Nashua Corporation board collapse and acquisition failure

Tom's personal experience on the Nashua Corporation board (1993 onward). A new CEO took the half-billion-dollar company to a quarter-billion in one year; pushed for a twenty-five-million-dollar European acquisition; twelve other board members voted yes despite all twelve having articulated reasons against. Tom abstained. He was later given a Steuben glass mountain lion sculpture as a parting gift — the "mountain lion ready to pounce" — and a consulting retainer. Used as the closing demonstration of the lecture's lesson about going along with the crowd.

In 1993 I was asked to serve on the board of directors of a company called Nashua Corporation up in Nashua, New Hampshire. It'd been there since 1845, started out making coated playing cards that all the people in the Western movies would be playing poker with — Nashua playing cards. Nashua was now sort of a struggling half-billion-dollar-a-year sales company. I was put on the board by the outgoing CEO, who had saved the company from bankruptcy in like 1983. He was now retirement age, he needed to put someone on the board, and he put me on the board. We won't talk about why. I was a little surprised. I knew Mitt Romney — I had his kids in Cub Scouts — and I said, "Mitt, I've never been on a board. What do you do?" He says, "It's easy, just go to the meetings, cash the checks." Well, not exactly. Not this board.

Used to make the "balance professional and personal" point. New CEO's spouse wanted to stay in California; CEO failed within a year. Charlie Clough's regret about not interviewing the spouse.

When I was 43, I was put on the board of a manufacturing company that had $500 million in sales. They'd been around since 1843. Company called Nashua Corporation up in Nashua, New Hampshire. They started out making playing cards — so all the cowboys out in the west could have something to do at night. They'd play cards, and Nashua made them. Nashua got into a number of things. They hired a new CEO. The old CEO had been there for twenty-five years. He had helped save the company from bankruptcy. He was a very good guy — of course he was a good guy, he's the one who put me on the board. We had a problem after one year with the new CEO, and it was partly California culture coming into New England culture, and they're not the same.

When I was in my early 40s, I was asked to serve on the board of directors of a company up in New Hampshire. It was a half-billion-dollar company, had been around since 1842. They started out making playing cards. They made paper, and they did some other things, coated paper. We don't have coated paper anymore, but the old stuff — you'd write on one side, it was inked carbonless paper that broke these little bubbles inside of the paper and put an image on the paper underneath. The CEO who put me on the board was recommended to me by this former department head of mine, who knew him through another board he sat on. I met with him the first time before he put me on the board. I said, well, why do you want someone like me? He says, I need someone who's young, who knows something about manufacturing, and is independent. Those are the three criteria.