My Life in Full by Indra Nooyi

I love reading about successful women in business, particularly women who have reached the very top and are prepared to share what it actually took to get there. And there aren’t many women with a career quite like Indra Nooyi’s.

I really enjoyed My Life in Full, but I also loved her MasterClass, Leading with Purpose. If you’re interested in business, leadership and how successful people think, I would recommend both.

Indra was CEO of PepsiCo for 12 years, from 2006 to 2018, becoming one of the most influential female business leaders in the world. Her memoir, published by Portfolio in the US and Piatkus in the UK, takes us from her childhood in India through her education at Yale and eventually to the top of one of the world’s biggest companies. But this isn’t simply a story about corporate success. It’s also about family, ambition, sacrifice and the reality of trying to have a demanding career while raising children.

Can women really have it all?

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Indra’s honesty about balancing work and family. She was running an enormous international business while raising two daughters, maintaining her marriage and managing family responsibilities. And she doesn’t pretend it was easy.

She talks about the support she received from her husband, family and others, and makes the point that successful careers don’t happen in isolation.

I think this is something we need to talk about more. Women are often expected to build successful careers, raise families, manage households and somehow find time for themselves. But behind many successful women are people helping to make it all possible.

Indra argues that businesses need to take childcare, parental leave and family support much more seriously. And I think she’s right. We can’t keep telling women they can achieve anything without also looking at the structures that help them do it.

Leadership with purpose

Another fascinating part of the book is Indra’s approach to leadership at PepsiCo. She introduced a strategy called Performance with Purpose, which aimed to combine business growth with healthier products, environmental responsibility and better support for employees.

For a company famous for soft drinks and snacks, that was an ambitious direction.

What I find interesting about leaders like Indra is their ability to look beyond what’s happening today and anticipate where a business needs to go next. It’s one thing to have a vision. It’s another to convince an enormous organisation to follow it.

Her MasterClass explores this side of leadership in more detail, including strategic thinking, communication, decision-making and the importance of understanding both the big picture and the finer details.

I loved the opportunity to learn directly from somebody who has actually led a business on that scale.

Why this matters to The Daily Round

There are some interesting connections between Indra’s story and healthcare. Her work at PepsiCo raised questions about nutrition, wellbeing and the responsibilities of major food and beverage companies. But I think the stronger connection is her discussion of care and working families.

Healthcare professionals know all too well what it means to spend their working lives caring for others while also managing responsibilities at home. Indra makes a compelling case that supporting working families isn’t simply a personal issue. It’s something employers and society need to take seriously if we want talented people, particularly women, to progress in their careers.

And that’s a conversation worth having.

My verdict

★★★★☆ 4 out of 5 stars.

I really enjoyed My Life in Full. Indra Nooyi has had an extraordinary career, and I found it fascinating to learn more about the woman behind the business decisions. There are valuable lessons here about ambition, leadership and strategy, but also about family, sacrifice and the support needed to build a successful career.

I’d particularly recommend this to women in business, entrepreneurs, aspiring leaders and anyone interested in how successful people navigate the competing demands of work and family. You don’t need to have ambitions of running a global corporation to learn something from Indra Nooyi.

Recommended by Jill Hudson, Editor-in-Chief, The Daily Round.