THANKS PHK ...

PHK-

THANKS.

+Three decades with the greatest company I could have ever imagined. I have more than I ever thought possible. I left knowing what brought me to the company and kept me here so long is gone and until proven wrong, never coming back. I get that a company will change going from -$1B to +$36B. I get were a Footwear company trying to be an Apparel company. I get that change is constant. Evolve or die.

For the longest time it never felt like work, it was a lifestyle. No matter who, you could look around the room and know that the person next to you was talented, going to be respectful and had your back. We were in it to do what was right for the business vs. manage our career. For the longest time great work was recognized and rewarded. Promotions, new titles mostly made sense. That is not the case anymore. NIKE is a culture of career elevation for those who are really good at working at NIKE regardless if your able to deliver great work at NIKE. Its how you say it, how you present it, how great is the deck? What font is that? Who cares if it makes business sense or if we can activate it I have the best new shiny object and some great new NIKE acronyms to go with it. I win, I rule. Nepotism run wild. Point me to my new parking spot.

Retiring the "American Psycho" was a great first step. Nothing good happened for the greater good of folks under his tenure. It was no secret in the hallways as a previous post calls out, he wanted to get rid of 50% of those 50 years and older. Take a look at the lay off list, ask someone to show it to you. He was warned.

What is so disappointing is no change to JM4. Its worldwide news that we are going to layoff and it felt like the next internal email was "no change" on JM4. Really? Our greatest fear has been realized by this leadership team as the sleeping German giant has been given life and no change? How? Why? What does someone have to do to lose their job? In sports (its still about athletes and sports right?) the head coach and staff are the first to go ... at a distance these layoffs look to be about tenured workers. Why are those folks paying the price for poor leadership across all functions? JM4 is invisible to the masses. An occasional email to Keep it Tight but thats it ... we have know we would have layoffs for to long now, longer than 2009 and silence ... no one in front of the masses saying we have a plan hear it is. Sad, unacceptable really.

What would I do? If I were to pick three things here they are;

Fire TE, Fire JM, Fire and walk/run/push the Queen of Walmart.com out of the building

These are the three main culprits in creating everything described on these posts. TE / Rules with fear and intimidation. My way or your out. How was the presentation? What font was that? All style, no content. #fakebritishaccent Did he/she just disagree with me? Your out.

JM / See above. Same thing. Clone. Performance product has s---ed for to long. The world largest Sporting Goods retailers are relying on Sportswear to deliver the business. Not good, healthy or where we need to be. Perf should always out pace fashion. Its still about the athlete and sports right? Whats sad is this Fear and Intimidation behavior is cloned to other leaders. Ask anyone who works in the NIKE Women's org or pick up the GQ magazine where it was called out.

QUEEN OF WALMART.com / See above. Hey lets have an offsite in LA and I will show you my yacht. How did this type person end up leading @ NIKE? Purveyor and activator of the Fear and Intimidation offense. Also, the leader that thought it would be good to dominate headcount asks and build an organization with no footwear experience. Believe it or not, the answer to everything isn't take an item and blow it out in color. Its not a one size fits all world. We do not validate our brand internally. Consumer right assortments are Campus right assortments. How do phrases like Directed Assortment and Minimally Credible make it into the company acronym list?

I spent the last part of my career in Merchandising. We have struggled from day 1 to find a purpose for our function. Everything we were doing, sales was already doing and that just put two functions head to head fighting for survival. There is no Merch function at Adi ... (not that we ever want to follow what they do) You want to eliminate useless positions? Eliminate this function. Either the or activate all NIKE product being sold through NIKE Direct.

Rant over.

Good luck.

Comment! It's anonymous!

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Nike needs to bring their factory jobs back to US soil. I quit buying Nike apparel years ago because they paid slave labor wages in SE Asia and made billions of dollars

Well said. TE & JM need to be held responsible for the current state of things. Instead, lower level employees pay the price for the sins of their leadership.

I remember the days when the athlete mattered. We helped them perform better, run faster, jump higher, and to reach our own personal best.

We were always in pursuit of greatness. We acted as if we were #2 in the business so that we could stay #1. We had a competitive drive that nobody could match.

