December 5, 2002
Wrap up: Frito-Lay CEO Expounds on Leadership, Diversity
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Austin, TEXAS - In a talk to McCombs MBAs at The University of Texas at Austin, Al Bru, President and CEO of Frito-Lay North America, the world's largest snack food company, urged students to cultivate their "people skills" if they want to become leaders in today's corporate environment.
Bru, visiting campus on behalf of the MBA program's Executive Speaker Series, spoke to students for 20 minutes before fielding questions. A team of senior managers from Frito-Lay joined him including CFO Dave Rader.
The most profitable division of the global conglomerate Pepsico, Frito-Lay is the fastest-growing food company in the U.S. The 90,000-employee firm, with North American headquarters in Plano, Texas, has operations in 45 companies, owns five one billion dollar brands, and last year boasted $9 billion in revenues and more than $2 billion in profits. Despite the recent economic downturn, the company has shown 10% annual growth over the last three years.
Known for such world-famous brands as Lay's, Ruffles, Doritos, Tostitos and Cheetos, Frito-Lay is one of the more diverse companies in the U.S. In addition to the Cuban-born Bru, three of the firm's top five executives are "diverse" by U.S. standards and the company prides itself on the fact that 30% of its management was born outside of the U.S.
Frito-Lay has been a dedicated partner of the McCombs School. In 2000, the firm sponsored the new Frito-Lay Student Leadership Center, a dramatic improvement in the school's student facilities. Since 1997 the company has hired more than 30 McCombs MBAs. Beginning with the class of 2003, Frito-Lay will begin hiring select McCombs MBAs for a fast-track program to senior management.
On Thursday, after providing an overview of Frito-Lay's operations, Bru outlined his vision of how to develop corporate leadership. In addition to reflections from his own career, he offered insights based on a "leadership success pyramid" that Frito-Lay developed from interviews with scores of top managers.
At the pyramid's base were planning and execution. To move up, Frito-Lay managers must master these pre-requisites and then cultivate courageous leadership, people development, savvy communications, and integrity. The pinnacle, operational excellence, pulls all of the factors together.
Bru defined courageous leadership as "being willing to take the tough assignments, the jobs that no one else wants to take." He also stressed that people skills were especially critical for corporate leaders, "Since once you rise to a certain point in an organization, your success will depend on having people who will succeed for you."
Other notable soundbites:
Bru, on selecting a company to work for:
"Join a company that's a growth company, because that is what will give you the best opportunity to rise up through the organization and to grow professionally."
On Frito-Lay and customer insights:
"We have some of the brightest people in the company working on customer insights -- the person who heads up our customer insight division for example used to be our executive VP of marketing. I asked him because we need someone looking at the future with a clear field of vision."
On Frito-Lay's biggest challenge:
"For any successful company, the greatest internal weakness can be to become so successful that you think you're invincible. The biggest challenge is what you don't know. More specifically, at Frito-Lay what we're looking at now is this increasing consumer taste segmentation that is characterizing today's snack food market."
CFO Dave Rader on his best piece of career advice:
"Three things. 1. You want a job where what you do matters to the success of the company. 2. You want to be at a company and a job where you are always learning. 3. You want to work with people you like because you're going to spend a lot of time with them."
On the business case for diversity:
"Within 20 years, half the U.S. will be diverse. How are you going to be successful in a diverse marketplace if you're management is not diverse? At Frito-Lay, we have set specific goals for diversity within the management ranks, and we've put targets on senior management to achieve those goals. This is an issue because we are living in a very diverse world."
For more information on the Executive Speaker Series contact series coordinator Chris Cochran, MBA 03, (512-471-3081).
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
