I think one of Nike’s biggest problems is that we’ve been so dominant for so long that we became too self serving. At some point, we stopped listening enough to what’s happening outside of Beaverton. We became too confident that we knew the consumer and that what worked for us before would continue to work.
Meanwhile, a lot of other brands were actually listening. They were closer to consumers, closer to culture, and quicker to understand how the market was changing. Especially with Gen Z and now Gen Alpha, the way people discover brands, connect with products, and decide what to buy has changed dramatically. I don’t think we changed fast enough with them.
And now we’re trying to fix it, but we’re already playing catch-up.
I think that’s partly a Nike problem, but I also think it’s an EH problem. When he came back, there was a real opportunity to challenge how we operate and change the way we think. But a lot of what I’ve seen feels like we’re trying to bring back the same Nike playbook that worked a few years ago. There’s nothing wrong with going back to some of our strengths, but the world we’re operating in today isn’t the same world.
There’s also an irony to Nike being an American company. Being American was a huge part of why Nike became what it became. American sports, athletes, and pop culture had enormous influence around the world. But I think that can also be one of our weaknesses today because we still tend to look at the world through a very US centric lens.
The world doesn’t work that way anymore. People aren’t only looking up to the US to tell them what’s cool or what’s next. Sport, fahsion and culture are coming from everywhere now and sometimes I feel like there is so much happening out there that we’re simply missing because we’re too busy talking to ourselves.
That’s the part that worries me the most. I don’t think the answer is just to get Nike back to what it used to be. We need to keep what made Nike special, but also become much better at listening again. We need to get outside of Beaverton, be closer to what’s actually happening in the world, and let the world influence us as much as we want to influence the world.
But I’m also afraid this isn’t something that will change overnight. And honestly, I’m not even sure it will change at all unless there is enough pain to force real change.
That’s probably the hardest part. Big organizations don’t fundamentally change just because people know they should. They change when the cost of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.
And when you’ve been successful for this long, there are a lot of people in senior positions who grew up in the existing system and benefited from it. Asking them to think differently isn’t just asking them to change how they work. In some cases, you’re asking them to question the structure, the roles, and even the way their own value has been defined for years.
That’s why I’m not sure the people sitting in those high chairs will naturally want to step outside of their comfort zone. Because real transformation could also mean changing their own role, reducing their influence, or even questioning whether some of those roles need to exist in the same way anymore. That’s a very difficult thing for any leader to voluntarily do.
So maybe Nike needs to feel significantly more pain before we see the level of change that’s actually required. I hope that’s not the case, but I worry that small fixes, reorganizations, and bringing back pieces of the old playbook won’t be enough.
Because the problem isn’t just the playbook. It’s the mindset and the system behind it.
And unless we’re willing to challenge that, we may keep changing things around the edges while protecting the very structure that got us here.