PepsiCo's first-ever chief strategy and transformation officer says cultural change is crucial when implementing tech tools at a company

• PepsiCo is one of the largest companies worldwide, netting $86 billion in revenue last year.
• Athina Kanioura, PepsiCo's first-ever chief strategy and transformation officer, has revamped the company's internal digital strategies.
• This article is part of "Tech Leadership Playbook," a series that shares advice from the most innovative tech execs.

When Athina Kanioura joined PepsiCo in 2020 as its first-ever chief strategy and transformation officer, her goal was to completely revolutionize how the company utilized technology internally. 

But PepsiCo is no mom-and-pop shop. It's a household name in over 200 countries around the globe. With nearly 500 consumer products, seven business divisions, and 300,000 employees, Kanioura had a lot of work to do. 

For the first nine months of her tenure, Kanioura got to know the organization's operations and its people, from C-suite executives and sales managers to delivery drivers and warehouse workers. 

"You need to bring people aboard, not their boss only," she said. "Before we even go and do anything, I need to explain what it means for them. This way, they feel part of the solution and not part of the problem."

With over two decades of technology implementation experience, Kanioura shared insight into how companies — big or small — can strategically implement new tools internally.

Explain how technology will enhance the experience of your workers

Kanioura said technology has a way of scaring employees, not because they won't be able to understand it, but because they don't know how the corporation plans to use it. 

"This is not about taking your job, this isn't about eliminating layers of the organization," she said. "We don't expect it to do wonders, but we need to show them how it will help them to do their job better."

Clueing every employee in on PepsiCo's digital transformation roadmap through clear, concise communication is the first step, Kanioura added. 

"If you treat this as a technology change, it will not be successful," she said. "This is predominantly a cultural and business change powered by technology. So it has to rely on the people who are going to adopt those capabilities." 

Establish global standards at the onset

Every tech leader knows technology is a tool that can be used in a variety of ways — that's the beauty and flaw of it. And a company as large and storied as PepsiCo is sure to have a variety of different workflows throughout the institution. That's what Kanioura found when she began surveying PepsiCo's initial tech strategies. 

"There weren't global standards," she said. Because PepsiCo operates in so many countries, every team had its own functional frameworks and principles. "Everything was siloed."

Consistency is key, too, Kanioura added. If something is not working for the entire organization, it might have to be eliminated for the betterment of all. 

"We had to work to correct and, in some cases, get rid of some of the standards that existed and replace them with global standards," she said. 

Encourage employee education and skill development

One of the ways PepsiCo is implementing its five-year global digital strategy is by launching PepsiCo Digital Academy where employees, no matter what role or position they hold, have access to educational resources to advance their career. 

This has given employees the opportunity to "upskill themselves" and "have a better understanding of what this change means for them," Kanioura said. 

The digital academy offers instructor-led programs, videos, blog posts, and podcasts on topics like leadership and management, as well as "future-ready" skills. 

Encouraging employee education and skill development also makes the company's digital roadmap visible, which is why Kanioura believes it's important for everyone in your organization to know the business's long-term goals. 

"Every employee in the future will be a knowledge worker," Kanioura said. "We all have access to the same technology, the same digital ecosystem, so why not at work? It should be exactly the same. For me, technology and digital is here to empower the human. We have to have a human-centric approach. If I don't do that, I have failed."

Balance the need for speed with ability to execute

Tech moves fast. But people, and corporate culture, do not. And that's where change management comes in. 

"If you ask me, 'Would you like the five-year strategy to be a three-year strategy?' Absolutely!" Kanioura said. "My people would jump up and down. But would a business the size of PepsiCo be able to absorb that change in three years? Absolutely not. I would break the company." 

Kanioura added, "People who come from tech are domain experts, and they can learn the business. But, if there's someone who's been a salesperson for 15 years, it's going to be very hard for them to learn technology. You have to find the right way of communication."

Mapping out a communication campaign and establishing global standards are great first steps, she said. But the real work is managing expectations. "A lot of my colleagues want to move fast, and then they move fast, and then they fail," she said. 

One of the ways Kanioura believes businesses can expedite technological innovation is by identifying change agents: people within your organization who are naturally curious and have tech savviness. Leaders can identify change agents either by a global recommendation process or by tapping managers to invite members of their team. 

Change agents then go on to take courses in functional tech skills, like data analysis, software engineering, or even artificial intelligence. Then they report back to their teams on how they can adopt the new technology they've learned and act as an ambassador for the company's broader digital transformation goals. 

At the end of the day, Kanioura believes it's important to know who you're trying to help with the assistance of technology and not be driven by bottom-line growth. 

"You need to find ways to drive adoption," Kanioura said. "I don't build applications for my engineers. I build the applications for the consumers, our customer partners, and our employees."