When news broke of Elliott Hill’s triumphant return to Nike as its new CEO, I immediately thought of Shoe Dog, the memoir by its founder Phil Knight. During my days as a talent management director at the company, the book was handed out to all employees.
In it, Phil explained what drove him to create one of the world’s most successful brands. Sure, as a young man he had goals of building a family and making money, he wrote. “But deep down I was searching for something else, something more. I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know, short as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative.” Then, suddenly, “I saw it all before me, exactly what I wanted my life to be. Play. Yes, I thought, that’s it. That’s the word. The secret of happiness.”
This is more than an origin story. It’s an ethos that Knight instilled throughout the organization. Above all, what has driven people at Nike to work hard, experiment, and innovate is that shared sense of what the work is all about. The better a job the company has done of making sure everyone feels their work is meaningful, the more successful Nike has been.
As I’ve worked elsewhere in the years since (while remaining a Nike shareholder), I’ve seen the same phenomenon play out at various companies. So for my doctoral dissertation from the University of Pennsylvania last year, I explored dozens of studies. My conclusion? Meaningful work—more than any other measure—has the largest potential impact on employee motivation and performance.
Nike’s struggles over the last few years have reflected this. John Donahoe was selected as CEO in 2018 (the year after I left the company, so I did not work with him). He has been credited with helping expand Nike’s digital efforts and guiding the brand through the early days of the pandemic. But it’s also long been clear that his selection sacrificed the shared sense of meaning at the core of the company.
He came along as an outsider with experience in tech and management consulting, but none with Nike’s industry or what it stands for. While his background and areas of focus prepared him to make strategic decisions on some important matters, they did nothing to make him someone who could represent and spread Nike’s ethos internally, keeping everyone inspired.
Nike’s executive chairman Mark Parker alluded to the need for this kind of course correction in announcing the new succession plan for Hill to take over. “Elliott’s global expertise, leadership style, and deep understanding of our industry and partners, paired with his passion for sport, our brands, products, consumers, athletes, and employees, make him the right person to lead Nike’s next stage of growth,” Parker said.
The mention of “partners” is crucial. As part of Donahoe’s cost-cutting efforts, Nike reportedly ended relationships with many of its wholesalers, creating an opening for competitors to move into those vacated spaces.
This wasn’t just a bad call for the obvious business reasons. When relationships are severed with people who have played a role in a company’s operations, work can feel less meaningful to those who are still there. In my research, I found that what makes work meaningful is not just the company’s purpose and how an individual’s role relates to it—it’s also the sense of community that people develop with those who are like teammates going after a shared win.
Layoffs at the company surely had a similar effect. The sense of community dissipates, and people become more detached—which was echoed by laid-off staff in statements to the media.
Hill’s arrival gives Nike an opportunity to fix all this. Nike staff celebrated the news as soon as it broke. Already, employees are signaling hope. If the team is anything like the one I once oversaw there—and I believe it is—then they’re not just hoping for better sales metrics and soaring stocks on Wall Street. They’re also hoping to feel great again about what they do each day—that what they do is meaningful, purposeful, and creative. That's how work becomes play, and how happiness takes root inside a company.
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