AchieveMax® Blog

It’s once again time for the biggest and most exciting event in football, Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa, Florida, on February 1, 2009. Tickets for this game are being sold for anywhere between $3,000 and $4,000 each at a time when few in this country can afford anything at all. It should be noted that it’s not just admission tickets that are costly this year. A 30-second commercial during this year’s game will cost advertisers $3 million dollars … that’s $6 million a minute or $100,000 per second!

Those out-of-this-world-prices have forced some pretty creative out-of-the-box thinking. Remember back in 1962 when the Avis Car Rental Company gained fame with its “We Try Harder” campaign? This claim was the result of the fact that Avis was currently number #2 in the industry behind Hertz and therefore must try harder to achieve success. When it launched that campaign, Avis was an unprofitable company with 11% of the car rental business in the USA. Within a year Avis was making a profit, and within two years Avis had tripled its market share to 35%.

Is History Repeating Itself?

Anheuser-Busch, the game’s king of advertising and the country’s largest brewing company, will air 4 ½ minutes of ad time this year at a cost of $27 million! However, Miller Brewing Company, #2 in the industry, is going to “Try Harder” and may very well get more publicity by spending only a fraction of that cost.

Talk about creativity!

Talk about thinking “out-of-the-box”!

Talk about overcoming adversity in tough times!

Miller Brewing will air a one-second commercial for the champagne of beers, Miller High Life, on affiliates across the nation. That’s right, a ONE-SECOND COMMERCIAL! Talk about shorter attention spans! Viewers will have to watch closely for these ads. This game-day stunt ad—known as a “blink”—will air on 25 local NBC stations reaching about 60% of the TV audience. The ads will feature the Miller High Life brand and will put the highly popular delivery man from its original ads in the one-second commercials.

Here’s the beauty of this unique approach to a very competitive advertising industry tradition. Miller Brewing, #2 in the industry, will spend millions less than #1 Anheuser-Bush.

Miller Brewing is receiving millions of dollars worth of free advertising as a result of media coverage explaining its unconventional approach to advertising. Radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet are all sharing the story.

As a result of this ongoing coverage prior to the big game, viewers will be looking for these ads in anticipation of something that appears to be impossible.

Viewers can visit the Miller website, http://1secondad.com/, in advance of the game to view the many creative ad spots.

Miller is demonstrating that anyone can use creativity and innovation to deal with adversity in challenging times.

Not only has it discovered a way to compete at a high level, save money when it’s most needed, entertain its audience and demonstrate its uniqueness … Miller may even have found a way to produce the most successful ads of the day at an event where commercials have been known to upstage the actual football game.

Share this report with your staff, watch the game to see if this gamble pays off, and then discuss how this kind of out-of-the-box thinking might very well benefit your organization in this trying times.

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Looking back over the previous authors whose bios we’ve shared with our readers, I realized that many of them would be much more familiar to Baby Boomers as opposed to those in Generations X, Y or Z (New Silent Generation). However, even though the more recent generations may not recognize these authors by name, they are, indeed, familiar with their narratives, strategies, philosophies, and anecdotes. The work of these early authors (Napoleon Hill, Denis Waitley, Og Mandino, Ken Blanchard, and Zig Ziglar) have been shared, repackaged, reframed, and updated by more recent authors for later generations.

In choosing Ziglar, I pondered my decision to include him among our author bios. I say that because Zig is much more than an author. He’s a tremendous salesman, leading sales trainer, a legendary motivational speaker, a beloved religious leader, and, of course, a very successful author. He’s done it all and yearns to share it with others.

I’ve personally lost count of the number of times I’ve been in the audience to hear this gifted orator share his down-home wisdom over the decades. However, I do remember the first time I ever saw him on a stage. Until that day, I had never seen nor heard of Zig so I had no idea as to what to expect. From the minute he walked on the stage, I was mesmerized … riveted to his every word and movement in an effort to determine if he was a motivational speaker or a very talented comedian successfully emulating an orator. I make that statement with the greatest respect, but I mean it sincerely.

