netrashetty
Netra Shetty
Leadership Style at Nike : Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area. It is the world's leading supplier of athletic shoes and apparel[3] and a major manufacturer of sports equipment with revenue in excess of US$18.6 billion in its fiscal year 2008 (ending May 31, 2008). As of 2008, it employed more than 30,000 people worldwide. Nike and Precision Castparts are the only Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the state of Oregon, according to The Oregonian.
The company was founded in January 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by Bill Bowerman and Philip Knight,[1] and officially became Nike, Inc. in 1978. The company takes its name from Nike (Greek Νίκη pronounced [níːkɛː]), the Greek goddess of victory. Nike markets its products under its own brand as well as Nike Golf, Nike Pro, Nike+, Air Jordan, Nike Skateboarding and subsidiaries including Cole Haan, Hurley International, Umbro and Converse. Nike also owned Bauer Hockey (later renamed Nike Bauer) between 1995 and 2008.[4] In addition to manufacturing sportswear and equipment, the company operates retail stores under the Niketown name. Nike sponsors many high profile athletes and sports teams around the world, with the highly recognized trademarks of "Just do it" and the Swoosh logo.
When one thinks of Nike, the ubiquitous swoosh and the "Just Do It" slogan spring to mind, conjuring up images of will-driven athletes moving with astonishing speed and grace, and seeking to achieve what was thought to be impossible.
"'Just Do It' is a corporate attitude too," said Nike vice president and CFO Don W. Blair in a recent talk at Wharton. From Nike's early days in 1968, when cofounders Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight sold running shoes from a car trunk, to its current position as the leading athletic and fitness company worldwide, the corporate side of Nike has tried to reflect the same freewheeling philosophy that its slogan promotes.
Blair has been instrumental in restoring financial credibility and stability to a company with a boom-bust history. Since he joined Nike almost six years ago, its financials have improved. From 1999 to 2004, revenues increased from $8.7 billion to $12.2 billion, profitability rose from $451 million to $945 million, and share price increased from $60.9 to $71.1.
In This Special Section
Just Do It: More than an Athletic Prescription
HP and Patagonia: Two Similar, Yet Different, Leadership Styles
San Francisco Symphony: Innovation Despite the Odds
Wipro: Leadership in the Midst of Rapid Growth
Global Governance: The View from the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos
Back to Special Section Home
Nike's maverick attitude towards the business world extends to its leadership style which, said Blair, "is based around three broad principles. The first is that Nike reflects brand positioning. Perhaps it's really the other way around. We have a passion for athletics and strongly believe in the power of athletics to change people's lives."
This authenticity plays out in Nike's corporate values and in the way it runs the business. When Nike began under the name of Blue Ribbon Sports, it was structured around University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman's work with a team of average track and field athletes. His approach was to develop the talent at hand through motivating, inspiring, challenging, and teaching. It worked. Bowerman created star athletes, including renowned long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine. This talent-development method has its parallel in Nike's corporate environment.
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"You look for pockets of excellence, and where you don't find them, you create them," said Blair. The first Nike employees were not selected on the basis of excellence. Most of them were friends of friends, but once they were hired they were transformed from average people to outstanding performers who helped shape the company. To achieve these kinds of results, Nike focuses on innovation, creativity, and energy which are now "part of our brand and our organization," said Blair. "The athletes we have worked with, like Prefontaine and John McEnroe, are in many ways counter-establishment athletes. Nike embodies much of that same spirit. We cultivate a culture of the rebel and celebrate those who go off and do what some say can't be done."
Second Principle: Like Riding a Horse
Nowhere is this more evident than at the footwear design building at Nike's Beaverton, Oregon headquarters, where Nike fosters a collegial atmosphere. "The building is impressive, there are athletic fields, and it's a work-hard, play-hard environment," said Blair. "We strive to reinforce that through every element of our business." For example, the company hosts twice-yearly design inspiration events -- such as bringing in the manufacturer of a foreign car with a unique design for the team to contemplate. Some interesting, sleek, innovative aspect of that car might find its way into the shoe design. We seek to create the milieu that builds organizational capacity to keep us competitive."
