Nike’s CFO on Developing Necessary Leadership Skills

mr. Campion is a double Bruin graduating from UCLA with the Bachelor of Arts and economics and then returning to earn an MBA from the Anderson School of Management he also holds a JD and an LLM in taxation from the University of San Diego School of Law also since joining Nike mr. Campion has become an accomplished marathoner and remains an avid Lakers fan even in the heart of Trailblazer territory it's an absolute honor to welcome mr. Campion back to UCLA Anderson thanks Craig for the nice introduction and thank you dean Olean for inviting me to be here today UCLA it is awesome to be back home at UCLA I first started calling UCLA home back in 1989 I moved into Dykstra Hall as a freshman that year and it was an awesome year so awesome that I ended up spending another seven years figuring out how to stay on this campus and roam around a bit love this place and it's great to be back my wife is here is also a UCLA alum she's here with our kids who are all decked out in some UCLA gear and we'll certainly be down in Westwood watching the Bruins beat USC tonight unfortunately our dog in our in-house mascot Josephine Bruin was not able to make the trip down from Oregon so I have been fortunate over time to have spent time learning at three of the most highly regarded institutions in the world UCLA Disney and Nike and when I met with Dean only and over the holidays what the Dean asked me to do was reflect on some of the learnings that I'd had at those institutions before we moved into QA and took some of the questions you guys have for me I I was as I said very fortunate to spend three decades here Disney and Nike what I didn't realize was just how fortunate I was at the time it's only when you reflect on the lessons that you've learned that you realize how truly valuable they are what you'll find is that the learnings that you're gaining here at Andersen will actually serve as a foundation upon which you'll build throughout your career I believe that over time you build the capacity to lead especially on a large scale by consolidating the learnings that you get from others primarily people say that he or she is a born leader I actually don't subscribe to that notion I think it's something you learn over time and certainly I think that makes all of you probably feel a little bit better about the money that you're spending to be here and get some of those get some of those learnings so where to begin leadership lessons Bill Bowerman who co-founded Nike with Phil Knight once said something to tinker hatfield one of our most highly regarded designers and innovators he said if you're going to be a leader you better know where you're going if you expect people to follow you I assume that many of you here at UCLA have taken a strategy class and unless the curriculums changed one of the first principles you learn in strategy is you have to have a clear mission statement and then you probably start reading some of those mission statements and then your eyes start to glaze over maybe you start to fall asleep literally in class and there's a reason for that many of them lack any real direction they speak to things like market share or metrics and refer to industries let's consider Nike for a moment I assume that everyone in this room has experienced the Nike brand be it by wearing our performance product on the playing field maybe you got inspiration from one of your favorite athletes or teams like one of mine the Lakers the Bruins maybe you're a little obsessed with cool sneakers like me that's good too that's that we're happy to have you as part of the brand in that regard as well the reality is Nike is and has been for decades one of the coolest most authentic most inspirational and innovative brands in the world and that doesn't happen by accident it begins with our mission Nikes mission is to provide inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world and we put a little asterisk on the word athlete noting that if you have a body you're an athlete so think about that in less than 20 words think about what our mission says it very concisely articulates our reason for being the distinctive value that we enterprise hope to bring to consumers inspiration and innovation those are our priorities two of them not a long list of them our priority isn't market share its inspiration innovation sport which is clearly evident in our mission is our passion and our mission taps into that emotionally our mission does another thing it articulates how massive we believe our opportunity is it speaks to if you have a body you're an athlete that's everyone we literally aspire to help everyone in the world all seven billion people of the consumers in the world achieve their full potential that mission doesn't just guide us strategically it fuels our culture we're driven by a diverse group of over 60,000 employees around the world that's a lot of people to lead and manage again think about that if you're going to be a leader you better know where you're going why because we've got over 60,000 people that are looking for direction all of those people around the world via our mission statement are bonded over a passion for sport and a desire to help others achieve their full potential that was it what is what is help Nate Nike stand the test of time remain a leader and continue to extend its leadership position I couldn't possibly share with you all the lessons that I've learned on my path to leadership at Nike I'd love to those who know me know I can talk and chat a bit so if you had a few hours I would try but the reality is that there are just a few that keep coming back to you you keep reflecting on them because they're more powerful than the others so I'm going to share a few of those I'm going to share them in a framework though I'm going to share them in a framework pairs and the reason is because one of the lessons that you learn as a leader actually has to do with the framework I'm about to share which is managing paradox often as a lead often people think leaders are decision makers I think we've had a politician and once said I'm the decider the reality as a leader is you're not often choosing between option A or option B or working through a checklist chillie what you're often challenged with is taking two objectives that seem contradictory and