He made his entrance with gigantic strides, appearing to be at least seven feet tall. I’m sure he’s shorter, but his impeccable black pin-stripped suit, long, confident stride, ear-to-ear smile, and direct eye contact transforms him into a gentle giant you immediately trust.

Zig made Fred Astaire look clumsy as he glided from side to side across that enormous stage as though he owned it—which he did during the extent of his presentation. He made certain he connected with every person in the audience.

I mentioned the possibility of his being a comedian because of his style. He jumped, glided, twirled, and kneeled on one knee—whatever it took to emphasize his point and convince you of his sincerity. Blend that incomparable choreography with a southern drawl, which immediately convinced you that he was raised in the small Mississippi berg of Yazoo City, and you were hooked for the duration. Add his many captivating props, and you were in for an exciting experience.

Very few of his boundless fan base were aware of the fact that Zig was born Hilary Hinton Ziglar as the tenth of twelve children in 1926. He lost both his sister and father in 1932 and suffered much hardship as his mother struggled to raise 11 children alone.

After a stint in the Navy, he tried his hand at college at the University of South Carolina but soon chose to pursue a career in sales. Although struggling early on, Zig soon fine tuned his craft. He sold sandwiches to college classmates for a while and then moved on to selling pots and pans where he became a true sales champion. He placed second in one national firm of more than 7,000 and first in another company with a 3,000-plus sales staff. He went on to set sales records selling a variety of products for various companies.

He soon began receiving requests to share his secrets with many sales organizations and gained such notoriety that he walked away from a record-setting sales career to focus on helping others to become more successful. The rest is history.

Zig soon became one of the world’s foremost sales trainers. His name was synonymous with confidence, motivation and success. His success with sales training led him to focus on personal development as well. In 1970, he launched his full-time speaking career and built a multi-million dollar corporation on the same philosophy he expounds to his audiences—hard work, common sense, fairness, integrity, commitment, and an infectious sense of humor.

Since 1970, an extensive array of Ziglar audio, video, books, and training manuals have been utilized by small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, U.S. government agencies, churches, school districts, prisons, and non-profit associations, affecting lives in a profound way.

Over the last 30-plus years presenting himself and his motivational ideas, he has developed a world-wide following. He has grown from a one-man show to chariman of the Zig Ziglar Corporation, headquartered in Dallas, with a staff of more than 60 employees—an organization which is committed to helping people more fully utilize their physical, mental, and spiritual resources. Zig has traveled more than 5 million miles throughout the world as a speaker.

A well-known authority on the science of human potential, Zig Ziglar has been recognized three times in the Congressional Record of the United States for his work with youth in the drug war and for his dedication to America and the free enterprise system.

Titans of business, politics and sports consider Zig Ziglar to be the single greatest influence in their lives. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Sales and Marketing, and the National Speakers Association honored Zig Ziglar with its highest award, “The Cavett.”

Individuals and institutions worldwide have utilized an extensive collection of Ziglar audios, videos, books and training curriculum. The client list of Ziglar Training Systems reads like a who’s who in American and global business. Nine of his books have been on the best-seller lists, and his titles have been translated into more than 38 languages and dialects.

Over the decades, Zig has personified his long-time motto of: “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

Last year Zig fell down a set of stairs and hit his head, resulting in a serious concussion. Suddenly, life was very different as this vibrant motivator no longer moved with the energy of a 65-year-old man as he had for so long. Almost overnight he aged 15-plus years and began the struggle to overcome and live with a brain injury.

After 32 years as the heart and soul of a business, Zig Ziglar has decided it would be best if he gave up his day-to-day operational role of his company. He has decided to hand over his company to his son, Tom Ziglar, president, and son-in-law Richard K. Oates, chief operating officer, as he concentrates on what he does best: produce best-selling books and energize crowds.

If you ever get an opportunity to see Zig in person, do yourself a favor and do so. You’ll never regret it. I’ve heard many colleagues say they make it a point to see Zig in person as often as possible. Does that mean that previous motivation didn’t last? I think not. Zig, himself, says “that people often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why I recommend it daily!”

Here are just some of the many books Zig Ziglar has written:

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Headquartered in Washington, DC with regional offices in Atlanta, GA and Westport, CT. Leadership IQ, a global leadership training and research company, provides best practices research and executive education to the world’s leading companies and their leaders.

