I want to start this conversation off with this, the board has made a decision to make a change. We have made this decision. It is about what you have done here to date. It is also, about what fiduciary responsibility the board has to shareholders. It is also about what the board believes that is expected from a servant leader. You have been treated very well at your time at Nike. With your career history inclusive of your time at Nike; we do not think it would be appropriate to be a reference for you or support your career for the remainder of your lifetime. I am sure you are familiar with the history, so I don't think it makes any sense to re-hash the historically unprecedented poor performance during your leadership of the organization; uncle Phil may love you to death, but he is 86 years old and is staring down the barrel of a wealth tax, and may have ulterior motives . The board is not going to change it's mind on this decision. The board has to do what is right for the organization You may agree or disagree but in this case I have made a decision.
It turns out the 20 or 25% that you thought were nay-sayers were aligned with the 50% that understood the market performance was going to influence the stock price, and you didn't focus on pivoting to a successful strategy. And, the 20 or 25% percent that you did focus on were the sycophants behind a strategy that was doomed to fail.
It has been made clear that your understanding of effective engineering leadership of an organization of 50, 500, or 5000 doesn't align with the development of an effective engineering organization of any size.
Throughout you time here your strategy of upgrading 20% of your team hasn't been executed at the leadership level. It has now been nearly 5 years for you at Nike, and you have not managed out 75% of your leadership team. It has been made clear that your direct team topped out prior to the launch of the failure of the CDA and also failed to pivot to a more effective strategy.
Your performance has shown that you are both not a world class athlete, but also that you do not have the capability to be a world class leader.
We are recommending only one thing for you to do; return your total compensation into stock buybacks on the company and shareholder behalf until the market cap as of the beginning of January of your start date at the company of ~157B is made whole to shareholders. Your time as the CEO of 3, now 4 organizations should have ensured your financial independence regardless of your time and compensation at Nike.
The board has decided that you are not the starter, you are holding the team back. Your time on the playing field is over due.