striking the right balance or trying to optimize against both objectives so let me start with a couple first one of the lessons I learned is you've got to master the fundamentals business is complex and large enterprises are not just run based on common sense alone we all kind of hope that sometimes we all start out hoping that a little common sense work ethic and and an engaging personality maybe problem-solving that'll solve it but actually the reality is it takes a lot of rigor to lead a Lardon enterprise but the second lesson is that you've got to become comfortable leveraging intuition they seem contradictory you got to master the fundamentals you're learning those fundamentals here at Anderson from strategic frameworks to valuation to rigorous analytics and at Nike we leverage all of those concepts for example our growth strategy which we refer to as the category offense is a segment to grow strategy it's a concept you learn in Business School and it's written about in a lot of business books that concept applied at Nike the category offense takes our billions of consumers around the world and segments them down through the lens of the sports they love and why do we do that the same reason other companies use a segment to grow strategy we're looking to gain deeper insights at a more granular level in two categories of consumers so that we can better serve them in more compelling ways that's said to the paradox at the same time truly innovative ideas are not conceived on a spreadsheet so my hunch is a number of you in this room prior to business school or maybe even currently while you're attending have had a job with the title analyst in it and if you haven't you're probably going to and most of the jobs if you go over to the recruiting center probably say analyst senior analysts or some kind of analysis in it certainly in the description unfortunately what we all come to real over time is that there isn't a supercomputer or algorithm that can take consumer insights and translate those through some kind of automated process into a relentless flow of new innovative products it doesn't happen without intuition you have to develop your own intuition and be confident leveraging it and even more importantly you've got to seek the intuition that other people have gained from experience that's one of the fundamental principles for me of learning is becoming a leader has less to do with what you were born with actually most of what you learn that gives you that capacity to lead you learn from others I've been super fortunate as I said to be at some great institutions but why am i fortunate not necessarily just because the the brand on the door it's because of people like Bob Iger Tom Staggs at Disney Marc Parker at Nike people who have had unbelievable experience and then shared those experiences with me to help me leverage their intuition to build my own a brief anecdote I when I was at Disney I had a transaction that I was working on it was actually selling one of our sports franchises and we got into a really complicated situation and Michael Eisner called me up to his office and he proceeded to tell me a story about heaven can wait and Frank Wells and Warren Beatty and I of course thought where is this this doesn't have anything to do with what we're working on but by the end of the story we actually did exactly what he was recommending and what he was recommending came from a completely different context and so I think just recognizing that you're going to learn over time from others and that that learning is going to help you develop the intuition that's required to accomplish great things your goal is a leader in managing that paradox is to marry those truly innovative ideas that are born from intuition into fundamentally sound strategic and financial plans and those are the fundamentals you're learning here as a CFO I'm responsible for resource allocation across fairly large enterprise I hear a lot of fantastic ideas usually because people want money and I get a lot of proposals and the reality is actually most of the ideas are pretty fantastic certainly a Nike they are and they were at Disney but we can't do them all and so what I often use is a simple phrase to clarify how we're going to move forward is the best ideas don't always get funded but the best plans do take Nike Flyknit for example this we have an insight our insight was that we could create a more lightweight comfortable customizable shoe with all of the characteristics of a shoe that a runner needs structure support cushioning etc and we believe we could do that with yarn see the spool of yarn on the image-making the uppers essentially on a knitting machine have never been done and before it could be done it required significant investment from a manufacturing process so we began with an idea and frankly we all got pretty excited about the idea and the next step was getting our head around what we needed to do to bring it to life and that required some investment what we landed on was the idea coupled with a detailed product as we call it brand or in business school you may learn it as marketing and distribution or as we call it marketplace strategy at Nike again frameworks you learn in business school that you apply against an intuitive idea to accomplish great things today just a couple years after launching flying it actually about three years after launching flying at the London Olympics we now sell millions of pairs of flying at shoes so again it was an idea an idea that we couldn't prove would work we had to use some intuition we now sell millions of pairs of shoes across running football basketball sportswear but things didn't go always go according to plan and that brings me to another lesson one of the most important aspects of being a leader is being an optimist I learned that from Bob Iger at Disney about ten years ago as he was transitioning into the CEO role at Disney in fact I had the pleasure of spending a little bit of time with him yesterday and we reflected on that and over the last 10 years our CEO at Nike mark Parker has reinforced that time and time again and the reason both of those two leaders did that is both companies are inherently companies that are fueled by creativity and innovation so be an optimist why the reason is because pessimism stifles creativity and innovation you can always find