The second leadership principle is that "Nike is not a company; it's a movement, or maybe it's a horse," states Blair, earning puzzled looks from the audience. Nike uses a distributed, non-centralized, collaborative leadership model that celebrates the success of the team. "Leadership is situational," explained Blair, who came to Nike from PepsiCo. "What works in one company doesn't necessarily work in another. When I joined, I was told to do nothing for six months. It wasn't an inactive time. Establishing one's ability to lead is more like riding a horse and less like driving a car. To be effective, a leader must learn how to ride that particular horse and the horse must learn how to be ridden by that particular rider. If one tries to go too far too fast, it's easy to get thrown off. One has to build relationships by understanding what people are trying to accomplish and moving that agenda forward."
Nike's view of itself has served as the basis for an effective marketing strategy: creating product need by promoting athletics as a movement, as a social good. One of the television ads Nike ran 20 years ago was focused not on Nike itself but on the value of athletics to girls and women. In the ad, one girl after another makes a plea (presumably to her parents) that she be allowed to get involved in athletics. "If you let me play sports, I will like myself more ... I'll be 60% less likely to get breast cancer ... I'll suffer less depression ... I'll be more likely to leave a man who beats me ... I'll be less likely to get pregnant before I want to ..."
Nike has also ridden on the back of its sponsored athlete Lance Armstrong, who made a miraculous recovery from advanced cancer and went on to win a record number of Tour de France bicycle races. Nike co-developed with Armstrong the popular yellow wristbands that sport only the words "Livestrong Campaign." Sold at a price of $1 each, the wristbands have produced approximately $20 million to date for cancer research. The bands have no Nike branding, but it's common knowledge that Nike is behind it -- another effective use of the "Nike as movement" premise.
Third Principle: Branding with Discipline
The third broad leadership principle centers around marrying branding with functional excellence and operating discipline. "This is one of our challenges as we move forward," said Blair. "Our aim is to build Nike into a $20 billion corporation, and this will require bringing an even more disciplined approach to our work. It's important to keep one's sights on the long term and to create value over time." The long view applies to Nike's labor issues in Asia. Beginning in 1996, ethical questions surfaced about Nike's practices concerning child labor, fair wages, the environment and the safety of its Asian workers. In response, Nike developed and began implementing a Code of Conduct, which involves working with government and non-government organizations to bring about change. There is still room for improvement. "We have gotten better; we are not complacent, and we continue to work to raise work standards," stated Blair.
He extended Nike's leadership principles one step further by discussing his own take on the subject. "There is nothing extraordinary in my approach, and you can take from it what makes sense for you, what makes it real for you." He began with leadership identity. "If you think you can change the world, you can." Leadership identity is embedded in both how one thinks and the words one speaks. "Instead of saying 'they need to do this,' a leader says, 'this is how we can do this.'" Getting the right people on the team and helping them succeed is the next principle. Blair contended that team success and employee productivity mean such things as recognizing, listening to, and believing that employees have impact. "It's like building a basketball team instead of a track team, which is individualistic. While there are set plays in basketball, the game is very fluid and you can't set execution from the center. Sometimes one has to make difficult decisions about who is on the team and change team composition on the basis of what works best for the individual and the team."
Blair's third personal leadership principle is to focus on goals and outcomes and not get lost in the process. "In a large organization, it's easy to be working in an area that is urgent but not important. Don't get stuck on process and lose focus on the big issues." Mastering the fundamentals is key to achieving goals, he added. It's not possible for one person to have in-depth expertise in all areas of a corporation, but one can create an organization where at least one person is focused on each particular detail. In building his team, Blair looks for broad thinkers who are also functionally deep in a particular domain.
