Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

AS in tech and his predecessor RF both excellent leaders that aren’t perfect but care deeply about the employees and company (those things do not need to be mutually exclusive). VA, VR, SD, DK, JB - all in tech and all gone now - all cared. Again none were perfect but they had loyal followings because they cared about more than just themselves.

Drop down a level and there’s JL, DS, TG, SC, MF, TH, and MW. Most were SDs (a few VPs) and almost all of them are gone now. I only worked directly for 1 of them but worked with most of the others and/or knew people who worked for them that loved them. I am 100% certain there will be a flurry of comments disagreeing with me, it’s all subjective, but I do feel good leaders exist at Nike. I just wish I worked for one of them now instead of the a-hole I currently report to.

Step 1: Genuinely caring about your team members. Enough said.

Been in industry for a while - your assessment on Nike leaders or lack thereof is correct.

Nike employees are very fine people.

Very fine people. On both sides.

It sounds like you do not know how to be a good employee.

Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcomes.

This is a relatively easy answer. It takes concerted effort and commitment to become great at leading others. It’s not something you can “wing it” or fake. Taking the time to understand what your unique contribution is, how that works ib support of the people supposed to follow you ultimately how you take accountability for helping those people find success in expressing their talents.

The reason why you see less of this behavior at Nike right now, is because many of the good ones are exhausted by the thought of putting in effort with no incentive or upside. Incentives for being curious enough to understand aren’t valued.

Unfortunately Nike for the most part does not reward leadership. A good leader is you highlighted is accountable and protective of his/her team or organization. Nike has become like lord of the flies where it's everyone for themselves, take credit for others work, throw anyone you can under the bus to deflect any blame or accountability for failures. Lie cheat and steal to pull money from other budgets to satisfy your own land grab & empire building. It's so bad I honestly do not know how it improves other than slowly over time with a completely new SLT that drives accountability from the top down. Very very unlikely to ever happen

I can answer this. I had a wonderful manager before joining Nike. First and foremost if we were late on delivering the project or if our KPI would drop, he would take the bullet and took responsibility in front of his higher ups. Never ever he would throw any of us under the bus and more importantly never ever allowed anyone do this in his team.
Second, he was super humble and made sure each of us feel good about what we were doing on his team and also gave us real good raises.... I am literally crying typing these. I probably regret for the rest of my career how I left that job....