all over again I could have accelerated the pace of change even more, taken that opportunity to actively shape the culture and then said you know what.

Guys, I'm not going to sit here doing a workshop outside the workshop and trying to convince you to come. I've tried, you're either in or you're out and those kinds of gross actions that I didn't take a single one. What gives us the opportunity to get through this period of transformation is that our founder loved to change and while we can respect the past, we must invent the future and our founder passed away in 1992, but the only thing I know for sure is that I am around from him a little bit and from all the stories and experiences is that if he were here today he would be changing things and he gives you that mandate, you know, you can stand in front of a group of Walmart associates and you can say The only thing that is constant at Walmart is that the group will respond to the change and that gives you the opportunity to say, "Okay, let's talk about what we need to change, why we need to change and what this is pointing towards, and if we don't do it." We're done, it's only a matter of time before changes make changes, it's very, very scary, especially when you leave the comfort of a big company where you know you've had great salaries, benefits, a pension plan that was fantastic and suddenly. you are going to be expelled it is not interesting it is perceived security it is actually the opposite this is the security of a company career the future is actually on the change side of things not in the status quo but if you know that If you have a role in the change, you accept it well, but if you don't know if you have a role in the change or because you are sure that you don't have a role because you don't have the skills, it is a problem.

Today's communication is totally different. I joined Facebook last week. I've been on Instagram for a while. What do I need to be in the next Snapchats? There will probably be something after that, but you know Sam Walton wasn't on Instagram or Facebook and I know I am. I came a littlelate to the party, but there's power in it and it's about getting the word out about why we're doing what we're doing and what we're trying to accomplish and giving people a voice, you know? Communication is not unidirectional, it is multidirectional. I'm just on Twitter and I'm scared to death because I have no idea what's going to happen, look at you kids, you're reckless, it's okay for us, for our CEOs, it's scary because if you make a mistake tweeting one word , there will be millions of people who will kill you in the public domain about how dare a CEO say what he does.

I am envious of my children for the things they tweet and the things they post. on Facebook oh my god I'm scared to death, but you know what's great about being young, what they don't know yet is that all of that will follow them for the rest of their lives, well that's it, duck, big dog. You know, you and I have nothing to worry about, hey, I want to ask you a question, how do you manage to be the CEO of Walmart and live in a small town where every move you make is tracked all the time?

What are you talking about? tracked you mean everyone knows everyone like Mayberry is something like that a little bit bigger than Mayberry yeah yeah we live in a cool place that's actually changing a lot but it's still small it's a bubble it's not like the rest of the world in some ways. and that's why it's very important for us as leaders to be out there, we travel a lot, we're all over the world, but we come back to this really small place where, if you go to Walmart, which I do, everyone says, hey Doug, how are you?

People follow you. You walked around the store to make sure everything was in stock. You know, we have to be aware of the bubble and not let it make us feel comfortable. It is not the most competitive market in the world. That's very true. You know, what I go and promote to us, is the same thing that they created. For me, I always see the perfect execution, so now when I go to any city and they say, oh, let's go to the next three streets to make a market or I'm going to guess what I'm going to decide where we go. and now they're terrified because I might choose a place that's completely off the beaten path and I don't want to see a prepared market.

I want to see the market as it normally exists for the consumer. That's something we don't tell stores. we'll go when we wrote yesterday or we didn't go into the store when the associate once said to me Doug, you're like the queen of England and I told him what a way and I told him everywhere you go you smell fresh paint, that's good. You have to remember it well, you have to remember it and be sincere. I think we have time, maybe one more theme in me and the one I would like to choose is making a difference in the world, so you ended up in this position.

You probably knew when you were a kid that I was going to be the CEO of PepsiCo. I mean, you probably knew that, but now you're here and you have this responsibility and this platform to try to make a positive difference in the world. Do you think about that and how do you help lead the board and your management team to make that difference and what does it mean to you personally? You know the deeper I go into this whole area of ​​doing sustainability differently, the more I'm convinced that unless you feel it, unless you feel it deep in your heart and really understand it, you're serving the whole area of sustainability, in my case I grew up in Madras in India, where I had those days and still do today.

