A Balanced Life

From the boardroom to the cafeteria, Warren Batts is known as an approachable, insightful executive

A soft-spoken, unpretentious, long-range strategist, Batts is chairman of Chicago-based Premark International and chairman and chief executive officer of Orlando-based Tupperware Corp.

An electrical engineering graduate, Batts was valedictorian of the class of 1961 with a 3.95 grade-point average. Not too bad for someone who flunked Georgia Tech's entrance examination.

"l don't take those kinds of tests well," Batts says. "I can think of too many answers. I'm never sure whether they want a theoretical or common-sense answer."

It is notable that Batts attended Tech at all.

"I lived in Jacksonville, Fla., at the time," Batts says. "I wanted to be an engineer, and I thought I had been ad- mitted to Tech. I came to Atlanta after having quit my job and sold the house, and I found that all I had been invited to do was take an entrance exam, which I proceeded to fail."

One long look at his May 1956 exam prompted vet- eran registrar W. L. Carmichael to give Batts some blunt advice: "You're not college material. Go home and try to get your job back."

Batts, 24 and a veteran of the Naval Reserve, convinced Carmichael to give him a chance, anyway. He enrolled in Tech's summer remedial program and was admitted on probation as a co-op student in the fall of 1956. The co-op program benefited him, he says.

"I probably would not have been a very good student if I had gone straight through, because I found I could be intense for about one quarter at a time, and then I needed about three months off," Batts says with a laugh.

"The co-op experience helped me understand myself a lot better," he adds. "Even though I was trying to become an engineer when I started, I didn't fully understand what engineering was all about. Along the way, I learned I would not be a very good engineer. I could take the tests and get the grades, but I just wanted to get back into the business world."

When he graduated at age 29, Batts was the oldest coop student to have graduated from Tech. He attended Harvard Business School on a fellowship, earning a master's degree in business administration and graduating in the top 10 percent of his class.

But he graduated without a job.

"I was too old for most of the companies that were recruiting at Harvard," Batts explains. "One of my pro- fessors got me my first job. It was with Kendall Textiles in Charlotte [N.C]. I was probably the number-three person in the manufacturing department."

The Long Climb Up

Premark, which stands for "premier trademarks," includes such global brands as Hobart, Wilsonart, West Bend, Florida Tile and Precor, and had $2.3 billion in sales in 1996. The Wall Street Journal recently ranked Premark's total shareholder return for one, three, five and 10 years among the top 20 percent of New York Stock Exchange companies it analyzedýa track record Batts considers his "report card" for his 10 years as the conglomerate's CEO.

Tupperware had $1.4 billion in sales in 1996. Batts, who is retiring in September, is helping set up the infrastructureýcorporate governance, investor relations, audit and treasury functions--for Tupperware to operate as a public company.

Batts occupies an immaculate corner office on the third floor of Premark International's corporate headquarters in Deerfield, Ill. One window overlooks a serene green space dominated by pine trees, while another overlooks the Tristate Tollway and the rush of traffic that sweeps by. Batts doesn't spend much time contemplating either viewýhe's out of his office mc~ro caftan than he's in it.

"Travel is numero uno in time consumption," says Batts, who spends three to four days a week shuttling between meetings involving Tupperware, Premark and the financial community. This year, Batts also serves as chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers, which adds to a hectic travel schedule. It's a lifestyle in which briefcases of old and new mail are exchanged at airports and a beeper is indispensable.

"I can always find him through the beeper," says Nancy Lutton, who has been his administrative assistant at Premark for four years. "We do a lot of communicat- ing. He doesn't necessarily check in, but if I need him, I beep him and usually hear back within a few minutes."

Batts is noted for being an extraordinarily approachable executive.

"There is a wonderful dichotomy in Warren," says Rick Goings, Tupperware president and chief operating officer. "He travels well in a boardroom, then he'll go get in a taxiýnot get in the back seat, but the front seat. He'll start asking the driver about his life. Warren has a wonderful balance about him. Given his level of success, he's the most unpretentious person I know."

It is a quality that has enabled Batts to relate to people who work for him at every level of the organization, Goings says. When he dines in the company cafeteria, he doesn't pick a table to himself. He knows many employees are in awe of sitting with the chairman.

"He'll go into the cafeteria, pick a table and sit with people," Goings relates. "He'll sit down in the middle of the grounds-maintenance crew. Warren asks a lot of questions about what you think, what you do, what you think you should doýthat empowers people."

Management Principles

"I believe in maintaining high integrity, doing my homework as well as I can and picking the very best people possible," Batts says. "Those would be my three over riding management principles." Picking the "best people" ca be subjective. Batts narrows the process by targeting people with proven records of success. "People who have been successful in the past tend to continue to be successful," he says. But that is not the determining factor.

"When doing reference checks, I basically check integrity. That sort of gets downplayed, but it is still the essence of running a large company. You've got to trust people."

Trust, he says, is also essential in delegating responsibility.

"You have to delegate a great deal in any kind of business that is larger than what you can do yourself," Batts observes. "You don't abdicate; you delegate." In dealing with people, Batts says he attempts to be "very consistent" to avoid any confusion about what is expected of them, and he makes himself "very much available."

"Warren is soft and warm with regard to people and tough on issues," Goings says. "His approach to overall management of a company is very strategic and cerebral. He will generally not look for the near-term things that are going onýhe will want to understand the broader issues. He wants to make sure the management of the companies he runs balances its focus between near-term results and the long termýthe real strategic priorities."

Is he a tough boss? "I'm a pussycat when things are going well," Batts laughs.

And when things are not going well? After four profitable years, Tupperware is experiencing a tough year in 1997. "We came out of the gate soft," Goings says. "When things are going well in a business, Warren is the kind of guy who is tentative, not assuming that they're going to continue to do well. However, during times of difficulty I find him collaborative and supportive. If you bring Warren in on the process early, you have a partner in working through difficulty, rather than a critic."

Batts is philosophical about business cycles.

"I don't feel much pressure [about the job]," Batts says. "If you've been around the track many times, you know how business goes through good periods and bad periods. The key is to keep plugging."

"Warren is a good teacher because he is one of the most intense students I know," Goings says. "This is a guy 64 years old who just got scuba-certified last year. He keeps a checklist of things he's learning how to do."

Batts works out daily to keep physically fit and enjoy' tennis. Although he owns a set of golf clubs, he says he seldom plays. For relaxation, he and his wife, Eloise, whom he married during his sophomore year at Tech, enjoy traveling and attending cultural events.

In February, Tupperware held a worldwide management team meeting in Monte Carlo. Because not all of the organization's directors will have an opportunity to meet Batts before he retires, Goings asked him to make a pre- sentation.

"His presentation was beautiful," Goings says. "It really moved people. Warren talked about valuesýthe value of the individual in relationships, and the interac- tion between business and the concept that if we do good, we'll do well. If we do good things in our commu nity, we'll do well as a business.

"What makes Warren good as a CEO isn't a lot of surface flash--it's substance."