a reason not to do something that's never been done before but optimism finds a way and finds a solution so I'd encourage you guys to keep that philosophy in the front of your mind as you elevate into leadership roles two more lessons that I feel like or a bit of a paradox first business is a team sport at the same time you've often heard this you've heard this I'm sure before from other leaders you have to continually seek the best talent you have to ask yourself as a leader of everyone on the planet do I have the most talented and diverse individuals in every role in my organization in business like in sports it's more about the name on the front of the jersey than the name on the back and you have to fuel that culture early in your career you're going to feel a different pull you're going to feel a pool to highlight your individual accomplishments because that's how you get ahead that's how you move through the ranks that is actually how you get ahead to some extent and move through the ranks early on but that runs out on you because as you progress through the ranks what you realize is that if you aspire to be a leader and you're working with other leaders one of the most important skills they're looking for you and that they value is your ability to use collaboration to drive alignment across cross-functional teams and large organizations and there's some good news in there it's not a sacrifice it's not like you're sacrificing your own personal accomplishment for the common good the good news is that ultimately you will get much more accomplished if you aren't worried about who gets the credit and if you get a lot more accomplished the spoils are plentiful and they go to the winners at Nike there is no other way we actually structure selves so that is a fact of life not a nice-to-have our organizational structures of matrix you're going to learn about matrix organizations over the course your time here at Anderson you're going to hear pros cons people who've worked in ones that worked people have worked in ones that don't work that but the secret ingredient in the ones that work and why and why it's so that skillset is so important to us is that it requires collaboration and alignment and we've purposely structured ourselves to get that because of that philosophy that it's more about the name on the front of the jersey on the back at the same time again as a leader you must be able to recruit and retain or draft a team comprised of all Allstars in every role that means individuals who've become accustomed to putting up big numbers like LeBron James like Kobe Bryant and being recognized publicly and and very openly as the best at Nike we aspire to be the most authentic connected inspiring and innovative brand in the world think about that for a second that's no small feat in the world think about the world Russia Brazil etc it reminds me of another anecdotes many of you pricing this the the most interesting man advertisement I think there's a quote in there that he speaks Russian fluently in French the reality is our mission actually kind of pushes us almost to in the direction of being actually that dynamic we can't accomplish that without extraordinary talent and that talent has to bring to Nike diverse global perspectives to help us connect with each of those consumers around the world on a more personal level and a level where they can say themselves on an individual level Nike is bringing me that inspiration and innovation they promised as Michael Jordan once said talent wins games teamwork wins championships you need both the best player in the world the most talented player in the world who frankly knows from Experian so talent can win games he won some games by himself but what he knows is you need both he didn't believe that he alone could win a championship actually we're seeing that all over the place in sports today we're seeing incredibly talented individuals who based on social media and otherwise are actually getting even more recognition than players like Michael Jordan got and what are they doing they're trying to pull together a diverse team that can help them win a championship that's actually one of the reasons I'm here today Anderson is renowned for the talent that it attracts and for the diversity of global perspectives represented in this room so in that regard it shouldn't be any surprise that over half of the NBA is that we hire the NBA interns that we've hired at Nike over the last several years come from UCLA and you might be thinking you saw that picture of me and my wife and my kids and all our UCLA gear maybe I'm putting my thumb on the scale I'm actually not I love UCLA and I'm always encouraging people to look to UCLA as a source of talent I actually had that made evident to me from our HR organization from scouring the MBAs that we've hired and saying you know there's actually a theme here as you're heading down to UCLA and that theme is UCLA again I'm not putting my thumb on the scale and I can't do that as a leader I have to stay objective but fortunately Addie Nolan and her factory and make faculty are making it a lot easier for me they're bringing all those folks that I'd have to go try to find around the world here to UCLA and we're we're really fortunate to be connecting with this student population in the way that we have over the last several years and I know some of you in the room can't see everyone in the room but I know some of you in the room spent the summer up at UCLA and some of you're probably coming back to okay two more lessons that also seem contradictory they're actually more kind of mantras or philosophies that I've leveraged over time stick the landing you can kind of picture what I'm talking about there I am and there is no finish line we've all probably watched gymnastics probably in the Olympics that's where we all probably watch it right but if we're being honest many of us don't have any clue how difficult or amazing any of the elements of the routine are any of them we're watching flips turns etc but there's one thing we do all know if you don't stick the landing you're probably not going to get a very good score in fact we're often sitting there holding our breath until that decisive moment it's actually not all that different in business particularly at the leadership level consider presentations to senior management