It can be challenging to maintain perspective in any corporate milieu, particularly one so conscious of its brand, said Blair. Yet, the ability to maintain objectivity is a critical aspect of an effective leader. "One has to be willing, always, to have the objectivity to see and say that 'the emperor has no clothes,'" he noted. "People don't sell out because they're afraid to disagree; they buy into 'group think.'"
Five Takes on Creative Leadership
How do you lead an increasingly diverse, creative and eclectic workforce? It's a question that senior executives at this month's Wharton West Leadership Conference tried to answer based on their own leadership experiences. In the following stories, Knowledge@Wharton reports on presentations by Michael Crooke, president and CEO of Patagonia; Anne Livermore, executive vice president of Hewlett-Packard; Vivek Paul, vice chair and president of Wipro Technologies; and Brent Assink and John Goldman, executive director and president, respectively, of the San Francisco Symphony. This section also includes coverage of a recent talk at Wharton on leadership by Don W. Blair, vice president and CFO of Nike, and an article on corporate governance -- as discussed among participants in the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos -- by management professor Michael Useem. Useem is head of Wharton's Center for Leadership and Change Management, which hosted the conference along with Wharton's Center for Human Resources and Wharton Executive Education.
HP and Patagonia: Two Similar, Yet Different, Leadership Styles
Patagonia, Inc. is privately held, makes high-performance outdoor and sports apparel, employs 1200 people, and has annual revenues of about $240 million. Hewlett-Packard ranks eleventh among the Fortune 500, provides a variety of computer products and services, employs 150,000 worldwide, and boasts revenues of $80 billion. Other than the fact that both are headquartered in California, what could they possibly have in common? Speaking at a Wharton West conference on leadership, Patagonia president and CEO Michael Crooke and HP executive vice president Ann Livermore proved that developing leadership has some common themes, regardless of an organization's type or size.
Wipro: Leadership in the Midst of Rapid Growth
As vice chairman of the Indian conglomerate Wipro and CEO of Wipro Technologies, Vivek Paul took the global information technology company from $150 million in 1999 to its current $1.3 billion, representing about 75% of the corporation's total income. Speaking at a recent Wharton West Leadership Conference, Paul shared his thoughts on leading an organization as it goes through such rapid growth, not only in revenue but in employees.
San Francisco Symphony: Innovation Despite the Odds
Imagine leading an organization whose most highly skilled white-collar employees are controlled so rigidly that they are told exactly how to perform their sophisticated tasks; how to hold their bodies while doing so; when to take bathroom breaks; even how to dress, with no individuality permitted and no personal feedback given. Yet you are expected to lead and foster creativity in this hierarchical, tradition-bound and "corporate" environment. That is precisely the challenge faced by leaders of the 93-year-old San Francisco Symphony, and every other American orchestra of its size, SFS executive director Brent Assink and board president John Goldman told participants in Wharton West's recent Leadership Forum.
Just Do It: More than an Athletic Prescription
When one thinks of Nike, the ubiquitous swoosh and the "Just Do It" slogan spring to mind, conjuring up images of will-driven athletes moving with astonishing speed and seeking to achieve what was thought to be impossible. "'Just Do It' is a corporate attitude too," said Nike vice president and CFO Don W. Blair in a recent talk at Wharton. From Nike's early days in 1968, when cofounders Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight sold running shoes from a car trunk, to its current position as the leading athletic and fitness company worldwide, the corporate side of Nike has tried to reflect the same freewheeling philosophy that its slogan promotes. Part of that effort, Blair told his audience, includes a sometimes unusual approach to leadership.
Global Governance: The View from the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos
The establishment of good governance is crucial for companies as well as countries, and it must become a major priority. Recognizing this reality, CEOs and political leaders at the World Economic Forum held last month in Davos paid considerable attention to this issue. Michael Useem, director of Wharton's Center for Leadership and Change Management, who moderated a workshop on the subject at the Forum, provides an inside view of the discussion.
