Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

SECOND HIRED AND PROMOTED THE WRONG PEOPLE.

Hire people who know how to make product not pretty strategy decks. Reward people for having a POV not playing hot potato. Be open to different cultures / ideas / ways of communicating.

Nike has become a homogenous slow slog of ex consultants who know jack sh-t about how to run a company let alone a sports brand.

@b0 what he said and the same in product management and design with a poor vision in leadership!

Hired or promoted the wrong people. They looked smart on paper but didn’t really understand the company or the customer. They made flashy decks and told good stories, but made horrendous decisions that were bad for the business over time.

@1t3 a country that has and rides elephants? If Indiana Jones taught me correctly?

@1na

…and what is that?

Ppl want to ignore the elephant in the room and pretend it’s not there..

it started before JD

@OP DEI

More often than not the wrong people were laid off around all the reorgs. So many dedicated, talented people have been let go. So many that should’ve been laid off remain.

Hard truth for Portlanders: liberal feminism ruined Nike.

JD and the BOD destroyed the culture and our business model with our key wholesale partners. Stupid decisions made by leadership that had no real personal stake in Nike as a company beyond the $$ they could squeeze out of it for themselves.

All really started to go downhill when Colin and BLM received mega $$$$.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/03/11/nike-sets-diversity-goals-for-2025-ties-executive-comp-back-to-them.html

JD tied DEI goals to executive comp, which explains the rushed and poor hiring and promotion decisions since 2020, building on the trend that was already in motion after #MeToo.

Also, the shift from Categories to the Gender Offense was meant to grow Women’s, but it backfired. Nike lost focus on sport, leaned too hard into lifestyle, and weakened its image as a serious sports brand.

This doesn’t get talked about enough because it conflicts with the dominant political narrative.

JD ki-led the culture through layoffs and an obsession with DEI over performance or accountability. Somehow JD was gonna solve George Floyd by letting HR loose with an over the top DEI agenda.

JD gave Hoka & On shelf space at our wholesale partners.

Went all in on China, which is now a poor performing market.

Are we still paying more to VP’s based on how diverse their team is? Through a bonus? Anyone know?

@cq that's my job in the weekend! I am also a 3percent member, white, Christian, and straight. Just to round out your liberal fear meter.

@at and @aj got it right. plus The Rat and his whole idiocy.

Oh look more bigoted people congregating on this site. You guys should all go work for ICE. That might be a better fit for you?

@b0 this is by far and away the biggest issue, and I cannot figure out, push out the old local folk, that UofO charm that brought it, crushed it....then, bring in a more 'diverse' crowd that is younger, not from 'round here, and can't make the cut?
bad move

Layoff of footwear development talent with decades of experience. Replaced by individuals with 2-3 years experience.

Accountability. Every team has a budget and is measured against the budget. Create cost in another team (bad design, not fixing a broken, bad process causing Charegebacks, etc) —- then that cost along with the resource costs spent by other teams chasing it, are directly charged to your cost center. Project ROI not achieved? Charged to your cost center. Customer cancels orders? Sales rep takes the git if they can’t find someone else to purchase it - and if sell at a lower price then pays the difference. DC late shipping so has to overnight it? DC pays the difference in service level out of their cost center. When everyone is accountable for costs, forecasting, estimates, operational processes, coding quality, etc … will all improve naturally. If pay for what ya’ do, then influences higher quality in everything

Agree with the sentiment here. But what was it? What was done to result in no culture and no hubris? And no accountability?

How far was the reach of the JD era destruction, how's this for a quick "balanced" summary

• goes all in on direct, seemed good with the covid play, lucky there
• stock goes to an all time high of 170, though the whole market was up, lucky there too
• goes over the top deep on dei, so did the rest of the country, justified play, meh
• portland as a place to live sinks to an all time low due to month long riots - turns out whq takes notice, divests from whq, Nike's downward slope accelerates
• tech takes a major wrong turn, going "global" (plus atl and the now defunct sf), all that did was 10x the burn rate, negative return on productivity, cto shake up, bad deal for GT

but the real problem is, the biggest problem, all the talent left, the creative talent, the shoe talent, the edgy talent that took risks, played to win, played big, and mostly won....gone, that culture..gone...JD was not cool, like you couldn't try to be not cool and be less cool then him, so not cool, his culture was bad, it ran deep....real deep...

can EH bring back that edgy cool as cool can be culture?

I donno, where's the excitement, can't exactly bring it back over hybrid / zoom era.

These main columns affect nike big: the city su-ks, the campus is spread all over the place, disjoint and not centralized, the talent has gone elsewhere, the portland shoe culture is gone, china does not want nike, tariffs don't help

the hits keep coming

Horrible external hires to senior roles, for example, SB from Facebook/meta had a VERY negative ROI with all the resources he was given.

JD, AC, Accenture….

Then you let go a lot of the people that loved the brand, lived the brand, had the swagger….

we created a culture of hubris and an org structure that operates with zero accountability

you eradicated the culture that produced all this success
now you are nothing special and too expensive