I think there wasn't much water in the city and we had so little water to live on every day that this whole notion of water availability and use was a crisis for me my entire life. I didn't know a time when water was enough until I came to the United States. Well, then I got water in my head. By the time we grew up eating and drinking a certain way, I suddenly realized that when you look around the world, you see everyone looking around. Health problems around the world, food plays a very important role in people's health and well-being, so one had to worry about that aspect as well and then my daughter went to work for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and I gained a whole new appreciation for everyone. about environmental problems beyond water, whether it's the carbon footprint, whether it's fishing, if it's any problem, she would actually show me all the statistics, what overfishing on certain coasts was doing to the world or the plastic and the oceans, and when do you start to If you are really feeling these issues and thinking about your children and your children, you are wondering what my role is as a manager of a large company to make a difference in the world through this incredible platform to The one I called the leader of a large company who could contribute to the problems or help alleviate the problems knew that she did not want to contribute to the problems she had to start helping the problems and to the extent that society had changed and perceived myself as contributing to some of the problems I had To make a change in my business model, Darrin born our notion of performance with purpose, which is how we can continue to perform while changing the portfolio and at the same time fundamentally change our environmental footprint and then the third one, which is really the one I'm most excited about.

It's about what can we do for our employees so that they can come to work at PepsiCo feeling that PepsiCo is a place where you can not only make a living but have a life so that you can fully dedicate yourself to work, the company treats you. fairly and equitably gives you the support system to be who you are and allow you to be who you are and we fully embrace that, so fulfilling the purpose is not a corporate social responsibility program, it's not, that's how we win money. because our belief is that if we do not change the portfolio we cannot continue to deliver performance, if we do not change our environmental practices we will not obtain a license from society to operate and our costs increase because we pay for water we will end up paying more for plastic recycling, so we have to do it and if we don't get the best and the brightest in terms of people, we won't be able to deliver performance, so performance in purpose is how we make money, not how. we spend the money we earn, which is what corporate social responsibility is all about, so that's what it's really about, very well said, we see the same way, I feel the same way, we want to open it up for questions that are difficult to answer. log in if you can to get started if the first question comes from Twitter, it's actually for the two of you and it's a classic and what organization and what leader do you admire the most and why do I need time to think.

I have to be a little close to Sam Walton. Sam was the founder of Walmart, he is the first person that comes to mind. There are a lot of positive characteristics there that we're still trying to live up to today in terms of who I admire right now, rather than a person I think I do. Characterize a group of people. One of the wonderful things about what we get to do is that we get to meet a lot of leaders and what comes to mind is that there are people who are really taking risks to try to make the world a better place.

This would be a very logical time to play it safe, it would be a very logical time to try to stay off the radar screen, but sometimes you have to go out and put some personal value on the line and try to change something and there are people that they're doing it, some of the CEOs that live in this part of the world are doing things like that to try to make the world better and I admire that I'm going to give them two, one, you know? something that sounds tried and tested when I became CEO.

I called Steve Jobs and told him I'd like to spend a little time with you and just understand what it's like to run a company the way you've changed it. And he kindly agreed to spend some time with me and gave me two or three hours. I think about his time and some of the lessons he taught me about design. How do you take something you really believe in and stick with it instead of doing it? Changing your point of view because the outside world wants you to change your point of view were phenomenal lessons. He was so kind to give me the time and he gave me those lessons that I will never forget.