Their work has appeared in Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, the Harvard Management Update, CBS News, and many more. They’ve trained tens of thousands of leaders from across the Fortune 500, non-for-profit, small-and-midsize companies, and government organizations.

They direct one of the largest leadership studies ever conducted, and currently focus their work on management and executive performance, workforce issues, negotiations, strategic planning and customer service.

In a three-year study, they examined 5,247 hiring managers from 312 public, private, business and healthcare organizations. Collectively these managers hired more than 20,000 employees during the study period.

The study focused on why new hires fail at such alarming rates which is certainly a growing trend. For instance:

• 46% of newly-hired employees will fail within 18 months.
• Only 19% will achieve unequivocal success.
• Contrary to popular belief, technical skills are not the primary reason why new hires fail.
• Instead, poor interpersonal skills dominate the list.

The study also discovered that:

• 26% of new hires fail because they can’t accept feedback.
• 23% of new hires fail because they’re unable to understand and manage emotions.
• 17% of new hires fail because they lack the necessary motivation to excel.
• 15% of new hires fail because they have the wrong temperament for the job.
• and only 11% of new hires fail because they lack the necessary technical skills.

The above data is certainly not rocket science. However, while the failure rate for new hires is distressing, it should not be surprising:

Eighty-two percent of managers reported that in reflection, the interview process could have been handled more effectively. Warning sign may have been noticed had the managers:

• been more focused on the interview itself;
• listened more and talked less;
• spent more time on the actual interview; and
• had stronger interviewing abilities and experience.

Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, explained that “The typical interview process fixates on ensuring that new hires are technically competent. But coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament are much more predictive of a new hires’ success or failure. Do technical skills really matter if the employee isn’t open to improving, alienates their coworkers, lacks drive and has the wrong personality for the job?”

The study tracked the success and failure of new hires and interviewed managers about their hiring tactics and new hires’ performance, personality and potential. Upon completing the 5,247 interviews, Leadership IQ compiled, categorized and distilled the top five reasons why new hires failed (i.e., were terminated, left under pressure, received disciplinary action or significantly negative performance reviews). The following are the top areas of failure, matched with the percentage of respondents.

• Coachability (26%): The ability to accept and implement feedback from bosses, colleagues, customers and others.
• Emotional Intelligence (23%): The ability to understand and manage one’s own emotions, and accurately assess others’ emotions.
• Motivation (17%): Sufficient drive to achieve one’s full potential and excel in the job.
• Temperament (15%): Attitude and personality suited to the particular job and work environment.
• Technical Competence (11%): Functional or technical skills required to do the job.

Eight hundred and twelve managers experienced significantly more hiring success than their peers. What differentiated their interviewing approach was their emphasis on interpersonal and motivational issues.

Hiring failures can be very costly, impacting not only your organization but other employees as well. However, these failures can be prevented if managers focus more of their interviewing energy on candidates’ coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament. Doing so will provide vast improvements in the hiring success. Technical competence is actually a very poor predictor of whether a newly hired employee will succeed or fail.

“The financial cost of hiring failures, coupled with the opportunity cost of not hiring high performers, can be millions of dollars, even for small companies,” adds Murphy. “And the human cost can be even worse. If a hospital hires a nurse that won’t accept feedback and alienates pharmacists and physicians, the result could be a medical error. This one bad hiring decision could cost a patient their life.”

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

In the spirit of C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement), here are this week’s new facts—one for each day of your coming week. Pass them on to others to keep the spirit alive or invite your friends and family to visit our blog where they can also view previous entries.

• After oil, coffee is the most traded commodity in the world.
• A served tennis ball can travel almost 150 miles per hour.
• Cinderella’s slippers were originally made out of fur. The story was changed in the 1600s by a translator.
• Eleanor Roosevelt was the only first lady to carry a loaded revolver.
• Finland has more islands than any other country: 179,584.
• If you unfolded your brain, it would cover an ironing board. The more wrinkles your brain has, the more intelligent you are.
• It cost $6,951.62 to discover America. This covered all expenses including salaries. (Columbus received $59.28.)

