For the recent class of ex-PepsiCo, it is time to reflect on your legacy. Kudos to those who can match the opportunity to work at another PepsiCo-working for a Multi-National Megacorporation with One Billion daily customers, making 65 Billion dollars a year-I say Dr. Carl Sagan would be proud how PepsiCo associates can roll Billions and Billions off their tongues.
My legacy is in two parts. The exoteric, the one I tell during job interviews, is describing how I was the first to uncover one of Mother Nature’s secrets on taste. I describe how I moved the discovery all the way to a Business Unit. Science, marketing, “organizational savvy”, sales, negotiations-are all in my tool box.
The second, the esoteric, is the one eternally shared inside PepsiCo. This is the one where I saw my boss becoming frustrated and ill, trying to fulfill changing requirements on an initiative. For reasons that continue to bewilder me, I stood up at the town hall and called truth to power- the program was making people sick, managers were too busy to attend this meeting describing their additional work! My PepsiCo career dissipation light turned on, and stayed on.
Equipment I purchased, people I recruited, data I generated, now completely gone from the last cull.
From all this, it seems my time at PepsiCo was for naught. Au contrare, for I did carry away from PepsiCo something most precious-a couple of lifetime friends.
My suggestions for the newest ex-PepsiCo class are to: 1) Recognize that like the Marines you are never ex-PepsiCo and 2) Be sure to secure and maintain the friends you made working for the “Blue Can.”