Thread regarding Nike Inc. layoffs

What took Nike down is simple: John Donahoe (and the id--ts who put him in charge). Who the he-l hires a TECH GUY who distroyed every. other. company. he ever ran before to run a successful sports apparel company? I don't get it. I blame John and the Board for all of it. I hope EH can bring the ship back, but it's going to take YEARS to recover from the damage caused.

Two letters: J. D.

This is only my opinion based on my observations. Perhaps Harvard Business School will do a case study on the decline of Nike one day:

1. Getting rid of all of the fun employee events on campus (e.g., family days, watch parties, athlete events, big Thurst Thursdays) and team offsites. We used to have more fun and celebrate sport and athletes. Nike was a fun place to work.

2. The hiring of JD and his intentional “strategy” to shift away from our wholesale partners to digital (why couldn’t we have done both as a Fortune 500 company?) and from performance product to an over reliance on lifestyle product (how many color ways does a customer need of AF1s?). This opened up shelf space for new competitors and dried out our innovation pipeline.

3. The constant rounds of layoffs, which appeared to target the very people who made Nike into what it was and created the culture, replacing them with inexperienced hires who were selected not based on merit but on other criteria and who don’t necessarily love sport or the brand. Many leaders seem to care more about their career advancement than the company/brand or the teams they “lead.”

EH has his hands full to try to turn this ship around. I hope he succeeds.

3 keeps going with JD swapping out said culture builders and business leads for DEI hires and promotions to hit the 2025 corporate social responsibility goals he set, thinking that kind of virtue signaling would grow the business without impacting performance which it did NOT.

3 things brought Nike down.

1. MP Stepping down as his plan to make the company into a $50 Bil brand was well underway and honestly, Just doing it. Doing it well. Would have been great for him to stay another 5 years. He knew what was up and had a captive audience of employees wanting to ki-l it. Nike was a vibe.
2. After MP retired to the BOD, we are Under TE's watch, here we go. Mr tough love. A Bro that the older Bro's were in good with. You know, the guys he essentially let off the hook for SH claims (insert fingers into ears ears and repeat "la la la la la") and also turned a blind eye to the painfully obvious disease of Chronyism. Then they all got busted, lawsuits galore and out the door they all went. It was toxic and probably should've happened earlier, but I digress.
3. THEN they (PK... didn't sound like this was a MP pick) hired tech bro JD to take over the helm. Not even a good tech bro at that. A faker, hired to run an innovative athletic apparel brand that represented the best of the best athletes in this world. Yeah, makes sense. ...NOT.... So he gets the keys to the castle. Pretends like he knows what's up. Fires all (most) of the high paid VP's in brand, this turn of events spirals and turns off the remaining high performing business and design talent ( they don't need the stress of waiting around to get plucked off the high paying fruit tree out of nowhere. No one is safe now) They leave for other companies willing to pay them pretty much whatever they ask for to make their brands cool (shocker, they did-and it continues). Off they went and off went our culture cultivators, business architects, design innovators and talent leaders.

It's the CEO's after MP that ki-led Nike. It starts at the top

entitled and hubris they are close cousins

No, entitled workforce destroyed Nike