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Whether you’re a valued subscriber or a casual visitor to our blog, we certainly appreciate your continued support and feedback. It helps us a great deal in deciding upon future content. We receive a fair number of comments via the feedback link at the end of each of our blog articles, and we look forward to each comment as they’re both interesting and informative.

You can read any and all of these comments by simply clicking on the link at the end of each article. However, we recently received a request from a high school teacher who apparently reads our blog regularly and now shares it with her students. She requested that we print her comment as part of a column in hopes of reaching a larger audience than she would if we posted her advice under comments.

She wanted to offer advice to other teachers and anyone who has an opportunity to work with students. We thank her for her kinds words of advice and share them with you below.

I’d like to share some advice with a certain segment of your readers but I’m not confident that the comment area of your blog is the place to do that in order to attain the greatest exposure. If you could possibly pass this message on in one of your columns, I feel a great many people would benefit.

I teach a business class for juniors and seniors in hopes of exposing them to the realities awaiting them after graduation. This class is only two years old and was established with the assistance of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. We have made great progress in that short time and the students really seem to enjoy the process.

A parent of one of our students contacted me with a suggestion that I check out your web site and blog. He felt that both contained a great deal of information that would assist us in reaching our goals while, at the same time, would entertain and educate our students. I, and two other teachers, searched your blog and web site thoroughly and quickly agreed that we wanted our students to do the same. We did not direct them to any particular segment as we wanted them to explore and discover what was important to them. We requested that they search, find something of interest, and report to their classmates what they found.

They came back with information from almost every segment of your blog and a number of areas of your web site. They found the following to be not only very helpful to them but enjoyable as well.

Your many, many book reviews (180)
Generational Gems for Future Leaders. (great stories)
Meet the Authors
Out-of-the-Box Thinking (exciting)
Little Known Facts About Leaders and Organizations (very informative)
A Site for Sore Eyes (great resources)
Fact-A-Day (fun and educational)
Need A Lift? (encouraging)
When the Going Gets Tough (motivational)

Many other areas were mentioned as well but the above seemed to get the most attention. The message I wanted to share with others in your readership numbers, who work with students in any way, is this: Your approach to writing captures their attention and explains very crucial issues in a way which is easily understood and truly enjoyed by students of high school age. If you’re working with students in a classroom situation, an organization, a project or any organized vehicle of learning, I would highly recommend that you expose your wards to this blog and web site as it will quickly become a favored resource. I might also point out that we have many staff members and parents visiting these sites on a regular basis and have reprinted many of your blog articles in our school paper. Do yourself a favor and visit both the web site and blog and make the discovery for yourself.

Thank you for letting me share and please continue doing what you do so well.

Ms. Julie Darbon

And thank you Ms. Darbon for your kind words and obvious support. It’s rewarding indeed to know your students are enjoying and learning from our efforts. I look forward to hearing from some of them in the future. Thanks too for exposing them to the realities of a challenging world they’ll soon be part of. You’re providing them a great service and I’m sure they’ll appreciate it greatly in the future.

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

January is National Mentoring Month … an annual campaign created in 2002 to promote youth mentoring across the U.S. This organization is the brain-child of the Harvard School of Public Health, the Corporation for National and Community Service and MENTOR.

Each year since 2002, President George W. Bush has endorsed the campaign by proclaiming January as National Mentoring Month. The declaration has been endorsed by both chambers of the Congress. Sponsors include The MCJ Foundation, MetLife Foundation, and The Curtis L. Carlson Family Foundation. Media partners include: Time Warner, Viacom, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC; Comcast; and the National Association of Broadcasters.

Designated nonprofit and governmental agencies are responsible for coordinating local campaign activities in communities across the country, including media outreach and volunteer recruitment. Local lead partners include state and local affiliates of MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership, Corporation for National and Community Service, Points of Light Foundation and Volunteer Center National Network, America’s Promise Alliance, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Communities in Schools, and United Way of America.

General Colin L. Powell has been chosen to headline the 7th Annual National Mentoring Month campaign for 2009. The campaign’s goal is to recruit volunteer mentors to help young people achieve their full potential. The campaign’s theme is “Share What You Know. Mentor a Child.”