I think the world lost an incredible person. In it he told me some things like don't be too nice when you really don't get what you want and you really think that's the right thing to do for the company, it's okay to throw a tantrum, throw things around you, okay? I know that people will talk about it and they will know that it is important to you and I think that in itself was a valuable lesson in terms of Honestly I think that in terms of people that I admire, I tell you that the people that you have really started to admire in these days it's The people who head these NGOs because they don't make much money, in fact, they barely make ends meet, but they still feel so deeply committed to a cause, they do research, they visit companies at their headquarters, they do silly things. , but I know what a bullshit it is if you look at it strictly from the point of view of them bothering me, but if you look at it through their eyes, you know, walking a mile in their shoes, you have to be proud that they feel so strongly. strength that they want to do it. make the world a better place for all these people who run NGOs, although one side of me says God, I wish they didn't have such a big megaphone, the other side of me is very proud of what they do and I believe that "We all go to change and become better companies thanks to your leadership.

Who would like to be next? How about here? Hello, my name is NAR doulos and I am an MBA. My question for you was that you mentioned international growth before and. I. I would love to know how PepsiCo and Walmart are thinking about the African market, specifically in the medium and long term, what do you think you will have to do differently to win over consumers there I'm telling you, PepsiCo and Africa don't. as big a footprint as we would like to have, but I think it is actually a very open market in many ways and I will tell you why the African consumer is improving enormously, so it is a very good situation.

The good thing is that the continent is angry about the right supply chains and the right products, so I think the market is just now taking off. I wish we had been there before, but now that we are, you know we are increasing our footprint there. I think the challenge we have is how to reach Africa with healthy products from the beginning and not start with the fun product for you, start with more good for you products, more grains, fruits and vegetables that contribute to the nutritional quality of the consumer African, which means we have to establish agricultural supply chains, which is what we are really working on now, so I think especially in the sub-Saharan African region because in parts of Africa like Tanzania or South Africa, Nigeria is already the rest from Africa I think we are working to establish agricultural supply chains and there is a lot available in Africa.

We believe that the potential is enormous. I am very excited about sub-Saharan Africa and was personally involved in the investment we made. it was made there a few years ago and what I believe is the best management team on the continent, the best management team in Africa from a retail point of view, we have several store formats and one day we will end up with a significant business in Nigeria. Kenya, in South Africa, where most of the companies are currently located and we are currently in about 12 different markets. Personally, I have been to five or six different countries in the region in the last few years and I feel energy, optimism and an opportunity that I think will be a very good business for us over time we want to be local we decided not to buy one hundred percent of the business because we wanted others to be able to benefit from the business we were growing there.

Source locally as much as possible, which isn't that hard because most of the food and we don't move great distances anyway, so I think there's an opportunity to grow there over a long period of time. and reach a lot of people and fulfill our purpose, which is to save people money and help them live better, but we are going to have to skip generations in some way with technology. I'm sure how advanced mobile devices are and how advanced some things like payments are in some sub parts of Africa and like the rest of the world we have to be at the forefront when it comes to technology and do it in an African way.

I'm very excited about this. Hello, my name is Ben. an MBA - first of all, thank you very much for coming, so you talked about having to be a little bit conservative or the pressure to be conservative as the CEO of a big company, yes because I've done Twitter you have to be, you know, conservative your investors, then having to innovate to succeed in this rapidly changing world, how do you resist those pressures and what can CEOs like you do to resist those pressures? I think personal conservatism versus taking risks with the business are two different issues, so with innovation you have to write the rules so that you know our products because, very often, ifyou really want to get advantages, you have to be the first to act, so I think from a product and product experience point of view, we can take as many risks as we want when I was talking about conservatism.

I was talking about personal messages that go out or messages that we post on behalf of the company, we just have to be careful when putting our personal messages. I tell you something about innovation, the bolder we are, the better. the more we can break the rules, the better off you will be because you know the world is full of ideas nowadays and if we don't do it, someone else will; In fact, I would say that small startups are capturing a lot of the current growth even in our space, even in the food and beverage space, so in many ways in our company we have to act as if we are a group of small startups, that's what we are a group of small startups, so to be able to do that we have to allow people to be bold, you know, write the rules however they want and that's what they're doing in our company when We have twenty-two billion dollar brands and now we have three or four others.