or the board of directors or partners or consider revealing a new product to consumers a lot of work goes into those moments if you will you have to give yourself enough space to ensure that that final product or moment meets the audience's expectations or standards for excellence especially in situations where you have to solve a complex problem in those situations and I think unfortunately we've all been behavior there before some of these lessons make you cringe when you think back and roll your own tape you develop this tendency you know it's complex and you worked really hard on it and so you want to show your homework and you know you want to get to the you got to get to the point events but you want to show the homework and you spend a lot of time figuring out how to show you show your homework but in the end showing your homework is never a substitute for a final product that fails to meet the expectations of the audience in business the goal is actually not to burden everybody with the complexity it's a to take the complexity and make it simple so that folks who don't necessarily have all the same context or expertise can align cross-functionally against what you're proposing at Nike we have a maxim that speaks to this and and actually our Maxim's are very powerful at Nike there buy Maxim's we mean values of the philosophies that drive us and you're often in a meeting at Nike where someone will take a Maxim and kind of verbally slap it on the table there's a debate and it's a circular conversation and someone just goes you know what we got to simplify and go that's actually one of our Maxim and the number of meetings I've been in have been countless where it's a complex situation and we're wrestling with it and debating and someone goes you know what we got a simplifying going what happens we decide there's one thing that's most important and there are three strategic imperatives or dimensions of that goal that we need to get after and that's where we really start to get traction so I said sticking the landing kind of implies a bit of finality finality or an end of the process but the reality is that those milestones those meetings are actually journeys along the path toward what you're trying to accomplish or your full potential at Nike we continue to push ourselves based on that other philosophy there is no finish line this actually is a picture from my office it's my desk looks right at this up at this quote all day it's one of my favorites it actually dates back to the founding of Nike with Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight and from a leadership development perspective it's critical you've got to push yourself to keep learning especially as a leader when others start to tell you you've arrived or you've made it or worse when you start to think that yourself you've got to stay on the offense always when you're a leader as an enterprise someone always wants a little bit a little piece of what you got they want some of your market they want to connect with your consumer they'd love a little later revenue and then they'd and they'd be thrilled with some of your profit but we so what you got to do is continually refine your game in order to extend that leadership position both over time and actually in terms of separating from the competition so at Nike like a runner who's just finished a race we always believe and push ourselves to think that our personal best is not the record we just said our personal best is always something that's still out in front of us all right finally actually it's one phrase with the paradox right in it you guys have probably heard the phrase it's business it's not personal that phrase makes absolutely no sense it's a cliche that everyone uses it's business not personal it's sort of absurd when you think about it people actually are the ingredient to create amazing results in a business the reality is it's business and it's personal in fact you might even flip them it's personal and its business its business and it's personal the phrase doesn't make sense you need to understand what motivates your team and how you can deliver on that you need to understand what people value what their strengths are and how you can enable them showing their strengths and putting their strengths to good use you need to help them avoid their derailleurs in short as a leader it's critical that you develop a personal relationship with your team that's actually one of the unique elements of being a leader you can be an individual contributor in the organ in an organization and be relatively siloed but as a leader you've got to push yourself to create the space to develop those personal relationships and there's something that's even a little more powerful what's more powerful is when you push yourself to share that same dimension about yourself with the team when you've got members of your team that actually have a pretty deep understanding of what motivates you what your strengths are and more importantly what your derailers are and when you do that the results are pretty phenomenal essentially when you do that you get a level of understanding and Trust amongst your team that makes you unbelievably faster it drives you to the results even faster than you can imagine so with that I want to thank you for inviting me back to UCLA to the point about it's personal I look forward to meeting a lot of you and the reception to follow and as I get to engage with UCLA more over time and I hope that me sharing some of what I've learned ends up being as much value to you as you ascend into leadership roles as what I learned from all those people I've mentioned and more that share their learnings with me over time so with that I think we'll transition over to Q&A well thank you for that Andy that was great before you sit down please flash your sneakers oh I did look at those Bruins sneakers are they not great and as you find these at Nike calm and I might add that they're not the official Bruin sneaker yet the contract is up in 2017 if you really like those sneakers I want to thank everyone for coming Thank You Craig for that great introduction some I'll ask a few questions and then I'll turn it over to you to ask Andy questions and first of all we're incredibly proud that you're a double Bruin that your wife is a Bruin and we of course attribute all your success