#WhatStruckMeInLeadership... WK 2

I love Nike and wear the gear with pride, but I didn’t realize the remarkable saga of innovation, survival and triumph that stood behind every #swoosh.

This week, I present Shoe Dog, a memoir by the creator of Nike – Phil Knight.

Fresh out of Stanford business school, Phil Knight borrowed fifty dollars from his father and launched a company with one simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost running shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his car in 1963, Knight grossed eight thousand dollars that first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion.

“The cowards never started, the weak died along the way — that leaves us.”

"Don't ever stop" - Nike’s cofounder fought a number of life-threatening fires during his journey, and maybe that's really a big part of building such a successful company - remaining in the game. He lost credit lines when his business depended on them; he repeatedly almost lost his partnership with Onitsuka when distributing them in the U.S. was the only business he had; he was fined for more than a year's revenue by the Government. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you’d better be prepared for long hours and dark moments…. He lived to fight another day, meditating, counting backwards, running, doing “whatever it took to hold it together ".

Building trust by being trustworthy  

Knight himself had been a runner all his life, he was part of the scene and knew coaches, runners, and their teams. Drove to track competitions, meetings and schools and talked to the enthusiasts. Jeff Johnson, the first employee, not only set up a store but created an experience for runners - turning the store into a mecca, a holy of holies for runners, created a beautiful space for runners to hang out and talk, built shelves and filled them with books that every runner should read, in all the world, there had never been such a sanctuary for runners, a place that didn’t just sell them shoes but celebrated them and their shoes. 

It also allowed them to be nearer to innovation: in the late 60s, the running tracks/ turfs went from being ash or dirt to a new synthetic material: tartan or rubber. New turf meant new physical properties in terms of grip, dampening etc. Because Nike were right there when the new surfaces were tested, they could respond quickly by developing a new shoe and sole fitting for this surface.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”

He admitted “My management style wouldn’t have worked for people who wanted to be guided, every step, but his core team was liberated & empowered “They are all dedicated to the purpose: making running better and find ways to contribute. Plus, they all share into important decisions, taking regular team retreats to work on bigger questions.

But instead of cherishing how far we’d come, I saw only how far we had to go

It’s always easy to tell a story after it happened. It is a great fallacy of our minds: because we know it happened, it was the only way it could have happened.  Knight doesn’t set out to build an empire, nor does he want to disrupt or overturn the shoe markets. He wanted to make running better by improving the tools (shoes) and runner’s health. He struggled, he fought and in the end, even after cracking $140 million in sales, he said. He admitted to being an absent father, narrowly avoiding burnout, making rash and bad decisions. Surely, the company thrived and survived, but there was luck involved: it could have gone differently, but then today we wouldn’t be reading this story.

In today‘s age of start-ups – Nike‘s success sets the gold standard.. #Be Legendary