In the process, each of them is a small startup and they are not conservative at all. Pepsi is not a conservative brand as an individual. I'm sure next year will be less conservative than me, but I'm a conservative person because I'm terrified of all of you, you know, I think the advice I would give you, whether you're going to start a business or join a business, It would be related to values ​​and a pause of a little time to know. who you are and what you stand for in our case at Walmart we have four core values ​​we respect the individual we strive for excellence we serve the customer and act with integrity those four core values ​​resonate for me personally, so it's been pretty easy to be a part of Walmart because those are the things that I personally believe in and the reason that matters in the context of your question is that a lot of things will happen your way, tomorrow there will be an emergency, something will come and I'm going to have to deal with it or when you're in these jobs you're going to have to deal with that and you need some kind of foundation on which to stand and pause to remember what our values ​​are my personal values ​​and how my answer here relates to that context, if you don't have that foundation you're going to move from one place to another. back and forth trying to figure out, case by case, what to do, whether it's a question about risk taking or how to handle a crisis or whatever else it may seem like. a little silly I'm supposed to pause and write or think about you know what you want your final story to be, but I think it's valuable, you know pretend you're at your retirement celebration someday, what do you want them to say?

What legacy do you want to be left with and predetermined before you start? That will be your result. Yeah, I'm not sure who decides who goes next. I will do that. Yes, thanks for sharing. I have a question so Amazon is a big competitor like you are who is that Amazon Amazon has it. I'm serious, if you both could talk to Basil now, what would you say to him and go on vacation? Jeff doesn't need money, but I'd be happy to pay it. During their vacation they are doing a very good job and as a retailer and someone who grew up serving customers, I admire the innovation and the solutions that they are providing to customers and this challenges me and part of our culture is to accept what what is doing competition and learn from it and try to act quickly to adopt what we should adopt within our own company, in some cases that is dangerous because it can seem like following and being followed and if you are following someone you are only going to be second best , so at the same time you have to be who you are and innovate within the context of who you are, but clearly what they and other e-commerce companies are teaching us is that technology can be used to solve customer problems. in a different way and it saves them time, it makes their lives simple and easy and we did it for a period of time one way and now we have to do it in new ways, so you know, I appreciate the challenge.

I like competitions. The only thing I know for sure is that the customers are going to win and they will decide who is here and who is not and fortunately for us, we are not competing against just one company, we are competing against many companies and what matters most. it's how much we're getting better and better, so I like it, it gets me up in the morning and I feel challenged and I wouldn't want it any other way. You said it all, thanks for coming and sharing. My name is Erin Chen. I'm from China and now I have an MBA, so I have a question for you two: a personal career like development, so you came to Dock as Doug, who has spent his entire professional life at Walmart, but actually, for now, in hours and years, it's not very common, so I really want to know what drives you to stay in an organization for your entire life and another question is for Andrea, like you've tried a different type of ro ​​and a different type of industry.

I want to know when she decides when you find your passion and how you get this passion for it. Thank you, you know, I think I've learned from every industry I've been in because it goes back to, you know, when I was a consultant, you learn everything from chemicals to banking to high tech. healthcare I did everything so it was great to learn strategy through the eyes of a BCG because you know you realize that strategy is not specific to the industry, but to the frameworks and the way you think about a business . I learned that and then through my journey, Motorola, ABB and Then when I got to PepsiCo, I moved back from high tech to utilities and power plants.