to us but there were probably there were probably a couple of leaders you spoke about some of the really important learning moments but you've had the opportunity to work with some really iconic leaders Bob Iger mark Parker and of course Phil Knight can can you tell us anything in particular you've learned from those leaders sure I've learned a tremendous amount but a few a few maybe of the more salient things I've learned from them I talked about how both Bob Iger at Disney and and Mark Parker share optimism in common and they have this that mentality that no finish line mentality they have something else in common it goes to the nature of its business and it's personal and it's not just relatively two of them I think actually if you look across leadership broadly what you find is the notion that great leaders realize that the more inclusive they are of people's perspectives the greater the ability they have to achieve what they're trying to accomplish in their full potential and you find leaders from time to time in your career that have camps so-and-so's in this person's camp so-and-so isn't that person camper this is their trusted network that's their trusted network those two leaders in particular along with a lot of others don't have camps in fact an anecdote I shouldn't probably talk too much about mark I know this ends up on video but but fortunately be flattering so hopefully he's pleased but mark has a really a couple of really interesting ways that that his leadership comes to life that's that's incredibly empowering one when he's got a questioner when he's looking to get something accomplished he doesn't work hub-and-spoke he doesn't go to who's technically responsible for this or that he actually makes the rounds he's known to do a lap and sit down with you and ask you the question and maybe talk to you about the issue and frankly sometimes you go away and you kind of go like hey that's not even my job so but he's trust me he thinks I'm the one that's going to solve that and then over the next few hours you start chatting with your colleagues and you realize oh he asked everybody that question and and that kind of goes to a second one which is asking questions I think there's you know fundamentally what motivates people what really gets people inspired is when they're able to do something that it succeeded someone else's expectations when you're able to autonomously create something that someone maybe didn't couldn't you didn't even imagine or task you with creating and what Mark does that's something that I've tried to employ more and I think a lot of people should consider applying more as he asks a lot of questions he doesn't make a lot of statements his questions can be leading directive sometimes they are purely just open-ended and in terms of intellectual curiosity but what he's really doing is leaving you that space to go answer it even if it's directive or leading you leave going I'm going to go answer that question with my team and it's really empowering and when you do and you deliver great results you feel great about it you don't feel like you just went and got a task done for somebody now you said you mentioned this isn't my job of course you're the CFO and you're in the EVP how do you conceptualize your job you're infinite are you also a strategic partner is it about talent attraction and retention is it about management how do you conceptualize your job as the CFO there are a couple of dimensions to that you're right I think you do end up at a level from a leadership perspective where it is less about your functional responsibilities it's more about the enterprise objectives and the and the fact that again the name on the front of the Jersey is much more important than the name on the back and sometimes that name on the back is your name sometimes it's your function but you got to really stay focused on the enterprise goals and I think the best leaders actually embody what's called kind of a t-type approach to leadership the the vertical aspect of Atty very deep functionally but the ability to think broadly across other functions and they develop that again they build that capacity over time by seeking out learnings and insights from folks in those other functions actually one of my partners at Nike is a guy named David de graça who spent some time here with the memes organization a UCLA marketing and Finance at a lot of companies those two folks don't get along that well he's a close friend and an unbelievable business partner and he's an example of someone that I try to learn from and I think to some extent he tries to learn for me to develop that kind of horizontal bar on horizontal bar on the tea by the way some of these questions may be familiar to you because they were culled from faculty and student questions so thank you for submitting them Nike is enormous and frankly Dwarfs any other player in the industry it's about 30 billion today and Mark Parker has stated that you want to grow it in 2020 to 50 billion you've been growing at eight and a half percent a year you already control I read 62% of the athletic shoe market professor suit told me that it's 90 percent of the elite shoe market so to get there you're going to have to grow at 10% a year tell us how so I spoke a little bit about our mantra there is no finish line and that actually applies to how we think about markets as well I think I also mentioned sometimes you'll read a mission statement and it'll speak to market share that's not where we start at Nike in terms of no finish line our philosophy is that there's always a greater distance between us and the potential or our potential then there is between us and where we started or us and our competition frankly and so where we start with is start with the consumer and the athlete develop increasingly more detailed and deeper insights on those consumers and grow the market not take share again back to the spoils go to the winner and when you grow the market you end up getting share along the way too but it's really about about that full potential and grow in the market and today digital for example has completely transformed the notion of segments to grow if you think about it segment to grow starts with the notion of it's a it's a big market and I'm already a leader so I got to segment it down and figure out hacking I can be a leader in the