General Powell is currently appearing in public service announcements (PSAs) on television and radio to promote the recruitment of volunteer mentors. His message focuses on the importance of mentoring, and the benefits to the mentor as well as the child. Ten years ago, prior to his term as U.S. Secretary of State, General Powell founded the America’s Promise Alliance, the nation’s largest multi-sector collaborative dedicated to the well-being of children and youth; his wife, Alma Powell, is the organization’s current Chair.

A highlight of the campaign is “Thank Your Mentor Day” in which Americans thank and honor their mentors. People are encouraged to contact their mentors directly to express appreciation, become a mentor in their own community, make a financial contribution to a local mentoring program, or post a tribute on WhoMentoredYou.org.

If you’re interested in learning more about this very rewarding movement check out the following links …

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/chc/wmy2009/index.html
Here you’ll find some of America’s most prominent people discussing important mentors in their lives—family members, teachers, coaches, friends, neighbors—who provided support, showed them the ropes, and helped them become who they are today.

http://www.mentoring.org/
This site will provide you with a connection to the Mentoring Partnership in your home state; latest mentoring articles in the news; mentoring stories; and much more.

http://www.mentoringcanada.ca/resources/aboutus.html
This site contains all of the same information as the site above for Canadian residents. Get involved today and make a real difference at a time when it is so crucial for everyone involved. You’ll be glad you did!

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

I am far from being a radical person. However, I can’t help but wonder if we, as a society, have grown too complacent for our own good. At what point do we simply say “Enough, already!” Again, this is not a political concern. This is definitely a leadership issue.

TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet have done a pretty good job of allowing us to get some insight into how our “leaders” in Washington, D.C. are dealing with what very well may be the greatest financial crisis in the history of our country. To be honest, it scares me!

Remember our initial exposure to the financial sector bailout? All focus was on the figure of $750 BILLION … yes, $750 BILLION! Say that figure out loud slowly. Isn’t it amazing how mundane it sounds? It’s almost as though that was the amount we spent at the mall over the weekend. And yet, that’s quite a bit of money.

How much is it? Consider this:

• A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
• A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
• A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
• A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
• A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

As I said, a BILLION is a large number. Now consider the fact that Bloomberg TV analyst Mark Faber, author of the “Gloom Boom Doom” report, recently declared that the initial proposal of $750 BILLION for the financial sector bailout will actually cost closer to $5 TRILLION!

How much is a TRILLION?

Short and sweet, a TRILLION ($1,000,000,000,000) is 1,000 billions!

If you counted to a TRILLION out loud, one number per second, it would take you 31,688 years to complete the task! A stack of $100 bills totaling $1 TRILLION would be 789 miles high OR 144 Mt. Everests stacked on top of one another!

Now consider the fact that our political leaders in Washington, D.C., from both parties, are so effortlessly tossing around both terms while never mentioning the fact that this bailout money will come out of OUR pockets. This is complacency.

What really concerns me is the fact that WE have accepted this rhetoric with very little, if any, rebuttal or concern. This too is complacency!

Dictionaries define complacency as: “the feeling you have when you are satisfied, especially when unaware of upcoming trouble.” Does this not describe our current status in light of the financial sector bailout and the auto industry rescue? $5 TRILLION plus!

This entire scenario reminds me of an age-old Generational Gem involving a complacent frog and a kettle of boiling water.

The story’s origins are rooted in nineteenth-century physiological literature. An article co-written by G. Stanley Hall from 1887 indicates that many experiments were performed on frogs in the 1870s and 1880s for the purposes of determining how reactive their nervous systems were to various types of stimuli. Another source lists an experiment done in 1882 at Johns Hopkins which produced similar findings.

The theory was simple. They say that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will leap out right away to escape the danger.

However, if you put a frog in a kettle that is filled with water that is cool and pleasant, and then you gradually heat the kettle until it starts boiling, the frog will not become aware of the threat until it is too late. The frog will soon pass out and eventually die … unaware of any threat. The frog’s survival instincts are geared towards detecting sudden changes.