And then, we started pointing fingers at each other, we started building walls between teams, categories, and functions. We became our own worse enemy. We had to sit and listed to TE pontificate while actually saying nothing. We had to bite our lips for fear of TE freezing you out. Disagree or debate with TE, you're out.

Eating our own, political battles, and a "TE's way or the highway attitude have become the new playing field we compete on. The enemy isn't the Germans, it's our own arrogance.

As we fought with each other, we lost our focus on the athlete. We had numbers to make so we accelerated NSW as the (product) answer. Our NSW product is great, but fashion isn't what makes us great. Innovative products, built first and foremost for the athlete, is what we do best. Instead, we are simply taking old models and spinning materials and colors.

Our "new news" is a collab with Commes de Garçon? That's not new news. That's doing exactly what everyone else in the category is doing.

WHO ARE WE?

That's not original. That's not the Nike we used to know.

Get back to focusing on the athlete. Innovate for them because that is what made us great.

And, while we can certainly continue to make new colors of the AirMax....a groovy little, energy team driven, colorway isn't going to get us back to greatness. In fact, it's just going to pull us down faster. That crap is just a bunch of sneaker hipsters talking to themselves. Sure, KITH is a cool shop but "c'mon man!", this stuff now rules the day. The athlete no longer does.

Edit to amplify.

Just do it NOW.

Its really sad. A company that was once known for disruption and irreverance became a steaming pile of politics. It was always there, its just keeps getting worse. There are no leaders, just managers. They manage a process. The Euro Mafia groups protects their own and then they bring in outside experts who continue to be toxic. This post is right. Nobody at the top gets outed. TE and JM need to go. What about PM and TF who overlook product and performance. All of this happened on their watch. Product is so bland and boring. They would put a swoosh on a turd and they would pat themselves on the back and talk about "murdering out" the color. Its all pretenders and lemmings at the top. Manage up. So very sad.

Nailed it

Great POV.

#facts

Building great decks, offsites to make it look like you care, financial planners, strat planners, career navigation! Ego maniacs, PHK and others used to say it's about THE PEOPLE AT NIKE, unfortunately that is simply not the case any more, most folks in leadership positions have no clue about meaningful relationships internally or, more importantly, externally! This commentary was so scarily spot on but unfortunately will ignored by the ruling class! TE thinks the Brits still rule the world! Too funny!!!

Hahaha, my thoughts exactly:

Wait, that would take 6mo and 36 approvals and would never get done.

Well said! Under TE's stewardship, vanilla is the new flavor, no one can disagree - category and brand meetings seek to achieve the sea of sameness in a bid to not rock the boat...I mean, really, how did folks like Dermot Cleary and DJ van hameren get to where they are without ever being fully and truly responsible for anything. How do you put someone like Dermot in charge of one of the largest performance categories? Simple: don't rock the boat and do as you are told..Anyone who disagrees leaves - the old adage of the reason you get hired (irreverence) is the reason you are fired (irreverence now equals irrelevance). Best of luck to everyone - I can tell you that there is life beyond and jut as Nike will survive so will each individual.

Turn this (accurate) rant into a pretty 1 pager and activate. Wait, that would take 6mo and 36 approvals and would never get done.

Bump.

OP FTW!

Laugh or cry? Idk.

Companies grow. Brands get stronger. Markets get cornered.

Steve Jobs summed this up (and it's applicable to us as well):

"I have my own theory about why the decline happens (...at mature companies). The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The product starts valuing the great salesmen, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company."

These posts increasingly read like obituaries

wow.

this is harsh.

22 years with the company... Survived the last round...

I stop being engaged around 2010. Not sure why, but at that point I ceased to care.

I used to live for Nike, this job was everything to me. Now it's just a paycheck. Again, not sure why...

Fear is the enemy of innovation. You cannot beat down your employees with threats and itimidation and expect more than drones, bots and "yes" men/women. We used to run through walls to make great product, then one day they eviscerated the human spirit. Still love the brand, cheering for you still.

Parker - here is your solution plan.

This is 100%.

you said it, right here op...

what gq article are we talkin about?

this is a golden rant

Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

THANKS PHK ...

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