Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

Pay me $32m and I'll tell you

Give every FTE employee stock as part of their compensation. Make everybody an owner and vested in Nike's stock rising.

Nice try JD. If you want my advice on how to save the company you better give me a C suite seat and then I’ll tell you.

Let's start saving Nike by opening the chat feature! How about that?

Make performance management easier.

Listen to your employees!! To turn off chat at such a crucial time when people are frustrated and scared and, frankly, friggin sick of the sh-t happening at Nike, LISTEN and make the changes everyone keeps telling you about. Be a godda-n leader. If you don’t like honest feedback about how people feel, you’re not a leader at all, you’re a coward.

• Refocus on WS while keeping ND active and profitable. Do not neglect ND as we are currently doing. Make ND and WS channels collaborative and competitive with each other.
• A bit late now, but the reorganization could have done handled much better. First, identify roles, then assign people, and finally execute the plan. The current approach was a haphazard massacre, leaving too many employees unclear about their responsibilities.
• Ensure products cater to the common athlete as well. Return to producing the best and coolest shoes and gear for basketball, soccer, SB, and other sports. While these may not be the biggest money-makers, they are crucial for showcasing your products in action globally and engaging the younger generation.
• Assemble a hands-on leadership team and remove those who only network and create presentations. Leaders should be capable of running a store or managing an account if needed. This ensures they make informed decisions, even if they never have to do these tasks.
• Establish a tech stack with a commitment that it will not change for at least five years once implemented. It is better to have a functional, if imperfect, tool than to have 20 impressive tools that accomplish nothing.
• Empower innovation teams to prevent their work from being discarded by someone unsure of how to present it in a slide.
• Develop a genuine loyalty program with exclusive products and real benefits. Undo the ineffective newsletter-club program we have had the past five years.
• Re-align prices. Upselling was awesome while it lasted, but the brand, consumer sentiment, and competition have changed. We can't continue to charge $30 more than other quality brands.
• I do not know how, but Marketing needs a fresh, innovative approach. We need creative thinkers to reimagine it. The same repetitive videos will not engage audiences for another decade.
• Make NSW high quality, cool designs again, even a bit exclusive. Those T-shirts we sell now are sad, ugly and look terrible after a few wears, and you see them everywhere in county fairs devaluing the brand. Make NSW your high margin, not your high revenue line.

We are leaving SO MUCH money on the table in women’s apparel. Give us some good fits, some quality fabrics, design for more than one body type and realize that women actually come in a variety of heights.
Oh, and maybe re-think pricing because who is buying full-price sweatshirts for $150+??

As a leader- walk the talk. Lead from front. All missing.

Set performance goals for product and make it publicly known. Start a space race competitive environment and let other brands follow if they’d like. Document the effort, failures and successes. Make consumers feel like they have an emotional investment in Nike and want to see it succeed. Currently innovation is a bubble within the bubble of Nike. The innovation is unveiled and people don’t have the time of day to decipher its value or meaning. Something in the vein of social media or even Netflix could drive the communication outward, the innovators, the athletes and designers could be household names. No brand really has that level of value with consumers at the moment and we have the opportunity and resources.

Talk with the people. Find the cancers and remove them.

Let's up the ante on the post about giving back people their desks:

1. Let people work on campus who want to work on campus. At their own desk if they want, or flexible-style: but the employee chooses. (Be honest: most meetings are on Zoom anyway, it doesn't really matter.)

2. Let people work remote who want to work remote. They will perform better than being forced onto campus anyway (the people I know consistently "put in extra time" from home on remote days, since they don't have to spend up to 2 hours commuting).

3. With the additional empty real-estate at WHQ caused by all those 100% remote employees, re-purpose it in two different ways:
   3a) As company-subsidized apartments. If I was young and not tied down to a house and family, I would love this. How cool would it be to walk out of your apartment and just go down to a Nike cafe for breakfast, saying Hi to your friends along the way, and then back up to your desk for work? (Or maybe your apartment is your work area as well!) It would be a benefit to employees and foster such a sense of community, a true Nike-Town.
   3b) Make WHQ a vacation destination/attraction! Turn some of that space into hotel rooms. Have people come spend $1000s to stay on Nike campus for a week, take a spinning or swimming class with a famous athlete, buy that exclusive shoe only sold at the WHQ company store, or pay $10,000 for dinner with LeBron James. WHQ is such a cool campus and could be such a money-maker.

In a nutshell: drop the fear-based management style, and embrace and enable love, compassion, and gratitude for the employee and the consumer. Give them both what they want, bring them joy through true transformation, and just see what happens.

Honestly, I think the root of many problems is evidenced by Nike forcing the flexible workplace model (aka Activity Based Work or ABW model) on employees.

There isn't a single employee I've talked to who dislikes having their own personal desk space. Everyone would rather have their own desk to customize and put their own stuff. Being able to personalize your own workspace at the office is one of the few joys a corporate job can provide, and brings a sense of stability.

Instead, we deal with having to hunt for a desk multiple times a day, wasting time unpacking and packing from our backpacks or locked cubbies, and/or hauling around your stuff. (I wish my corporate work environment felt more like high school! Said no one ever.) Not to mention trying to have zoom meetings in open spaces with random people all around. And never knowing exactly where your teammates are so you can collaborate with them.

No one is acknowledging how mentally taxing this is. People need patterns and consistency to get into a flow and reduce mental load.

I logged and calculated time lost due to ABW once: I easily lose 1-3 hours of productive time _every_day_ because of ABW.

Give the employees back their desks, and along with that a sense of ownership and comraderie with their team by keeping the team together, and you WILL see employee morale rise, and efficiency improve, and a host of all other positive benefits, which WILL impact the performance of the company. Happy employees = happy customers.

Wow John Donahue we all know this is you!!! LOL

Don’t put everything into DTC when it’s clearly not working everywhere, like stores

It’s you isn’t it John. We know you faked this before you’ll make any progress as a real CEO

Not alienate wholesale partners! Retail 101 for Dummies

you have to pay for them - you don't get them free
(or if you are "upper" management steal them)

I think it’s more about what I wouldn’t have done.

I wouldn’t have pulled out from our retail partners without stronger planning for DTC. Maybe build out more stores (as was planned) before pulling out of key partners.

I wouldn’t have laid off so much of our staff. What’s the point? You didn’t even move the stock? Now you’re down on headcount with no short-term benefits.

I wouldn’t force RTO. It just doesn’t make sense.