Shoe Dog – My Learnings & Key Takeaways

I recently finished reading this book, cover to cover. I can definitely say that this is one of the best business books I have read till now.

This book is about how Phil Knight built Nike from scratch, in partnership with his coach - Bill Bowerman.

In this article, I am sharing my learnings and implementation of Leadership principles from this book.

Firstly, what does the title mean?

Shoe Dog – People who devoted themselves wholly to the making, selling, buying, or designing of shoes.

Now here are my key takeaways:

1. Where there is trust in the team there is no place for ego.

2. Dissent is the key attribute of any successful team - that is, members should feel comfortable to challenge any decision which they do not agree or align with.

3. Believe in your mentors and be there in their companionship for as long as possible. Few examples from this book which tell the intensity with which Phil believed in his coach/partner, Bill Bowerman.

• He mentioned that his policy was – Whatever Bowerman Wants.
• In another situation, Bowerman wanted to sell majority of his stake in the company. Phil requested him to not fully dissolve his stake and begged him to retain a percentage, to stay as Vice President and member of board.
• In order to pay homage to his coach, there is a lane in the Nike headquarters in Beaverton, named as Bowerman Drive.

4. Be transparent even during rainy days. This is really challenging, but in long run, this is the only road which elevates a leader and their team towards success.

In the book, there are few situations highlighted where Phil needed to share not so good news with team, investors, shareholders, and he shared it with full transparency. This, in fact, resulted in gaining more respect and trust for him as well as for the company.

5. Unless you are fully convinced, don’t agree.

Before going public, Phil and his team discussed multiple times for a good number of years, a solution to going public, without Phil giving up control. The team knew what the conditions were and did not proceed until they had a solution that completely convinced them. Finally, once Nike went public, Phil retained 46%.

6. Empower the team, give them freedom to execute, but at any given situation a leader should not hesitate to clarify where everyone stands.

For instance, when Nike was launching an apparel line, Phil started paying close attention to what his team and him wore. So, he instituted a dress code. When he saw that even after discussion his leadership team was not following the dress code, he directed the bookkeeper to deduct a few dollars from their salary, and in fact he did not hesitate to send them back home.

7. For a leader, it is paramount to understand the strength and weaknesses of their team, and in a case where the work assigned to the team is not matching with their strengths, then immediate corrective action needs to be taken, swiftly.

8. A leader needs to continuously push their team away from their comfort zone, thus preventing them growing stale.

9. A leader needs to take care of the society - that is, the bigger cause of existence.

A very good example highlighted in this book – in the rubber room of a shoe factory, the fumes are toxic and cancer-causing. So, Nike invented an approach which helped to eliminate 97% of carcinogens from air. Then, they gave this invention to their competitors and anyone else who wanted to use it.

10. And this is my favorite one - a leader needs to take care of their health first, in order to be successful in professional and in fact in personal life as well.

So, this was an overall great book. If you want to read or gift a business book, do consider this one, I am sure you will be intrigued.

In case you have read this book, please feel free to share your learnings or any points of discussion in comments.