different segments the power of digital technology takes a notion of segments and says I can be one-to-one in personal at scale ultimately across all seven billion you've got to start somewhere but again back to there's no finish line to us we look at something like that and say yeah just like we thought there's even greater opportunity than several years ago we might have thought if we just thought about share dynamics within an existing market so let's go to digital that's different from your traditional direct reach to wholesalers and retailers and in a sense you might be disintermediating them how is that going to affect your relationships with some very traditional challenge channels for Nike yeah it's a great question and one we think a ton about from a strategy a middle a mid to long range planning perspective and annual operating plan perspective it's an extraordinary dynamic it digital's transforming everything we do from how we create product just yesterday we had announced that we had a partnership with DreamWorks I was out with DreamWorks understanding how we might be able to leverage their digital technology in a better way to earn an interesting way to 2/8 our state us in our design and creation product it's trans it's certainly impacting to the positive how we connect with consumers as I just talked about and it's also impacting that third pillar strategy the consumer experience in the market and that and by that I mean I do mean both bricks and mortar and digitally it's becoming a more seamless market you're not choosing between channels you're leveraging digital to expand the market so you actually feel that retail might grow from the digital content yeah it's two phenomenons one we think digital actually helps you better serve consumers that should grow the market I think this the you know the one of the other phenomenons is really more our strategy we look at the market and we always start with the consumer we don't start with channels out and when we look at the market we think there are still endless opportunities even in a market like the u.s. to dimensionalize it and so we can look across our wholesale partners our owned brick-and-mortar door is digital and we're not can we do and what we do is look at opportunities to further segment and differentiate those experiences so that when consumers interact with us at those points we're not going to be everywhere but our wholesale partners are bricks and mortar and our digital business allow us increasingly so to be everywhere but they also create so much capacity that we think there's an opportunity for everyone in the ecosystem to grow the more we connect at a category and consumer level so digital is not only impacting Channel and distribution issues but also advertising you've shifted away from TV and print I saw that you slash your traditional marketing budgets by about 40 percent to move to a lot more of the online social media and viral marketing strategy so talk about that yeah we am at Nike we started one-to-one so when you think about digital allowing you to be more personal in one to one Nike started we could create a more innovative product for athletes and they started by creating those products loading them up in a van and going around to track meets and other events around Oregon and connecting with people one-to-one and understanding what products work for them what didn't as we got bigger over time we again saw that opportunity to innovate for and inspire for a much bigger population we now operate in over 190 countries but but the our ability to connect with inspire and innovate for was somewhat limited and we had to do it in more mass ways dimensionalized but mass what digital is allowing us to do now is take both notions and collapse them basically get back to one to one engagement deep brand engagement knowing our consumers to serve them but do it at scale and so it's less about favoring one medium versus another it's more about leveraging now what's available to us to get back to our roots and be more deeply connected with consumers you mentioned 190 countries by the way maybe a couple more questions and then you'll have some time 190 countries China is a big one and China has had some rough waters recently both in terms of consumer markets and the currency devaluation has that affecting Nike and I understand that isn't Michael Jordan there now or was recently there because it's so important to you to send those big stars there yeah I mean I'll take the last notion first are one of the things I talked about is us making sure that we push ourselves to be authentic and connected with our consumers around the world and actually you know at Nike it starts with the athlete and the athletes we partner with have the same goal and so whether it's Michael Jordan Kobe LeBron Kevin Durant others they push themselves to be of those markets and so we do actually with our athletes spend a lot of time in those markets back to China so we're very mindful of the macro economics and the dynamics in China how could you know the everyday it's in the news and as you noted they do impact us on a macro scale to some extent in terms of what's going on relative to oil or to foreign currency that can impact our sourcing at the same time we believe China is a tremendous opportunity for Nike we have significant momentum there now and we do feel like we can sustain that momentum because that Rho momentum is really rooted in our strategies coupled with some really interesting dynamics for us in China it's obviously as everyone would tell you an incredibly attractive market because of an emerging middle class because as even China from a government perspective is said growth in China economically will actually start to be more so fueled by consumption that favors Nike but what really favors Nike and at the same time gives us an opportunity to fuel is sport in China the Chinese consumer has long been passionate about sport and we've all heard about their passion for basketball mostly from a fan perspective very in the past very few people actually as we would say played with a whistle play basketball where there was a ref with a whistle competitively increasingly we're seeing those numbers explode sport participation in sports like basketball there's tremendous momentum and running of late in China and that's obviously where