百事掌門人盧英德的困惑

????盧英德厲聲問道：“現在請再告訴我一遍，百事公司到底有什么問題？”

????盧英德自2006年底擔任百事公司（PepsiCo）首席執行官。說這話之前，她剛剛連珠炮似地拋出一連串公司財務業績數據。數據顯示，公司業績在增長，利潤率相當高，并且通過分紅和股票回購為公司股東們支付了可觀的收益。因此，她不由感到疑惑，問題到底在哪里？究竟是什么原因讓投資者、華爾街分析師和媒體都對她心懷不滿？事到如今，很明顯，她非常憤慨。

????這是一個細雨蒙蒙的早晨，盧英德乘坐公司專機從位于紐約郊區的公司總部飛行25分鐘趕到位于康涅狄格州基靈利的菲多利（Frito-Lay）工廠。她半夜看完《每日脫口秀》（The Daily Show）和《科爾伯特報告》（The Colbert Report）這兩檔喜歡的節目后才上床睡覺，而清早四點鐘就已經起床了。她說：“人們都說睡眠是上帝的恩賜。但他可從來沒給過我這個天賦?！彼稽c也不會感到疲倦。她解釋道，她如何將百事公司從一家旗下擁有百事可樂（Pepsi）、激浪（Mountain Dew）、樂事薯片（Lay’s）、多力多滋（Doritos）、奇多（Cheetos）和其他數百種食品飲料的“北美休閑產品公司”，轉型為一家生產健康食品的全球企業。在這個肥胖癥成為全球首要健康問題的時期，健康食品將會大受歡迎。她反復強調，做出這一重大轉變是“正確的決策”。此外，公司在“轉型的同時也獲得了良好業績”，她在前面已經提到過那些財務報表上成績。盡管如此，普遍的觀點依然認為盧英德和百事公司都面臨著難題。

????眼下正是任何轉型過程中都會遇到的最困難的時期，因為尚未獲得預期收益，也沒人知道到底什么時候才能達成收益目標。公司前任首席執行官史蒂夫?雷尼蒙德至今尚未公開發表過他對公司前景的看法。他說：“最近的情況讓我回想起了公司歷史上的幾大關鍵時刻，大膽的領導者做出了并不太受歡迎的決策，但這些決策對定位公司的未來發展來說是非常正確的?！崩?，1965年百事公司總裁唐納德?肯德爾將百事可樂與菲多利公司合并。雷尼蒙德稱：“當時沒有幾個人認為這是個明智的舉措。除非獲得實實在在的業績，否則重大的變革很難得到人們贊賞。百事會獲得實實在在的業績的，我堅信這一點?！?/p>

????那么，評論家們是不是都在信口胡說？他們最常提起的反對盧英德的說法實際上并不靠譜。他們是這么說的：她在任期間公司股票表現很糟糕，這讓公司在勁敵可口可樂公司（Coca Cola）面前蒙羞，因為后者股價大幅飆升（參見“新可口可樂”一文）。此外，她將太多的時間和金錢投入健康食品，使得自己成為克林頓全球計劃（Clinton Global Initiative）的寵兒，但在現實世界里卻沒有消費者愿意買賬，結果讓公司的業務遭受影響。其實這些說法都不對。在盧英德的任期內，公司股票的股東回報率是與標準普爾500指數相符的。跟可口可樂進行比較沒有意義。盧英德剛剛上任時，可口可樂公司剛剛從低迷的十年中恢復過來，而百事公司股票價值已得到充分反映。而且，并沒有證據能夠證明，百事對健康食品的政策傾斜對公司整體業績造成了損害。幾乎所有健康食品都是在盧英德擔任首席執行官很久之前百事公司就已收購的業務，包括桂格食品（Quaker Foods）、純果樂（Tropicana）和佳得樂（Gatorade）等。難怪盧英德會大膽質問：“到底有什么問題？”