I learned so many different facets of business when I came to PepsiCo, even though I hadn't actually worked in the consumer sector, I was able to think differently at that time when I joined PepsiCo. PepsiCo needed new ideas, so I came in and started changing the status quo from day one and PepsiCo gave me the freedom to go ahead and make all the changes and suggest all the changes that need to be made, and I think why I stayed at PepsiCo and why it took root at PepsiCo from the day I joined the company and this is a part of the culture that has not changed I feel like PepsiCo is my company, it has embraced me and now I make sure we accept other employees I feel like it's my company it's not a public company called PepsiCo it's my company every aspect of the company I feel like I can change it any time I want I felt like that when I was head of strategy I felt like that when I was CFO when I was

president

I feel that even more As a CEO I mean you have that sense of ownership over the company why would you leave something that belongs to you and that's why I have put down roots and I don't regret it for a moment.

Those 22 years I've been at PepsiCo and it's the best ride of my life, whether I was CEO or not is irrelevant. It has been the best trip of my life. My dad was a dentist and dentistry is difficult. None of you will be. Dentists right that's why you're here he was a dentist for 40 years and it's hard for you to get up every day you're going to see people who don't really want to see you, they're there because they need to be and that's why I was greatly influenced to trying to create a career for myself that was flat Cybil because I didn't want to be stuck training for a job and having to do that job forever if I didn't like it, so I went.

To get a business degree, I went to do my MBA and my MBA was primarily driven so that if I found myself in a situation where I wasn't happy, I could change jobs. I thought it would help me move but then I ended up working at Walmart and I really started because I just needed a summer job to make money for school and I loved it and that's why I'm still here. I would've been great. I have been able to do more than a dozen different jobs. I have worked in all countries and in all formats.

We deal with everything from marketing to logistics to finance to legal to Africa, how fun is that, so when I'm no longer having fun I won't be doing this anymore, but for over 25 years it's been a blast and I've come to care a lot for this and I've gotten bored. If I was bored I'd go do something else or if I was working with people I didn't like I'd leave, but there are a lot of great people. around where I work, thank you very much for coming. Oh my name is Sarah foo and I'm a second year MBA student and they told me they were lucky to get the last question so my question to you is obviously what you're talking about.

There's a lot of similar changes and risk taking, but a lot of that will only be measured or seen or evaluated over years, but also today, if you look at everyone, like investors or just the market in general, it's very shortsighted. . and then there's a lot of noise in the market, so how do you balance the short-term demand so that you like to meet the long-term vision to take risks and do long-term projects that are actually good for the business? That's really good. He said, I think you understand, it should be how, what do we do about it, what do we do about it, you know, I tell you what, I think you should look at the investments that you make in the company as a portfolio, there are a lot of things that deliver results. in the short term and that gives you some breathing room to invest in the long term because I don't think especially in our industries, which are more established as opposed to a startup, I don't think you can say, look, wait. for three or five years, in five years you start to see, no one is going to believe you because we are expected to deliver because we established, you know, legacy companies, so the way things are at Pepsi, I know what we need to invest.

By constantly balancing projects that will deliver results today, countries that were delivered today and that can then provide us with ammunition to invest in long-term initiatives, you can't have too many long-term initiatives or too many short-term initiatives because you don't want to spoil the investor. with too many short-term investments, you know programs that then don't give you permission to invest for the long term, so this judicious balance is what we worry about all the time and that's what, and you know, I think to tell you that the The only way to do this is if you have the support of your board of directors.

For public companies, the board has to fully accept your program and support it in case investors say we don't like the way it is delivered. Well, if we ran these businesses for one quarter of a year, we would hurt them enormously and we care about them too much to do that, but as we articulate that long-term vision, which, as you know, in some cases may be beyond a investment cycle. We have to clearly communicate what our strategy is and be accountable for milestones along the way, so it's not enough to say I'm running this business for the long term.

Contact me again in five years and we'll see how it goes. I'd like to try it, so I think as long as you're deliberately thoughtful, building relationships and communicating, whether it's with the investment community or your board, you can do it. In our case, we have a family that owns almost half of the business, so it helps a lot. If they believe in what you're doing, it helps us have a long-term perspective, not just a perspective that I have no right here, I don't have that path to get the opportunity again, please join me.