we're focused we're focused on it is obviously an enormous country and when we think about our mission that if you have a body or an athlete there's over a billion people there's over glad-tidings in China and sort of like it's been it's been it's been a it's been a great source of momentum for us but we think the opportunities integrator but then from from a currency standpoint it is it is the blow soften for you in a sense by producing there and or how do you deal with the repatriation issues of the funds yeah it's um and I can do this with this group you guys are relative a technical group so currency in general is an interesting dynamic I think what what we've become resolved to so to speak we prefer this isn't the case but it is is that we're going to be in a pretty dynamic and volatile macroeconomic environment it is maybe to overuse a cliff cliche the new normal and so we've got a couple of dimensions we look at in that regard one of them is we look at our business on a currency neutral basis to ensure again that from a consumer first perspective we're capitalizing on the opportunities we see to serve a consumer and I guess not diluted by the math around currency but we're a Dow 30 company we're a global enterprise that also has a mission which are an objective which is to translate that value we for create for consumers into shareholder value so from a currency perspective we have a couple of things a couple of strategies that we use one we have a trading company which touches on your point I'll touch on a second and then a very sophisticated hedging program our trading company takes those potentially offsetting risks and optimizes the offsetting of those risks and China is certainly a market where we do source a fair amount of product but we also sell a fair amount of product and so those offsetting factors our trading company uses those rather than then then hedging from a gross perspective the risks we look at the net our hedging strategy actually the main point of our hedging strategy a lot of people talk about hedging making earnings more predictable etc and that's certainly a benefit of it for us we think of it strategically our hedging strategy allows us to take to hedge volatile currencies out a year maybe longer and use those to ensure we're delivering appropriate near-term financial performance but we're keeping our eye on the real ball which is continuing to invest a fuel long-term growth it gives us the time to pause manage the levers that we can within our business to ensure we strike that balance this will be my last question so remember to think of yours you have a stable of athletes that is enviable and some of them actually carry industries you know my husband is a tennis player he'll probably use any racquet that Roger Federer uses and yet there are sometimes risks with athletes so how do you assess both the potential and the risk of an athlete before you sign them and then how do you manage them and they conduct when they are in your stable yeah first Nike will will always be connected with the world's greatest athletes teams Federation's and that's because athletes for us are an incredible source of inspiration and insights that help us innovate and so that will always be core to our strategy and it's actually in a way where our strategy starts we often say it starts with the athlete at the same time you can't predict everything that's going to happen over time you talked about contracts certainly our contracts are structured so they give us protections in the event that's something we couldn't predict happens and we feel like we need to be protected the reality is that we have to evaluate all of those on a case by case basis the risk that materialized are different in terms of their nature in terms of their magnitude and so we push ourselves to to to analyze them on a case by case basis in the context of our goal which is to continue to leverage that connection with the athlete to then translate it into innovation inspiration that makes everybody better and help them reach their full potential and if it doesn't quite go right what happens I mean with the athlete doesn't how do you manage out of a bad contract is really I mean there are two dimensions one is contracts can give you certain protections in the event that you can't otherwise work your way through in a non contractual or legal way and so oftentimes that second Avenue is where the case-by-case basis comes in and we evaluate the circumstances it but we do have contracts that give us quite a bit of protection your questions and there are microphones there in the center of the room please introduce yourself and keep the questions briefly if you don't mind Dean Walters when when Kevin Durant came into the league he was not much of a negotiator and at 24 25 he indicated that he was going to become business savvy he came very close to leaving you last year in order to retain him did you give you or colleague of yours did you give one of these inspirational speeches simply come out with the number that he wished to hear ha ha ha that's a good question actually as I said I think the most important element in our relationship with the athlete is actually the relationship of course as is documented in the press athletes based on their accomplishments and based on a lot of other things that they do and like many of us have an opportunity to to gain economically as well what we really I think focus on and pride ourself on is the relationship with the athlete and so I wouldn't necessarily say it's an inspirational presentation but we do hope overtime and we and we do develop overtime with athletes like Kevin Durant Kobe LeBron and others is a deep personal connection with those athletes and it's interesting when you say they become savvy about business it's actually part of that that learning we talked about earlier you can learn something from anybody we learn a lot from the athletes and what we actually often find is athletes all of our athletes Kobe is a great example is often looking to us to help them think about that next phase of their life when they go into business and unfortunately my role that's something I get to partake in a little bit I don't partake in so much the sports marketing side as much as I do when an athlete's kind of looking to get some insights from us from a business perspective I think