“Every morning you've got to wake up with a healthy fear that the world is changing, and a conviction that, to win, you have to change faster and be more agile than anyone else.”
Healthy Fear and Conviction
From Adi Ignatius’s interview with Nooyi on design thinking, Harvard Business Review, September 2015 (pp. 80-85). The line closes the interview, in response to a question about whether Nooyi still has the rebellious streak she had growing up in Madras.
She described what “rebel” meant growing up in Madras: playing in a rock band, climbing trees, things that broke “a well-defined conservative stereotype,” balanced against being “a good student and a good daughter, so I never brought shame on the family.” The pivot into the line: “I’m still a bit of a rebel, always saying that we cannot sit still.” In childhood, “cannot sit still” meant doing what young women weren’t supposed to do. As a CEO, it means refusing to be outrun: a “healthy fear” that the world is changing, and the conviction to move faster than anyone. Same trait, scaled.