The letter Indra Nooyi wrote to her team's parents

Think about the best manager you’ve ever had.

I’m guessing you don’t remember them for a strategy or a target. You remember a moment. A time they noticed you. A time they said, “I see what you’re doing, and it matters.”

This month’s story is about one of those moments.

The visit home

In 2001, Indra Nooyi was named President of PepsiCo. It was a huge moment for a woman who grew up in Chennai, and she flew home to India to see her mother.

What happened next surprised her. Relatives and neighbours came to the house all day. But they didn’t congratulate Indra. They walked up to her mother and said, “You did such a good job raising her.”

In that moment, Indra realised something she had never thought about in all her years in corporate life. Behind every person on her team was a family who had shaped them. And no one ever thanked those families.

So she did

Back at work, she started writing letters to the parents of her senior executives. She told them what their son or daughter was achieving, and thanked them for the gift of their child to the company.

Over the years she wrote hundreds of these letters. Many parents wrote back. For some executives, it was the first time their parents truly understood what they did at work, and they never forgot it.

It cost her some time and a pen. It built a kind of loyalty no bonus can buy.

What this taught me

As leaders, we often think recognition has to be big: an award, a promotion, a stage.

But people don’t remember the size of the recognition. They remember that it was personal. That someone looked past the job title and saw the human being, and the people who stand behind them.

When our team in India was certified a Great Place to Work, it didn’t come from anything I said. It came from what our own people said, anonymously. That taught me that how people feel at work isn’t built in big programmes. It’s built in small, everyday moments, like a thank-you that names exactly what someone did.

Try this this month

Pick one person on your team and write them a short note. Not an email with five other things in it. Just this:

“I noticed ___. It made a difference because ___. Thank you.”

If you want to go one step further, the way Indra did, tell their family. A simple message like “Your daughter did something remarkable this week” can stay with a parent for years.

Your turn

Who’s the manager you still remember, and what did they do? I’d love to hear. Reply to the letter in your inbox, or send me a message on LinkedIn.

Until next month,
Hitesh