what Andy saying is how do they manage the multiple millions is what he advises them on other questions go ahead oh so I was a frack and you've done so much for the stable community already making Bella bronze shoes right now so what's next the Hat great question that is a great question I would actually encourage all of you to the shoe you mentioned there's a there's a video that's worth getting on the internet and looking at a shoe that LeBron and our CEO Mark Parker our CEO is actually our innovator in chief our designer in chief in a way mark came up through design and what happened was a young man actually reached out to us and said hey I have I have some complicating factors in terms of what it would take for product to help me reach my full potential and again back to that point of a mission that's the kind of thing that grabs a mark Parker it actually grabbed another designer guy named Toby Hatfield and Nike one of the things you should know is those learnt those experiences actually push us one of the things our innovators talk about is the more complex the challenge it actually pushes us to create even more innovative solutions so as Mark would say if you listen to our earnings call we're really excited about the pipeline but but he's often unfortunately left to just leave a little bit of a tease but until we actually formally announce that but I would tell you to rest assured that there's a lot of energy and focus at Nike on leveraging those unique situations to create amazing products thank you anyone else well I'll ask in the meantime if you think of if you think of I have two more questions but I'm happy to interrupt for others technology's been a big part for Nike and with technology smart clothing 3d printing you're dabbling in all and I'm sure much more and I can ask also what's next in the technology arena and how are you going to couple that with your mission yeah I think one of the things that's really there's a quote I think it's by a futurist or a philosopher that says some the future is here it's just unevenly distributed and that's something we push ourselves on at Nike because one of the things we push ourselves to do is innovate and create the future and right now a lot of that that future that's here that's not fully distributed as technology enabled and it's actually something that's been poured us since the beginning we have a sports research lab we put our products to the test on athletes in very scientific ways and so the opportunities frankly are pretty endless in terms of and to give a little bit more specificity one of the things we encourage people to do is do more I think if you've you've probably heard the phrase just do it it's part of our brand part of our brand is how do we invite people to do more one of the ways you invite people to do more these days is community and connecting people and giving them insight into how they how they can do more another fundamental priority for us is how do we help people get better everybody wants to get better I think there was a fan of the show Friday Night Lights there's a quote on the show every day you get a little bit better a little bit worse let's make today a day we get a little bit better technology in terms of performance tracking coaching certainly is starting to offer that opportunity and that's fundamental to our brand how it'll manifest itself in terms of products and services and in terms of products that we create or products that we partner with people to create still remains to be seen I mean obviously that will be that will be core to what we do for decades to come it's not just about what the next the pipeline is but certainly a huge opportunity for us well we're very grateful that you hire MBAs and MBAs from Anderson who share success think fearlessly and drive change how do you use MBA talent within Nike actually one of the great things about Nike from a talent perspective is there's a synergy at Nike our consumer brand as well as our employment brand is very similar we see tremendous potential in people from an athlete and sport perspective and it actually carries over to how we think about talent within our organization we have we have a chief operating officer for example who originally joined Nike as a controller from Price Waterhouse our head of our global categories so really we're product consumer insights product and and brand are conceived from a strategic perspective was a tax guy and the big probably big six at the time and he came in as an MBA into a strategic planning role so we use MBAs in a variety of ways what were what were what I'm most proud of is that over the last several years what we've said is let's find the best entry points for MBAs because we've seen them go on to realize that potential into very diverse roles in the company let's create more of an opening and we've done that particularly in the finance and strategic planning function we've done it to some extent in marketing as well so initially coming in we look for that that area where you can take those fundamentals you're learning in Business School that you're mastering and feel like you're contributing right out of the gate but the great thing again at Nike is we we're always pushing ourselves to identify that potential and then frankly sometimes Nikes a bit of a free agent market once you're in Nike and you're delivering results and you show that you can work collaboratively as a team as as a team those kind of general managers throughout want you on their team and so you feel a pull market into pretty exciting roles I want to thank you for being here and we brought you something to wear on your next marathon yeah yeah UCLA sweatshirt here and we hope that it brings you to the finish line which is really not the finish line so thank you so much

Channel: UCLAAnderson

Views: 32,219

Rating: 4.8192773 out of 5

Keywords: Andy Campion, Nike Leadership, UCLA, Anderson, Alumni, Thought Leadership, Inspire, Leadership, Leadership style, Business, Wisdom, Life experience, Reflection, Innovation, Roadmap, Authentic, Mission statement, Dedication, los angeles, CFO, Chief Financial Officer, Nike CFO, Dean's Distinguished Speaker Series, UCLA Anderson Dean's Distinguished Speaker Series, professional development, career advice

Id: JFlttbCGCFo

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Mon May 23 2016