Indra Nooyi

So it's that little micro pennies that add up to the whole business.

So if you don't understand the business at the most granular level, you come at it in a very different perspective.

And people don't understand you because you're talking in tens of millions and hundreds of billions.

And they're like, I'm selling a 25 cent bag of Doritos, a 45 cent bag of Tostitos.

What are you talking about?

Don't talk to us about millions.

We've got to cut a penny out of this route or cut a penny out of the packaging cost to get the profitability up.

So you've got to be able to talk that language.

So the left of the decimal is that language where you sit down with the team and say, can we take out two cents from this entire product package?

I mean, the example is when we decided that it's an imperative that we reduce the water usage in our beverage plants, right?

We were using two and a half liters of water to make a liter of Pepsi.

Now, I want to get it down to 1.2 or 1.3.

And it's not enough to provide a dictate and say, get it down to 1.3.

It's a question of, what does it take to get it down?

Let's talk through it.

Where do we use the water?

How can we recycle some of the water?

How do we need to clean it to fishbone standards?

You've got to ask all those questions so that the R&D people realize that you're not just providing a mandate.

You're basically saying, I'm going to help you get to the right answer.