????看問題更深入的評論家指出，百事公司確實面臨嚴峻挑戰，這些挑戰已對公司造成了損害。資本收益率大跌，也就是投資者對公司投入總資金的經濟收益百分比，這一比值非常重要。公司旗下最有價值的若干品牌，比如，百事可樂和多力多滋都已經喪失了優勢或者市場份額，甚至兩者都已經不保。在這個行業里，只有以新產品來取悅消費者才能生存。但百事公司的創新能力較弱。公司推出了新口味產品如櫻桃香草味的百事可樂，但沒有哪種產品比得上可口可樂公司的拳頭產品零度可樂（Coke Zero）及其奪人眼球的瓶罐外觀設計?；緢绦惺菍⒄_的產品以正確的量投入正確的店鋪，百事公司在這一點上做得不夠。維持百事產品在零售商店面的覆蓋率也有麻煩。此外，日常管理費用激增使得公司的效率和生產力都低于應有的水平。

????本文節選自將于6月11日出版的《財富》雜志，閱讀英文全文請點擊此處。

????譯者：李玫曉/汪皓

????"Now tell me again -- what exactly is the issue with this company?" Indra Nooyi asks with an edge to her voice.

????She has just rattled off a list of statistics describing the financial performance of PepsiCo (PEP), the company she has run since late 2006. They show that it has been growing, earning high profit margins, and paying respectable returns to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks. So, she wonders, what's the problem? Why on earth has she been taking such an infernal amount of heat from investors, Wall Street analysts, and the media? For she has been, and she clearly resents it.

????It's a drizzly morning, and Nooyi is aboard a company plane for the 25-minute flight from headquarters in suburban New York City to a Frito-Lay plant in Killingly, Conn. She has been up since 4 a.m., having gone to bed at midnight after watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, which she loves. "They say sleep is a gift that God gives you," she observes. "That's one gift I was never given." Definitely not fatigued, she explains how she's been transforming PepsiCo from "a North American fun-for-you company" -- maker of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Lay's potato chips, Doritos, Cheetos, and hundreds of other foods and drinks -- into a global enterprise with a product line that can prosper in a world where obesity is fast becoming the No. 1 health problem. Making that profound shift, she says repeatedly, is "the right thing" to do. What's more, the company has been "performing while transforming," delivering those financial results she cites. Yet for all that, the conventional wisdom is that she and PepsiCo are in trouble.

????This is the hardest time in any transformation, when the returns haven't arrived and no one knows when or if they will. "The recent past reminds me of pivotal moments in our history when bold leaders made decisions that weren't popular but were the right decisions to position the company for the future," says Steve Reinemund, Nooyi's predecessor as CEO, who until now hasn't spoken publicly about the company's prospects. An example was president Donald Kendall's combining Pepsi-Cola with Frito-Lay in 1965. "Few people saw that as smart," Reinemund says. "Major change is never applauded until your numbers prove it. And they will. I'm confident they will."

????Are the critics nuts? The most widely repeated case against Nooyi is in fact off-base. It goes like this: The stock has tanked on her watch, shaming PepsiCo in comparison with the eternal enemy, Coca-Cola (KO), which has soared (see "The New Coke"). And she has torpedoed the company's performance by committing far too much time and money to healthy products that make a CEO the darling of the Clinton Global Initiative but that real-world consumers don't want to buy. None of that is true. The stock's total return to shareholders has exactly matched the S&P 500 (SPX) over her tenure. The Coke comparison is invalid; when Nooyi got her job, Coke was just starting to recover from a dismal decade, while PepsiCo stock was richly valued. There's no evidence that a greater focus on good-for-you products -- nearly all of which are in Quaker Foods, Tropicana, and Gatorade, businesses PepsiCo bought long before Nooyi became CEO -- has damaged overall performance. So, as Nooyi defiantly asks, "What's the issue?"

????Critics who have looked deeper point out that PepsiCo does face significant challenges that have hurt the company. Its all-important return on capital -- economic profit as a percentage of all the money that investors have put into the company -- has plunged. Several of its most valuable brands, such as Pepsi and Doritos, have lost strength or market share, or both. In an industry that survives by exciting consumers with new products, innovation has been weak; the company has introduced flavor tweaks such as Cherry Vanilla Pepsi, for example, but nothing to match Coke's hugely successful Coke Zero and attention-grabbing bottle and can designs. Basic execution -- getting the right products into the right stores in the right quantities all the time -- has been subpar; the company has had trouble holding its share of retailers' floor space. Overhead has ballooned, leaving the company less efficient and productive than it needs to be.