People I work with do not even watch sports, and some never bother to learn. It makes Nike feel like just another corporation, if it ever was more
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I think it’s concerning that you think that wasting time watching sports should be a requirement to work at Nike. You sound like one of of the a--hats that should leave and make room for more qualified individuals.
I hope both team loose. And I am really fu--ing good at my job.
Wow I read the original post and was all “he-l yeah!”…
Then read some of the followup posts and was all “hmmm… good points”…
In the end I’m with @cf. Win as a Team was always my favorite Maxim and I try to always act that way regardless of which sports my fickle attention span follows.
I DO love sports and participate in them but it’s the mentality that matters.
Kind of cuts to the crux of the matter, doesn't it? When the majority of employees don't understand the target customers it leads to inevitable downslide.
Whatever Nike’s mission is, it doesn’t really resonate if the company doesn’t operate with a pro athlete mindset, rewarding people based on merit.
@cc reading this is really concerning! This person doesn’t understand what culture represents to a company!
Maybe it’s why Nike became this!
Just another company!
@cf I completely agree. Simply watching sports doesn’t qualify someone to work at Nike; participating in them does. People have busy lives, but staying active is important for your own health, not to mention why work for a company if you don’t genuinely connect with its mission?
Talk about lip service. So watching sport is what is supposed to set you apart at Nike now? How about the embodying the spirit of sportsmanship? You know, sharing the ball, passing it down instead of hoarding it for yourself, playing fair, putting the team above personal glory... Do they count? Or, number of hours being an armchair sportsman is what counts? No wonder the whole LT is rotten..we have people like CS and MF and other self serving people expected to lead us. God help Nike!
@cc, a strong connection to the company mission should be fundamental, but at Nike, it seems secondary to internal connections.
@cc it's not that different than talking about the weather, it's just a way to connect, doesn't matter which team, teams you like or follow, it's just fun and positive
Most of the Indians in IT damn care about sports, and does knowing or not knowing sport impact their outcomes?
People work for money and in return give back to company, why do you want to complicate this relationship with emotional factors.
Sitting in the office and getting distracted by stupid college level teams and sports does more harm to productivity than not being interested in it and focusing on your work.
A technical integration Engineer should be more interested in GitHub and AI than sports, same goes for a accounting director who needs to be more interested in new compliance regulations.
So separate out the knowledge based roles in the company and may be the rest of useless folks can focus on sports?
@ac, given how central sports are to Nike, favoritism, nepotism and internal bias can influence who ends up where.
I’ve never watched sports, other than boxing … sports has nothing to do with what I do at Nike and rarely comes up in conversation.
@be
it's not a sport
Check if they watch cricket
@af I think my issue with it is that being into sports doesn't have to mean liking any particular sport. Most of what is talked about is American Football or Basketball, both of which I find incredibly boring to watch or talk about.
I think everyone has a passion for a sport, it's what makes working for the biggest athletic sponsor pretty cool, and why nke always knows they can attract talent
or at least...knew....skeleton of a campus with aging sports athletes doesn't quite hold up after 20 years
need more swoosh ads on tv promoting big players in many sports
maybe less genderless pro pride culture wars and more action
less talk less balk and more muscle, get back in the lane swoosh, we're not the same
@ae sure, maybe it doesn’t directly affect an individual roles day to day, but this is basic culture. Shared beliefs and actually giving a damn about the mission. Do you even know what Nike’s mission is? And are you really saying it’s fine if a big chunk of people just don’t care?
The best companies work because people are bought in. It’s pretty hard to inspire athletes if you don’t care about sport at all. One person might be fine on a micro level. But when a lot of senior leaders don’t care, then it becomes a macro problem.
@ac I don't feel like "being into sports" has little to any effect on the majority of roles at Nike. Definitely in tech it is meaningless, and many of the business side roles. Like really, does your finance controller being into football have any affect on their ability to do their job? For sales, marketing, design, innovation, and anything product creation based sure.
Why are there people at Nike who don’t care about sports at all?? Somehow a bunch of them ended up in senior roles too. Seems like a newer shift post-CDO, more blame on JD than EH.
It’s also a problem when sports become the only thing some people pay attention to—it starts to feel like a modern version of Bread and Circuses
pre 2020 groups would talk about sports, more cohesion, before / after standups, or coffee runs, it would get talked about, spark interest
now, nothing, everyone too worried about saying the wrong thing or just too preoccupied about losing their job, or just too tuned into the fact the overall culture is a repressed, dark and overall a non social place