Chris Peterson, CEO of Newell Brands, joins Adam Mendler on the Thirty Minute Mentors podcast to share how he went from a plant accounting job at a Procter & Gamble cosmetics factory to leading a $7 billion global consumer products company with more than 21,000 employees. Their conversation covers turnaround strategy, building and empowering teams, and the decision-making habits that separate effective CEOs from the rest. Read the full transcript of Adam’s conversation with Chris Peterson.
Episode Summary
Chris Peterson became CEO of Newell Brands in 2023, taking the reins of a company that owns roughly 80 consumer brands, including Sharpie, Rubbermaid, Crockpot, and Graco, and operates more than 40 manufacturing plants across 42 countries. On this episode of Thirty Minute Mentors, Peterson joins Adam Mendler to walk through the leadership lessons that carried him from an entry-level accounting role at Procter & Gamble’s CoverGirl Cosmetics plant in Baltimore to the top job at a Fortune 500 company, and the systematic approach he has used to turn Newell around.
Peterson traces his foundation back to Cornell University, where he graduated in the top five percent of his class with an engineering degree while playing varsity golf all four years, a combination he credits with teaching him both rigorous problem-solving and the mental discipline to perform under pressure. He describes an early turning point on the CoverGirl plant floor, where he learned that career advancement comes from, in his words, taking advantage of the opportunities to be curious and to engage more broadly than just the job in front of you, rather than waiting to be told what to do next.
Much of the conversation centers on the three skills Peterson considers most critical for a CEO leading a large, complex organization: developing and executing strategy, communicating clearly and consistently across a workforce of more than 21,000 people, and building strong teams that can be trusted to lead without constant oversight. He walks Adam through the turnaround framework he applied at Newell Brands, starting with an honest assessment of where the company’s capabilities fell short, then applying a where-to-play, how-to-win strategic framework to decide which of Newell’s roughly 80 brands and which of its geographic markets deserved the most investment. Peterson notes that just 25 of those brands and 10 of those countries account for about 90 percent of the company’s sales and profit, a concentration that shaped where he focused the turnaround. Rebuilding the leadership bench was part of that same effort. Peterson discusses the difficult, deliberate process of replacing roughly 75 percent of the company’s top 500 leadership roles since 2023 in order to put the right people in place to execute the new strategy.
Peterson also speaks to how leadership and innovation intersect at a company built on physical products people use every day. He describes the development of the Graco EasyTurn car seat as a case study in listening to customers first, explaining how consumer research uncovered a specific parent pain point around installing and rotating car seats, which Newell’s product teams then engineered a solution around. It is a practical example, Peterson says, of innovation that starts with a real problem rather than a technology looking for a use.
On decision-making, Peterson pushes back against the instinct to wait for complete information before acting. If I have 70 or 80 percent of the information, he tells Adam, it’s probably the right time to make the call, arguing that intelligent risk-taking, not perfect certainty, is what separates leaders who move their organizations forward from those who stall out chasing more data. He extends that philosophy to how he handles mistakes on his team, saying he does not mind anyone who tries something and fails, as long as the same mistake is not repeated. That tolerance for smart risk, paired with a low tolerance for repeated errors, is central to how Peterson describes building a culture that can move fast without becoming reckless.
Throughout the episode, Peterson returns to a theme that Adam Mendler’s guests on Thirty Minute Mentors frequently echo: that the power of the organization is much stronger than any individual, and that time management is one of the most critical skills separating successful CEOs from everyone else. For listeners interested in corporate turnarounds, consumer products leadership, or the practical mechanics of scaling decision-making across a large organization, Peterson’s conversation with Adam offers a candid, detail-rich look at what it actually takes to run a company through change.
What You’ll Learn
- How a where-to-play, how-to-win framework guides brand and market investment across a portfolio of roughly 80 consumer brands, where just 25 brands and 10 countries drive about 90 percent of sales and profit.
- Why Peterson replaced about 75 percent of Newell Brands’ top 500 leadership roles since becoming CEO in 2023, and how he approached rebuilding a leadership bench during a turnaround.
- The three skills Peterson considers most essential for a CEO: strategy development and execution, communicating across a workforce of more than 21,000 employees, and building teams that can be trusted to lead.
- How the Graco EasyTurn car seat was developed by identifying a specific consumer pain point first and engineering the product around it, rather than starting from technology.
- Why Peterson makes decisions at 70 to 80 percent information rather than waiting for certainty, and how he balances intelligent risk-taking with accountability for repeated mistakes.
- The early-career lesson from the CoverGirl Cosmetics plant floor that shaped how Peterson thinks about curiosity and engagement as drivers of career advancement.
- Why Peterson considers time management one of the most critical skills separating successful CEOs from everyone else.
About Chris Peterson
Chris Peterson is the President and CEO of Newell Brands, a global consumer products company whose portfolio includes Sharpie, Rubbermaid, Crockpot, Graco, and roughly 75 other brands sold in more than 40 manufacturing locations across 42 countries. He was named CEO in 2023 and has led the company through a significant operational and leadership turnaround, restructuring its strategic focus around its highest-performing brands and markets and rebuilding a substantial portion of its senior leadership team. Peterson began his career at Procter & Gamble, where an early role as a plant accounting manager at the company’s CoverGirl Cosmetics facility in Baltimore, Maryland gave him his first exposure to manufacturing operations. He graduated from Cornell University in the top five percent of his class with a degree in engineering and played varsity golf for all four of his years there. (Note for whoever implements this page: verify Peterson’s official Newell Brands executive bio at newellbrands.com for the most current title and board or industry affiliations before publishing, since executive bios can change.)
Related Episodes
- Episode 119: Newell Brands CEO Ravi Saligram – Peterson’s immediate predecessor as CEO of Newell Brands, Ravi Saligram, joined Adam to discuss leading the same consumer products portfolio just a few years earlier, offering a direct point of comparison for how Newell’s turnaround strategy has evolved under new leadership.
- Episode 85: Former Honeywell CEO David Cote – Like Peterson, Cote led a large, diversified industrial and consumer-facing company through a major turnaround, and his conversation with Adam covers similar ground on restructuring strategy and rebuilding leadership talent at scale.
- Episode 109: Former Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly – Joly’s turnaround of Best Buy is one of the most studied corporate turnarounds of the past decade, and his conversation with Adam offers a useful complement to Peterson’s own account of stabilizing and refocusing a struggling consumer brand.
- Episode 137: Former Home Depot CEO Frank Blake – Blake’s episode explores leading a large-scale organization through culture change and renewed focus, themes that echo Peterson’s emphasis on rebuilding his leadership bench and refocusing Newell around its strongest brands.
- Episode 40: Former Dunkin’ Donuts CEO Robert Rosenberg – Rosenberg’s conversation with Adam covers building and managing a large portfolio of consumer-facing brands, a useful parallel to Peterson’s work prioritizing Newell’s highest-performing brands and markets.
For more on the leadership and decision-making themes in this episode, see Adam’s posts on how leaders think about risk without playing it safe and executive decision fatigue in leadership, both of which explore the same tension between speed and certainty that Peterson describes in his own decision-making process.
If Chris Peterson’s approach to leading a turnaround and rebuilding a leadership team resonated with you, book Adam Mendler for your next event to bring these same leadership and decision-making lessons to your organization.
