Chris Peterson is the CEO of Newell Brands, a global consumer products company behind brands including Rubbermaid, Sharpie, Graco, Yankee Candle, and Coleman. Chris joins Adam to share his journey and his best lessons and advice. Chris and Adam discuss a wide range of topics: leadership, turnaround strategy, decision-making, prioritization, talent management, career growth, and more.
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Read the full transcript of Adam’s conversation with Chris Peterson.
Episode Summary
Chris Peterson, the CEO of Newell Brands, was assigned early in his career as the plant accounting manager at a Procter & Gamble CoverGirl Cosmetics plant in Baltimore. A month or two in, he asked his plant manager for a couple of days working the manufacturing line itself as a day laborer, just to understand what the job actually involved. He was not particularly good at it, and the line didn’t perform as well with him on it, but the experience stuck. About a year later, while giving a senior executive a tour of the plant, Chris pointed out a formula card and correctly predicted that the formula card would list about eight ingredients, with talc first. When Chris explained how he knew, the executive told him he was “the type of person that I want to have destined for higher things.”
Chris became CEO of Newell Brands, the parent company of Sharpie, Rubbermaid, and Crock-Pot, in 2023, and used his first day to tell Wall Street plainly that the company was in a turnaround. He then had his team spend about two months assessing Newell against competitors on eleven capabilities considered necessary to win in the industry. On roughly half of them, Newell ranked dead last.
The strategy that followed was built around concentration rather than expansion. Twenty-five of Newell’s brands accounted for ninety percent of its sales and profit, and ten of its forty-two countries accounted for the same share, so those became the explicit focus. Newell consolidated seven separate U.S. selling teams into one and twenty-three independent supply chains into one, built a brand management function, which Newell didn’t really have, and turned over about seventy-five percent of its top five hundred roles, with roughly half filled by moving existing employees into new roles, sometimes as promotions, and half by outside hires.
One product born from that rebuilt innovation process is the Graco EasyTurn car seat. Researchers watching parents put children into car seats noticed how straining the bending and twisting was, especially for new mothers after a C-section, and the team developed a seat that swivels and partly comes out of the back seat so the child can be placed in directly before it locks back into place. It launched in 2025, and Chris says it was the number one-performing new item in all of baby gear launched that year. Rather than waiting for complete information, Chris aims to act once he has roughly seventy to eighty percent of what he needs, and he measures his innovation portfolio the way a batting average works, aiming for about seventy percent of innovations to succeed and learning and course-correcting on the ones that don’t.
What You’ll Learn
- Lead with knowledge, not title: Chris says the authority that comes from being the most informed person on a topic is usually better than positional authority, and the only way to get there is to be a good listener.
- Give every stakeholder a way in: Chris publishes an operating calendar about a year in advance with regional team visits, investor conferences, board and shareholder meetings, and facility visits, and he says direct input from each group makes him a better leader.
- Let people fail, just not twice: Chris tells his teams he doesn’t mind anyone trying something and failing, as long as they don’t make the same mistake twice, while being careful not to fail at something critical for the company.
- Decide once you have 70 to 80 percent of the information you need, Chris says, because waiting for perfect information is too slow and making no decision is itself a decision.
- See the work firsthand: Chris makes trips to the little over 40 manufacturing plants Newell operates so he does not become disconnected from what is happening in the business.
- Be curious beyond your job: Chris says taking chances to learn and engage beyond the job you were given will make you a better manager over time.
About Chris Peterson
Chris Peterson is the CEO of Newell Brands, the more than seven billion dollar parent company of brands including Sharpie, Rubbermaid, Crock-Pot, and Graco. He earned a B.S. in operations research and industrial engineering from Cornell, where he played golf. Chris spent 20 years at Procter & Gamble and later held senior finance and operating roles at Ralph Lauren and Revlon before joining Newell as chief financial officer in 2018. Since becoming Newell’s CEO in 2023, he has led a public turnaround built around focusing the company on its leading brands and countries and closing its biggest capability gaps.
Related Episodes
- Episode 119: Newell Brands CEO Ravi Saligram
For more on leading Newell Brands, Ravi discusses serving as its CEO, after previously leading OfficeMax, along with his lessons on branding, turnarounds, and trust. - Episode 109: Former Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly
For more on leading a turnaround, Hubert discusses the leadership philosophy and contrarian strategic decisions behind Best Buy’s turnaround. - Episode 87: Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Mark Tritton
For more on turning around a retailer, Mark discusses leading Bed Bath & Beyond’s turnaround and his lessons on leadership, team-building, and branding. - Episode 94: Former Ingredion CEO Ilene Gordon
For more on leading a Fortune 500 company, Ilene, who grew Ingredion from $2 billion to $10 billion in market cap, discusses her lessons on time management and hiring. - Episode 111: RH CEO Gary Friedman
For more on transforming a struggling company, Gary, who took over RH, formerly Restoration Hardware, when it was on the verge of bankruptcy, discusses his journey from community college dropout to the Forbes 400, along with leadership, mentorship, hiring, and branding.
