IIMC SAYS PEPSICO CEO INDRA NOOYI WAS AVERAGE STUDENT
Different people bloom at different times of life
Being average isn’t a bad thing at all as Indra Nooyi has shown. The recently appointed CEO of PepsiCo has been described by her teachers and batchmates from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta as having being an average student. To be considered average in academics is seen as a sign of an average life ahead. Parents spend years drilling into their children’s head to excel and expect them to do so in academics as that is seen as the ticket to a better future. So why should an institute like IIMC be proud of an average student like Nooyi? Does this mean that one need not excel at studies and still hope to occupy the CEO’s chair?
History is replete with examples of people who failed or were average students, but not only were they successful later in life, some even changed the course of history. Napoleon, for instance, finished near the bottom of his class at military school yet is considered to be one of the most brilliant military strategists. Albert Einstein did poorly in elementary school and even failed his first entrance exam at the Zurich Polytechnic.
Human beings change and different people blossom at different stages of life. And that is why an average student like Nooyi can bloom into an extremely successful professional. By putting too much emphasis on just brilliant academic performance while recruiting, companies can lose out on the real achievers.
A publishing house may have never hired William Faulkner — he had failed to graduate from high school as he did not have enough credits. It’s an altogether different matter that he went on to win the Nobel prize for literature. Or for that matter George Washington would not have been considered presentable in today’s marks-obsessed world as he had poor grammar skills and did not do too well academically. Thomas Edison’s fate would have been well and truly sealed had emphasis been put on the fact that he was thrown out of school when he was 12 years old because he was thought to be dumb and bad at mathematics. The bottomline is that anyone can be successful — even those who were just average students.
Being average isn’t a bad thing at all as Indra Nooyi has shown. The recently appointed CEO of PepsiCo has been described by her teachers and batchmates from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta as having being an average student. To be considered average in academics is seen as a sign of an average life ahead. Parents spend years drilling into their children’s head to excel and expect them to do so in academics as that is seen as the ticket to a better future. So why should an institute like IIMC be proud of an average student like Nooyi? Does this mean that one need not excel at studies and still hope to occupy the CEO’s chair?
History is replete with examples of people who failed or were average students, but not only were they successful later in life, some even changed the course of history. Napoleon, for instance, finished near the bottom of his class at military school yet is considered to be one of the most brilliant military strategists. Albert Einstein did poorly in elementary school and even failed his first entrance exam at the Zurich Polytechnic.
Human beings change and different people blossom at different stages of life. And that is why an average student like Nooyi can bloom into an extremely successful professional. By putting too much emphasis on just brilliant academic performance while recruiting, companies can lose out on the real achievers.
A publishing house may have never hired William Faulkner — he had failed to graduate from high school as he did not have enough credits. It’s an altogether different matter that he went on to win the Nobel prize for literature. Or for that matter George Washington would not have been considered presentable in today’s marks-obsessed world as he had poor grammar skills and did not do too well academically. Thomas Edison’s fate would have been well and truly sealed had emphasis been put on the fact that he was thrown out of school when he was 12 years old because he was thought to be dumb and bad at mathematics. The bottomline is that anyone can be successful — even those who were just average students.
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