My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

by Indra Nooyi

Many young people, worried about how they will manage it all, are choosing not to have children. This could not only have dire economic consequences in the decades to come, but, on a very personal note, I find this detail sad. With everything I have accomplished, my greatest joy was having children, and I wouldn’t want anyone to miss the experience if they want it.

the fundamental role of a leader is to look for ways to shape the decades ahead, not just react to the present, and to help others accept the discomfort of disruptions to the status quo.

With a can-do sense of optimism and a must-do sense of responsibility, we can transform our society.

this mission Performance with Purpose, and, for a dozen years, I weighed every decision against these measures, making constant trade-offs to achieve a more sustainable, contemporary organization.

My childhood was not a world of “Great job!” It was more like “That was so-so” or “Is this the best you can do?” We were accustomed to honesty, not false encouragement.

Greek philosopher Epictetus’s saying:“We have two ears and one mouth, so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

We thrive, individually and collectively, when we have deep connections with our parents and children, and within larger groups, whether we are related or not. I believe that healthy families are the root of healthy societies.

Family, as powerful as it is, can also be so fragile. Every family runs the risk of unexpected hardship. And without adequate safety nets from government or private enterprise, episodes like my father’s accident can ripple through people’s lives for decades or generations. Most significantly, this event made real my father’s urging for me, as a woman, to always have the means to provide for myself.

“If you take on something, you must give it your all” and “If you make a promise, keep it.” He insisted on reliability.

Work. It’s not really optional. And that’s good, because the benefits of paid work hardly need review: humans thrive when they are challenged; they are proud when they’ve done a job well and gain from being with people who share the same goals. And we all need money to live.

But what of the millions of families who don’t have this luxury? The travails of working parents who do this dance every day for years—through snowstorms but also through job loss, divorce, illness, and the millions of other hurdles we all face—make me wonder why accessible, affordable quality childcare isn’t a national priority.

Good business demands tough decisions based on rigorous analysis and unwavering follow-through. Emotion can’t really play a part. The challenge we all face as leaders is to let the feelings churn inside you but then to present a calm exterior, and I learned to do that.

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.