Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader.
Every year in consulting is like three years in the corporate world because you have multiple clients, multiple issues – you grow so much.
If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself.
An important attribute of success is to be yourself. Never hide what makes you, you.
Take a stand. Be known for your courage and confidence.
I pick up the details that drive the organization insane. But sweating the details is more important than anything else.
The glass ceiling will go away when women help other women break through that ceiling.
The biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict with each other.
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.
I grew up in a Hindu household but went to a Roman Catholic school. I grew up with a mother who said, ‘I’ll arrange a marriage for you at 18,’ but she also said that we could achieve anything we put our minds to an encourage us to dream of becoming prime minister or president.
At the end of the day, don’t forget that you’re a person.
Just because you are CEO, don’t think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I’ve never forgotten that.
Market growth alone doesn’t give you enough tailwind. You have to create your own. The way to do that is by designing products for consumers that wow them.
Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent.
Anything that’s done to address unemployment in terms of massive stimulus spending is going to exacerbate deficits. And anything that’s done to address deficits in the short-term is going to exacerbate unemployment.
There is nothing like a concrete life plan to weigh you down. Because if you always have one eye on some future goal, you stop paying attention the the job at hand, miss opportunities that might arise, and stay fixedly on one path, even when a better, newer course might have opened up.
I wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.
If you give up the guilt, that’s a huge load off your shoulders.
My parents made us dream that we could be anyone that we wanted to.
PepsiCo did not have a woman in the senior ranks, nor a foreign-born person who was willing to think differently.