Dive Brief:
- Indra Nooyi, the CEO of global soft-drink and food giant PepsiCo, says she makes a point of connecting personally with the parents of key employees and job candidates — sending them a letter or calling them on the phone.
- The disclosure came in a candid interview in front of a crowd at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which Nooyi discussed her management technique of putting an extraordinary level of focus on the most important employees at the company.
- Nooyi said she has spoken with the parents of all her direct reports, plus those of around 200 other key employees and hard-to-recruit job candidates.
Dive Insight:
This probably sounds a little creepy. If so, that has more to do with the way we wrote the piece than with the facts at hand. In the interview, which Fortune published verbatim in a question-and-answer format, Nooyi and her wacky call-the-mom technique come across as positively charming.
Perhaps this is because of the story she tells in the interview about how people congratulated her mother for the daughter's success. Perhaps it's because of the funny way that Nooyi explains how she wishes someone would give her a report card on how her now-grown children are doing in life. But most likely, it's because Nooyi is on to something important in her desire to "bond employees to the company" by "engaging them with their hearts."