I think each and every single problem of Nike, from stock price, to low sale, to toxic culture, all and all comes down to only to two thing : hiring practice not being based on merit and zero accountability for real KPI....
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There is no theory. Evidence is right there in the linked article you didn’t even bother to read.
What a bunch of replacement theorists. Your white fragility is showing.
Nike used to breed world class leaders. Oh, how the mighty have fallen…
I've been saying this all along. DEI is a scam. and this is coming from someone with an HR background.
It’s ridiculous. I wish I would’ve realized it at the time, but I didn’t have the same interview process as external candidates. The external candidates talked with an HR person first, then 2-3 others on the team and finally my manager. I only interviewed with HR (a coordinator and my HRBP, which I thought was very strange) and then my manager which she turned into a 1:1 more so than an interview.
Why? Because they were planning to replace my in my role. My understanding is because I wasn’t a yes-person, I’d pushback on policy violations and other things. My manager treated me like sh-t, also hoping I would mess up enough to be fired/have legitimate “reasons” for replacing me.
Troll
Our factories are being forced to move to India by Indians.
And who do you think makes final hiring decisions and decides who to lay off and who to keep during restructurings? Right, it's the executives whose compensation is directly tied to their ability to achieve DEI targets.
@1zjf+1tEnGzfR Apparently, you were too low on the HR totem pole to be properly informed that Nike's executive compensation was directly tied to achieving ambitious diversity goals shortly after the MeToo movement and the George Floyd incident. It wasn't just Nike, either.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/03/11/nike-sets-diversity-goals-for-2025-ties-executive-comp-back-to-them.html
You have diverse slates which is determined during the recruiting process but doesn’t mean the diverse candidate will get selected.
Goals are 2 women 2 men 1 ethnic minority - can be man or woman. Ideal state you at least have an even split but that isn’t reality. The goal is to give someone from a diverse background a chance at the table.
All this stuff was introduced in 2018. Wasn’t George Floyd - anyone who says that is probably someone so low on the totem pole that doesn’t know how things work.
How do I know all this? Because I was there when they introduced the program from an Hr perspective. On paper, sounds like a good idea but reality the politics still happen. We do look “better” when we hire more diverse candidate all because of McKinnsey consulting posted an article back in 2016 that said diverse workforces generate more revenue.
Proven to be bogus now but… greater good right? Probably pi---d off some right wing nut jobs but so what? All this was introduced due to the “Me too” movement which Nike was directly in the cross hairs on. Guess most of y’all forgot or at least the “DEI” haters.
Sigh…
Hire your buddies, do a bunch of shady sh-t, and no accountability for costs created or mistakes made while chasing shiny new tools. Duh! A+B+C = Failure. Just look at SEC —- shipping and billing data is all messed up, unfortunate teams working uncompensated round the clock to clean up the mess, while people pat themselves on the back saying “look at me and what a good job I did” … Pah-LEASE! Get real, be authentic… no more of the false narratives on how everything is awesome
At NSRL, they straight told us during an all hands that they were hiring with DEI goals (this was for E band position back then) i.e. at least 50% of the participant pool had to "diverse", and if they were female or of color, they got extra points.
I think at the end of the day, the senior leadership used DEI as a means to bring in their own people and ignore actual good candidates. Selfish execution by key players.
@1uik, I had the same experience as you on hiring panels. Nobody ever mentioned anything about DEI goals and we certainly didn’t favor or disfavor anyone because of any physical characteristics. We just hired the best candidate.
However, as you move up the food chain at Nike to the most senior positions, unfortunately these characteristics do come into play more often. Mostly in the form of who gets invited for interviews to begin with. If three of four interviewees are “diverse” (something Nike measures purely in the form of easily identifiable physical characteristics rather than tougher sorting based on diversity of experience, thought, etc.), there’s a good mathematical chance a “diverse” person will get the job.
Sometimes Nike is better off for this. Sometimes it isn’t. In either event I prefer the way we did it within the lower echelons of Nike employment. Overall we made better hires when nobody was even thinking about “diversity”.
Takes like this really aggravate me. I was on many hiring panels during our last hiring push. I never got “DEI” instructions. We vetted each candidate thoroughly and fairly. We didn’t hire jerks who ticked all the boxes because they were JERKS. Not because of DEI bullsh-t. These takes always come from someone who is bitter and has no idea what they are talking about.