This parable is often used to illustrate how humans have to be careful to watch slowly changing trends in the environment, not just the sudden changes. It’s a warning to keep us paying attention not just to obvious threats but to more slowly developing ones.

Remember a tough little Texan businessman, Ross Perot, who ran for President in 1992? He appeared on network television with charts and graphs to warn us of the very financial industry threat we now face. His illustrations were ridiculed by seasoned politicians insuring his defeat.

Threats of the U.S. auto industry demise have been evident since the 60s. However, at the time, the water in our kettle was obviously room temperature. Are you starting to feel the heat?

This same complacency has led to the extinction of tens of thousands of U.S. businesses in the past year. It’s all a matter of leadership.

The next time you hear a politician use the words “billion” or “trillion” in a casual manner, remember our friend the frog. Inform your “leaders” in Washington, D.C. that the water in our kettle is reaching the boiling point!

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Indra Nooyi is the Chairperson of the Board and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PepsiCo., the world’s fourth largest food and beverage company. Nooyi has been named the #1 Most Powerful Business Woman in the world in 2006 and 2007 by Fortune Magazine. According to the polls Forbes magazine conducted, Nooyi ranks third on the 2008 list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women. She was also named one of America’s Best Leaders of 2008 by U.S. News & World Report. Today, Indra Nooyi presides over 185,000 PepsiCo employees in nearly 200 countries.

Indra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India in 1955. Her father worked at the State Bank of Hyderabad and her grandfather was a district judge. She completed her schooling in Madras, India. She went on to earn her Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Madra Christian College in 1974 and immediately entered the PGDBA (Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Administration) program at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. After graduating from IIM-C in 1976 with a Master’s degree in finance and marketing. She worked in India and played lead guitar in an all-women rock band in her hometown of Madras, India.

Against her parents’ advice, she came to the United States in 1978 at age 23 to earn her M.B.A. in Public and Private Management at Yale where she worked as a dorm receptionist—opting for the graveyard shift because it paid an extra 50 cents per hour. She also played cricket in college and sang karaoke at corporate gatherings. Her parents thought she should have stayed in India, gotten married and raised at a family. “I always had this urge, this desire, this passion,” she once explained, to “settle in the United States,” where she is now the married mother of two daughters.

After earning her Master’s degree from Yale in 1980, Nooyi started at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). From there she moved on to strategy positions at Motorola and ABB. She then went on to become the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Strategic Marketing for Asea Brown Boveri (ABB—the world’s largest builder of electricity grids) and Vice President and Director of Corporate Strategy and Planning at Motorola. She also had stints at Mettur Beardsell (textiles) and Johnson & Johnson.

Nooyi came to PepsiCo in 1994 as the company’s chief strategist. From the start, she helped executives make some tough decisions. She played a vital role in starting Tricon, which is currently known as Yum Brands, Inc. Seeing less future in fast food, she moved the company to shed KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell in 1997, arguing PepsiCo couldn’t bring enough value to the fast food industry.

Betting instead on beverages and packaged food, she helped engineer a $3 billion acquisition of Tropicana in 1998 and a $14 billion takeover in 2001 of Quaker Oats, maker of Gatorade. The moves proved prophetic choices. Company earnings soared, and so, too, did her stature.

According to BusinessWeek, since she became CFO in 2000, the company’s annual revenues have risen 72%, while net profit more than doubled, to $5.6 billion in 2006.

On August 14, 2006, she was named the CEO of PepsiCo, becoming the fifth CEO in PepsiCo’s 42-year history. By 2006, Nooyi was one of just two finalists to succeed CEO Steven Reinemund as leader of one of the world’s best-known brands. She got the nod in August becoming the fifth CEO in PepsiCo’s 42-year history. She then immediately flew to visit the other contender. “Tell me whatever I need to do to keep you,” she implored. They had worked together for years, both loved music, and Nooyi was persuasive, offering to boost her competitor’s compensation to nearly match her own. He agreed to serve as her right-hand man, creating her version of a team of rivals.

