Speech sub Record copy REMARKS BY E. W. LITTLEFIELD BEFORE SAN FRANCISCO AND SAN JOSE CHAPTERS OF THE ELFUN SOCIETY, GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY - SEPTEMBER 18, 1968 __ When the suggestion was first made to me by Bill Swan that I address The Elfun members about the Board of Directors of General Electric, I welcomed the opportunity to do so. However, when the time came to prepare my remarks, I found that the subject was not as easy to deal with as it had first sounded. Perhaps you can liken my dilemma to being asked to describe "How to play football". The description of "How to play football" sounds very much the same whether you are talking about a high school team, a college team, or a professional team. Each team has a running game and a passing game, has its defensive men and its blockers. In theory each team does or tries to do the same things, but you and I know that there is a very great difference between the way a high school team plays football and the way the Green Bay Packers play football. So it is with boards of directors. In law and in theory boards of directors are elected by the shareholders and made responsible for the management of the business. If you follow the broad approach, the General Electric Board will sound very much like the board of directors of any reasonably large and publicly held corporation. It deals with certain matters because the law says that it must. In keeping with good corporate practice, it reserves unto itself authority to act on matters of broad policy, or certain items of an extraordinary nature