"Every year in consulting is like three years in the corporate world because you have multiple clients, multiple issues - you grow so much"
About this Quote
Consulting gets mythologized as a time machine: step in, and your career accelerates on fast-forward. Indra Nooyi’s line leans into that mythology, but it’s more than hustle-porn. It’s a neat piece of corporate rhetoric that reframes a notoriously punishing model (endless decks, shifting scopes, travel, late nights) as compounding personal growth. The arithmetic is intentionally imprecise; “three years” isn’t a metric, it’s a permission structure. If you endure the grind, you’re not just working harder, you’re becoming someone faster.
The subtext is about exposure, not intelligence. “Multiple clients, multiple issues” signals a kind of curated chaos: you’re dropped into different industries, executive temperaments, and urgent problems before you’ve had time to get comfortable. Comfort is the enemy here. Nooyi is pointing at the consulting advantage as pattern recognition under pressure - learning how to diagnose, persuade, and deliver when you don’t own the organization and can’t wait for perfect data.
Context matters. Nooyi built her credibility in worlds where speed and adaptability are prized, and where leadership is measured by how quickly you can translate complexity into decisions. The quote also flatters the listener: if you’ve done consulting, you’re battle-tested; if you haven’t, it suggests a route to catching up. Quietly, it’s also a defense of elite career pipelines - the idea that certain environments don’t just train you, they multiply you.
The subtext is about exposure, not intelligence. “Multiple clients, multiple issues” signals a kind of curated chaos: you’re dropped into different industries, executive temperaments, and urgent problems before you’ve had time to get comfortable. Comfort is the enemy here. Nooyi is pointing at the consulting advantage as pattern recognition under pressure - learning how to diagnose, persuade, and deliver when you don’t own the organization and can’t wait for perfect data.
Context matters. Nooyi built her credibility in worlds where speed and adaptability are prized, and where leadership is measured by how quickly you can translate complexity into decisions. The quote also flatters the listener: if you’ve done consulting, you’re battle-tested; if you haven’t, it suggests a route to catching up. Quietly, it’s also a defense of elite career pipelines - the idea that certain environments don’t just train you, they multiply you.
Quote Details
| Topic | Career |
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