@vgp+1tEnGzfR
100% spot on. Not to mention all the promotions during reorg...fairness is a total joke at Nike
Nike lacks leaders who are cross-functionally competent. Doesn't seem to be more than a few years back when it broke completely. I do think Global Tech started to steer the business leaders by bullsh-tting them into shiny tools over measured outcomes. I blame weak leadership for allowing that to occur from the C suite down to directors. I'd hate to turn the company back over to full sales control but it may be the only way to get back on track.
I love when Nike "posts" an open role to only have it already pre-determined who will fill the position. Total waste of time for those applying. Thought it was supposed to be a competitive/fair process? Shouldn't the person with the most qualifications and fit be given the role? No, it is more of who you know than anything else.
Reposting @mrw+1tCguGtp from another thread here since it summarizes the situation well:
“The issue is that Nike linked executive compensation to achieving highly ambitious DEI goals, which led leaders to make decisions primarily to maximize their own pay. While diversity itself is not the problem, these incentives essentially created discriminatory quotas that undermined meritocracy. This approach resulted in the rapid promotion of underqualified individuals into key roles that make crucial decisions and set strategies for the company.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/03/11/nike-sets-diversity-goals-for-2025-ties-executive-comp-back-to-them.html
Why did this happen? It was largely a reaction to the social unrest triggered by George Floyd's mu---r. However, five years later, companies that adopted similar DEI goals are just now stepping back. Recently, Microsoft, Google, Zoom, and others have declared that such goals are no longer "business critical."
https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-layoffs-dei-leader-email-2024-7
It wouldn’t be surprising if Nike followed this trend. Companies are primarily loyal to their bottom line, not social causes. The quality of leadership is crucial, as Nike and others are discovering.”
Those are huge contributions to Nike’s situation no doubt about it. Those issues have been lying there beneath the surface for years. They were never exposed as the power of the brand covered them up for the most part. Along comes the cast of clowns that made the decision to shift to DTC and alienate our partners was the straw they busted the camels back & exposed the company for the cluster f-c* it is. Direct to Consumer is hard and Nike’s disaster of a tech stack & supply chain issues are blockers to doing it at scale. Never mind the business shift took resources away from product development and brand building. HON, JD & the rest of the kings court didn’t ki-l Nike on their own they just exposed the rotten corpse for all to see.
Well said @iuj+1tEnGzfR
Not elevating the right people while bringing in untalented and politicking friends, is a sure way to push talent out, demotivate everyone around, and erode the foundation of the company.
It is our leaders hiring their friends and people that will say yes versus those that are competent in what the job requires. It is leaders focused more on people that talk versus those that do. It is also leaders that have no regard for talent in the organization and let go of those leaders that folks actually are motivated to work for. I know a handful of great leaders that we just let go so that VA could instill and elevate those that agree with him. Footwear is the lifeblood of this company, but in Supply Chain right now we have a leader who has no experience with our factory partners, a regional VP in Singapore that is more interested in control and having people that will do what he says versus elevating footwear supply chain, and a really demotivated organization because most of us have no clue what the strategy was for the changes and what our actual jobs are today. I started looking for a role outside of Nike a little after the April layoffs because the "leaders" all hands showed that they had no clue and could not provide a clear strategy on why we did what we did.
So DEI is the main issue….JD and his cabal is the real issue.
Ultimately what it comes down to is shady leaders doing shady things. Bringing their “friends” into the company with no experience/should not be put at that level; no understanding of Nike, Nike’s ethos or true appreciation of the brands’ history; making shady deals with vendors and costing the company millions; promoting toxic culture because leadership can’t get on the same page and understand that their teams aren’t the most important, etc.
I wouldn’t say the failure is directly related to DEI at all, just corruption.
I fully agree. Nike’s legacy is based on sport and voice of the athlete. George Floyd happened during COVID at a time when sports weren’t happening and when Nike stopped innovating and had supply chain issues. So we leaned fully into DEI on the George Floyd coattails and decided that this was our new mission. We stopped talking about sport and athletes and all of a sudden race and gender were the only things that matter to JD and MM and the rest of the c suite.
I don’t think dei is Nike’s downfall but it became the only topic in a room and distracted from other objectives at a critical crossroads. If JD was focused on innovation and product rather than corporate DEI metrics maybe things would be a lot better today?