Admonishing Boards of Directors

“Boards (have) to start doing their jobs.”
Tupperware CEO Rick Goings


By Eric Seidel, CEO
The Media Trainers®

Savvy CEO’s go into news interviews with the mindset of “what’s in it for me?” Nothing wrong with that! The media usually aren’t asking you for an interview just to do you a favor. They need you to help them, so, there’s every reason for you to think about what you can get out of it, too.

That means having a clear vision of the medium you’re talking with, who are their readers/viewers/listeners, and who in that large pool of audiences you need to reach with a premeditated agenda.

Tupperware CEO Rick Goings made the most of his interview with CNBC’s Rebecca Jarvis at the Yale CEO Summit earlier this month. He sent a clear message to investors, CEOs and especially boards of directors. “Growth and perpetuation of the enterprise” is job one of a board, according to Goings.

He added that “weak strategies with weak CEOs has been allowed to exist because of weak boards.” (Click on the video below for the essence of Goings’ remarks.)

Goings obviously isn’t excited by all the government involvement today in the U.S. free enterprise sector. GM should’ve been allowed to fail, he said. And he blames the GM board for not acting years ago in changing leadership and getting a new business model that could’ve prevented the automaker’s historic decline into bankruptcy.

While Goings took advantage of the CNBC interview, the business network probably—and happily—received more than it had hoped thanks to the Tupperware executive’s strong comments.