The company was founded in January 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports by Bill Bowerman and Philip Knight,[1] and officially became Nike, Inc. in 1978. The company takes its name from Nike (Greek Νίκη pronounced [níːkɛː]), the Greek goddess of victory. Nike markets its products under its own brand as well as Nike Golf, Nike Pro, Nike+, Air Jordan, Nike Skateboarding and subsidiaries including Cole Haan, Hurley International, Umbro and Converse. Nike also owned Bauer Hockey (later renamed Nike Bauer) between 1995 and 2008.[4] In addition to manufacturing sportswear and equipment, the company operates retail stores under the Niketown name. Nike sponsors many high profile athletes and sports teams around the world, with the highly recognized trademarks of "Just do it" and the Swoosh logo.
When one thinks of Nike, the ubiquitous swoosh and the "Just Do It" slogan spring to mind, conjuring up images of will-driven athletes moving with astonishing speed and grace, and seeking to achieve what was thought to be impossible.
"'Just Do It' is a corporate attitude too," said Nike vice president and CFO Don W. Blair in a recent talk at Wharton. From Nike's early days in 1968, when cofounders Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight sold running shoes from a car trunk, to its current position as the leading athletic and fitness company worldwide, the corporate side of Nike has tried to reflect the same freewheeling philosophy that its slogan promotes.
Blair has been instrumental in restoring financial credibility and stability to a company with a boom-bust history. Since he joined Nike almost six years ago, its financials have improved. From 1999 to 2004, revenues increased from $8.7 billion to $12.2 billion, profitability rose from $451 million to $945 million, and share price increased from $60.9 to $71.1.
In This Special Section
Just Do It: More than an Athletic Prescription
HP and Patagonia: Two Similar, Yet Different, Leadership Styles
San Francisco Symphony: Innovation Despite the Odds
Wipro: Leadership in the Midst of Rapid Growth
Global Governance: The View from the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos
Back to Special Section Home
Nike's maverick attitude towards the business world extends to its leadership style which, said Blair, "is based around three broad principles. The first is that Nike reflects brand positioning. Perhaps it's really the other way around. We have a passion for athletics and strongly believe in the power of athletics to change people's lives."
This authenticity plays out in Nike's corporate values and in the way it runs the business. When Nike began under the name of Blue Ribbon Sports, it was structured around University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman's work with a team of average track and field athletes. His approach was to develop the talent at hand through motivating, inspiring, challenging, and teaching. It worked. Bowerman created star athletes, including renowned long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine. This talent-development method has its parallel in Nike's corporate environment.
Read More About...
branding, nike, women leaders, creativity, positioning
Articles
Will the New Nike+iPod Sport Kit Hit the Ground Running, or Hit the Wall?
Knowledge@Wharton
If You Were in Charge, How Would You Market These Products?
Knowledge@Wharton
Talking Chimps, Subservient Chickens And Others Blend Entertainment and Advertising
Knowledge@Wharton
[More results for: branding]
"You look for pockets of excellence, and where you don't find them, you create them," said Blair. The first Nike employees were not selected on the basis of excellence. Most of them were friends of friends, but once they were hired they were transformed from average people to outstanding performers who helped shape the company. To achieve these kinds of results, Nike focuses on innovation, creativity, and energy which are now "part of our brand and our organization," said Blair. "The athletes we have worked with, like Prefontaine and John McEnroe, are in many ways counter-establishment athletes. Nike embodies much of that same spirit. We cultivate a culture of the rebel and celebrate those who go off and do what some say can't be done."
Second Principle: Like Riding a Horse
Nowhere is this more evident than at the footwear design building at Nike's Beaverton, Oregon headquarters, where Nike fosters a collegial atmosphere. "The building is impressive, there are athletic fields, and it's a work-hard, play-hard environment," said Blair. "We strive to reinforce that through every element of our business." For example, the company hosts twice-yearly design inspiration events -- such as bringing in the manufacturer of a foreign car with a unique design for the team to contemplate. Some interesting, sleek, innovative aspect of that car might find its way into the shoe design. We seek to create the milieu that builds organizational capacity to keep us competitive."