As CEO, she has continued to pursue her unusual, and tremendously ambitious, vision for reinventing PepsiCo. She is now focusing on taking the company from snack food to health food, from caffeine colas to fruit juices, and from shareholder value to sustainable enterprise. That is an ambitious goal which she plans to attain.

In doing so, Nooyi is attempting to move beyond the historic trade-off between profits and people. Captured in her artful mantra—”Performance with purpose”—she wants to give Wall Street what it wants but also the planet what it needs.

By 2010, Nooyi has pledged half of the firm’s U.S. revenue will come from healthful products such as low-cal Gatorade and high-fiber oatmeal. The company will also abandon fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar and will campaign vigorously against obesity.

Nooyi faces many challenges in today’s globally competitive, financially challenging world. If she can lead her organization to the goals she’s established, and her historic record indicates that she can, Nooyi can pretty much choose her next challenge.

With annual revenue of $39 billion, the enterprise she leads is as large as many federal agencies, and moving to run one of those agencies could be her next venture. “After PepsiCo, I do want to go to Washington,” she has said. “I want to give back.”

For all that, Nooyi remains profoundly personal. She told the BBC in March that she calls her mother in India twice a day. “At the end of the day,” said the CEO of one of America’s biggest enterprises, “don’t forget that you’re a person, don’t forget you’re a mother, don’t forget you’re a wife, don’t forget you’re a daughter.” When your job is done, “what you’re left is family, friends, and faith.”

Nooyi is a Successor Fellow at Tale Corporation and serves on the board of several organizations, including Motorola, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International Rescue Committee, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

In 2007, she was awarded Padma Bhushan by Government of India. In 2008, she was elected to the fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In March 2008, Nooyi was elected Chairman of the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC), a non-profit business advocacy organization representing nearly 300 of the largest U.S. companies doing business in India and two dozen of India’s global companies investing in America. Nooyi leads USIBC’s Board of Directors, an assembly of 25 senior executives representing a cross-section of American industry.

Among her friends are former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who describes her as a “wild New York Yankees fan and a caring CEO.” Though raised on cricket, she has become an expert on New York Yankees statistics and Chicago Bulls teamwork. Nooyi is a master of substance, knowing PepsiCo’s product lines and financial metrics in depth.

Keep an eye on this dynamic leader as you are going to hear much more about her in the coming years.

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

In the spirit of C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement), here are this week’s new facts—one for each day of your coming week. Pass them on to others to keep the spirit alive or invite your friends and family to visit our blog where they can also view previous entries.

• A forest fire moves faster uphill than downhill.
• Ants stretch when they wake up in the morning!
• Birds, proportionate to their size and weight, are 75% stronger than people. Also they have no sweat glands. They cool their bodies with air sacs and by opening their beaks and vibrating the walls of their throats.
• Each square inch of human skin contains 20 feet of blood vessels.
• Famous storyteller Hans Christian Anderson couldn’t spell.
• Hummingbirds can fly 500 miles without stopping.
• In the term ZIP code, the letters Z-I-P stand for Zone Improvement Plan.

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Believe it or not, I’ve stumbled on even more “obvious questions” that don’t seem to have obvious answer. This list brings our grand total to 220 now with no end in sight.

If you have any additions to add to our list, please feel free to send them along.

• How do you write zero in Roman numerals?
• If you put a chameleon in a room full of mirrors, what color would it turn?
• Now that Microsoft is so big, should it be called Macrosoft?
• Why are the obituaries found in the “living” section of the newspaper?
• Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?”
• Why is it called lipstick if you can still move your lips?
• Why is it the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather
  forecasts and economists?
• Why do alarm clocks “go off” when they start making noise. Isn’t that “going on”?
• Why don’t woodpeckers get headaches when they slam their head on a tree all day?
• Why do overalls have belt loops, since they are held up at the top by the straps?
• Why do mirrors reflect backwards but not upside down?
• Why do we call it a “hot water heater”? It’s actually a “cold water heater.”
• Why is there not a Channel 1 on TV?
• Why is it watching your daughter being picked up by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius violin to a gorilla?
• Why is it when you mix water and flour together you get glue … and then you add eggs and sugar, and you get cake? Where does the glue go?

Harry K. Jones is a professional, motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.