Sublime

My job was getting employees at every level to focus on one priority: pleasing customers. And it was also getting managers to focus on the obvious corollary: pleasing employees.

The brothers treated their employees as family and were famous for their reluctance to stand on ceremony and their willingness to get their hands dirty. From the beginning they invested heavily in education. All employees were required to take an introductory academic course and could then choose commercial or technical training if they wished. The

“While our competitors are dropping standards, we will raise ours,” I said. “And we’ll hold firm on pricing.” The directive I gave to all our GMs was summed up in one phrase: “Control without compromise.”

One area that Indra did not sacrifice while at Pepsi was empathy for her employees. She regularly wrote to the parents of her senior employees, giving them a type of report card (invariably a positive one) about how their children were performing. How can your mother get a favorable report card from your boss and you not feel undying loyalty to tha