The second leadership principle is that "Nike is not a company; it's a movement, or maybe it's a horse," states Blair, earning puzzled looks from the audience. Nike uses a distributed, non-centralized, collaborative leadership model that celebrates the success of the team. "Leadership is situational," explained Blair, who came to Nike from PepsiCo. "What works in one company doesn't necessarily work in another. When I joined, I was told to do nothing for six months. It wasn't an inactive time. Establishing one's ability to lead is more like riding a horse and less like driving a car. To be effective, a leader must learn how to ride that particular horse and the horse must learn how to be ridden by that particular rider. If one tries to go too far too fast, it's easy to get thrown off. One has to build relationships by understanding what people are trying to accomplish and moving that agenda forward."
Nike's view of itself has served as the basis for an effective marketing strategy: creating product need by promoting athletics as a movement, as a social good. One of the television ads Nike ran 20 years ago was focused not on Nike itself but on the value of athletics to girls and women. In the ad, one girl after another makes a plea (presumably to her parents) that she be allowed to get involved in athletics. "If you let me play sports, I will like myself more ... I'll be 60% less likely to get breast cancer ... I'll suffer less depression ... I'll be more likely to leave a man who beats me ... I'll be less likely to get pregnant before I want to ..."
Nike has also ridden on the back of its sponsored athlete Lance Armstrong, who made a miraculous recovery from advanced cancer and went on to win a record number of Tour de France bicycle races. Nike co-developed with Armstrong the popular yellow wristbands that sport only the words "Livestrong Campaign." Sold at a price of $1 each, the wristbands have produced approximately $20 million to date for cancer research. The bands have no Nike branding, but it's common knowledge that Nike is behind it -- another effective use of the "Nike as movement" premise.
Third Principle: Branding with Discipline
The third broad leadership principle centers around marrying branding with functional excellence and operating discipline. "This is one of our challenges as we move forward," said Blair. "Our aim is to build Nike into a $20 billion corporation, and this will require bringing an even more disciplined approach to our work. It's important to keep one's sights on the long term and to create value over time." The long view applies to Nike's labor issues in Asia. Beginning in 1996, ethical questions surfaced about Nike's practices concerning child labor, fair wages, the environment and the safety of its Asian workers. In response, Nike developed and began implementing a Code of Conduct, which involves working with government and non-government organizations to bring about change. There is still room for improvement. "We have gotten better; we are not complacent, and we continue to work to raise work standards," stated Blair.
He extended Nike's leadership principles one step further by discussing his own take on the subject. "There is nothing extraordinary in my approach, and you can take from it what makes sense for you, what makes it real for you." He began with leadership identity. "If you think you can change the world, you can." Leadership identity is embedded in both how one thinks and the words one speaks. "Instead of saying 'they need to do this,' a leader says, 'this is how we can do this.'" Getting the right people on the team and helping them succeed is the next principle. Blair contended that team success and employee productivity mean such things as recognizing, listening to, and believing that employees have impact. "It's like building a basketball team instead of a track team, which is individualistic. While there are set plays in basketball, the game is very fluid and you can't set execution from the center. Sometimes one has to make difficult decisions about who is on the team and change team composition on the basis of what works best for the individual and the team."
Blair's third personal leadership principle is to focus on goals and outcomes and not get lost in the process. "In a large organization, it's easy to be working in an area that is urgent but not important. Don't get stuck on process and lose focus on the big issues." Mastering the fundamentals is key to achieving goals, he added. It's not possible for one person to have in-depth expertise in all areas of a corporation, but one can create an organization where at least one person is focused on each particular detail. In building his team, Blair looks for broad thinkers who are also functionally deep in a particular domain.
It can be challenging to maintain perspective in any corporate milieu, particularly one so conscious of its brand, said Blair. Yet, the ability to maintain objectivity is a critical aspect of an effective leader. "One has to be willing, always, to have the objectivity to see and say that 'the emperor has no clothes,'" he noted. "People don't sell out because they're afraid to disagree; they buy into 'group think.'"
Five Takes on Creative Leadership
How do you lead an increasingly diverse, creative and eclectic workforce? It's a question that senior executives at this month's Wharton West Leadership Conference tried to answer based on their own leadership experiences. In the following stories, Knowledge@Wharton reports on presentations by Michael Crooke, president and CEO of Patagonia; Anne Livermore, executive vice president of Hewlett-Packard; Vivek Paul, vice chair and president of Wipro Technologies; and Brent Assink and John Goldman, executive director and president, respectively, of the San Francisco Symphony. This section also includes coverage of a recent talk at Wharton on leadership by Don W. Blair, vice president and CFO of Nike, and an article on corporate governance -- as discussed among participants in the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos -- by management professor Michael Useem. Useem is head of Wharton's Center for Leadership and Change Management, which hosted the conference along with Wharton's Center for Human Resources and Wharton Executive Education.
HP and Patagonia: Two Similar, Yet Different, Leadership Styles
Patagonia, Inc. is privately held, makes high-performance outdoor and sports apparel, employs 1200 people, and has annual revenues of about $240 million. Hewlett-Packard ranks eleventh among the Fortune 500, provides a variety of computer products and services, employs 150,000 worldwide, and boasts revenues of $80 billion. Other than the fact that both are headquartered in California, what could they possibly have in common? Speaking at a Wharton West conference on leadership, Patagonia president and CEO Michael Crooke and HP executive vice president Ann Livermore proved that developing leadership has some common themes, regardless of an organization's type or size.
Wipro: Leadership in the Midst of Rapid Growth
As vice chairman of the Indian conglomerate Wipro and CEO of Wipro Technologies, Vivek Paul took the global information technology company from $150 million in 1999 to its current $1.3 billion, representing about 75% of the corporation's total income. Speaking at a recent Wharton West Leadership Conference, Paul shared his thoughts on leading an organization as it goes through such rapid growth, not only in revenue but in employees.
San Francisco Symphony: Innovation Despite the Odds
Imagine leading an organization whose most highly skilled white-collar employees are controlled so rigidly that they are told exactly how to perform their sophisticated tasks; how to hold their bodies while doing so; when to take bathroom breaks; even how to dress, with no individuality permitted and no personal feedback given. Yet you are expected to lead and foster creativity in this hierarchical, tradition-bound and "corporate" environment. That is precisely the challenge faced by leaders of the 93-year-old San Francisco Symphony, and every other American orchestra of its size, SFS executive director Brent Assink and board president John Goldman told participants in Wharton West's recent Leadership Forum.
Just Do It: More than an Athletic Prescription
When one thinks of Nike, the ubiquitous swoosh and the "Just Do It" slogan spring to mind, conjuring up images of will-driven athletes moving with astonishing speed and seeking to achieve what was thought to be impossible. "'Just Do It' is a corporate attitude too," said Nike vice president and CFO Don W. Blair in a recent talk at Wharton. From Nike's early days in 1968, when cofounders Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight sold running shoes from a car trunk, to its current position as the leading athletic and fitness company worldwide, the corporate side of Nike has tried to reflect the same freewheeling philosophy that its slogan promotes. Part of that effort, Blair told his audience, includes a sometimes unusual approach to leadership.
Global Governance: The View from the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos
The establishment of good governance is crucial for companies as well as countries, and it must become a major priority. Recognizing this reality, CEOs and political leaders at the World Economic Forum held last month in Davos paid considerable attention to this issue. Michael Useem, director of Wharton's Center for Leadership and Change Management, who moderated a workshop on the subject at the Forum, provides an inside view of the discussion.
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