Organizational Leadership Series with Nike Leaders & Executives

we are so excited today because our leading residents at Columbia Law School miss Hilary crane who most of you might not be in class with has brought her executive team to talk about their effective leadership styles how they work together and how they create this awesome culture at Nike and without further ado I'm actually going to go ahead and pass it over to the our moderator for this afternoon mr. Adam Bryant Adam Bryan is the managing director of American company which is a senior executive consulting firm he is also a New York Times award-winning journalist he created the corner office where he where he interviewed over 500 CEOs on their effective leadership styles and how that in parts of parts a strong organizational culture he has two books on the on this subject so if you were lucky enough to read them they're amazing but he's also the yoruba mark senior advisor for this initiative and we're so happy to have him and thank you all for being here today they all just flew in so we're gonna give them a big round of applause and go ahead and get started Thank You Hillary Olivia I'm sorry Thank You Hillary thank you all for coming I am very ambitious for our time together I want to cover a lot of ground I do want to jump right in rather than doing dramatic readings of BIOS and things like that but the first question on everybody's mind is who's the fastest runner on the team how fast is your mile Wow very impressive okay so if just kind of a lightning round format if we can go up and down the line starting with you and just your name title kind of brief synopsis of what you do what your role is and then if you can share with the audience something kind of memo to self of something that you have learned in your career that you didn't know when you were younger and in law school or Business School as the case may be sure thanks my name is Anne Miller I am the corporate secretary in chief ethics and compliance officer I've been at Nike almost 13 years in in my role a part of what I do is is partner obviously with lots of different people as it relates all governance matters so public company filings board related matters and then also in all compliance related matters with a focus on anti-bribery and anti-corruption the one thing I've learned which which I knew before starting the job I just hoped I wouldn't have to exercise it so much is resilience recognize that along the way there's a lot of tough journeys and that you will make mistakes and it's not making dumb mistakes it's how you respond to them and always be curious and continue to learn and to grow and to just stay after it put your head down and do good work make up more opportunities at that than most my name is Sean O'Halloran and I had our government in public affairs and I think basically word we are translators and between the language of Nike and the language of different governments and trying to figure out how we can talk to each other and communicate but and I would say that there is a dynamic tension between business and government naturally and all business is touched by government in some way shape or form and and so it's how we craft that relationship those relationships around the world I would say that there are a lot of variables and we have to understand that a lot of them we don't control or and we and it's really a matter of how we get our company to chart a path through them and how we can take things that we don't control like weather and war and and still be successful and around the world but and then figuring out how we influence those those variables that we we can be a part of so it's a big part of it but disruptive forces are pretty much a given I'd say biggest lesson is to is to be nimble don't be complacent with the status quo that that things are constantly changing and and and that you try to minimize the surprises but they're always gonna be things that you don't anticipate and and just trying to be prepared for those things good afternoon my name is Colin Graham and I am the geographies and global marketplace Council what that means is that I lead numerous teams many of them based overseas as a European legal team China legal team asia-pacific legal team a Latin America legal team so they're all my responsibilities as well we have a separate legal team based in Boston with the convert organization myq ensconce converse I've got responsibilities there and back at world headquarters in Oregon of other legal teams brand marketing privacy Nike technology and I also am responsible for the strategy financial and ops organization which supports Hillary's entire organization led by one of my colleagues who's sitting a couple of rules they are I think the biggest lesson that I've learned is just the importance of relationships you can be a fantastic lawyer but you'll get nowhere in a corporate inhouse environment unless you are able to build strong relationships with your business partners that's not always easy you've got to be Oh you've got to be approachable you've got to be responsive we've also got to maintain some level of Independence that means that your advice is listened to and taken seriously and I was taught nothing about the importance of building relationships and I was at Law School many hello my name is Margo Fowler I'm a chief intellectual property IP officer at Nike so it involves the typical trademark patent we have IP litigation we have brand protection which is anti-counterfeiting also part of that role is sports marketing on the legal side and Collin and I share reporting over brand marketing so it's a it's a lot of the consumer facing work that faith that we do a lot of consumer facing work so the biggest lesson you know kind of trying to pick something different than the team the importance of or the or the difference between activity and impact that just being busy and hard working is really not enough you have to be impactful I'm just reminded of one example up from that from my world on the on the brand protection side you know we don't want to seize an anti-counterfeiting we don't want to seize like a million socks and the Sahara we want them or or dog collars with the swoosh on it but we want to you know even take 5,000 World Cup jerseys right outside of you know what the Paris Stadium so that's one of the key lessons I've learned hi I'm Rob line one chief litigation counsel first I think it's amazing that you have this program here and I wish I had something similar when I was in law school my job is a commercial litigation also some IP litigation sports marketing litigation government investigations I run the global Employment Law team and I also have the honor of running our resilience organization which includes global event security and business continuity and the like I think the the biggest lesson I've learned is that you can be an incredible lawyer but this job is not just about luring and so you can be right on the law and wrong on where you're going and so there's more than just thinking about whether I'm gonna win or lose a case or whether my legal argument is right or wrong and and I think in order to make those decisions the second thing is you got to listen to other people lawyers have a problem with that and you know if you could learn in law school to know that it doesn't matter if you're the smartest person in the room you have to listen to other people and we have one of our outside counsel is actually a alumni sitting up there and you know it provides me with great advice a lot of times so you know I think it's really important to make sure you're listening to other people hi everyone my name is Jorge casa meto I am Nikes chief social and community impact officer and what that means is I lead a fantastic team across the world who works to make the world a better place through the power of sport and this is part of our purpose offense across what we do with environmental sustainability diversity inclusion and our social and community impact work and did not go to law school nor Business School so this is rarefied air I was at West Point yesterday and I was not in the military either so this is a really interesting week for me what I would say in terms of lessons and I'm gonna share too one is similar to something rob was saying is that not everyone thinks the same way that I do and what whether it's relationships whether it's listening that the way people process information or the way people intake information or what considerations they have are going to be different and then the second more to the leadership piece of it is it's gonna sound trite because it's something that I've probably learned as a child that it just didn't listen to it was being authentic I think authenticity plays such a large role in leadership and in day to day and it's something that we forget at some point when we start our careers because we're trying to be like that person or that person and that's both good and bad because it slips in as opposed to learning from those lessons and incorporating it into your authentic style hi I'm Hilary crane it's my distinct privilege to lead the team of all of these people I'm the chief administrative officer and general counsel at Nike and in addition to these great people other really crucial members of my team are also here and I want to introduce them I have my HR leader who teams with all of us that's definite and then sitting next door we have Terry and she runs strategy and operations for the whole department and next door is the person who makes my life possible and keeps this team running my executive assistant Jenni who's probably I think we would all agree the most important player in this whole organization what I would leave you with that I really didn't understand at the beginning is that the power is entirely in the team your career is gonna be about who you choose to surround yourself with and that can be on the good and the bad in a law firm or in a company so take real care with that it matters the other thing I would also say is don't be afraid to have people who are smarter than you as part of your team they don't make you look worse they make you look better so don't be afraid of that sometimes you see in business people who are reluctant to have super powerful people around them for fear it will diminish them I have found uniformly that it's the opposite and so I'm humbled every day to have these guys thank you in great Tia for the next question so in my friend we do a lot of work with leadership teams at the c-suite level at sort of Fortune 200 companies one of the things that we encounter and you will encounter in your careers is that there are a lot of leadership team that our teams in name only they call themselves a team but they don't act like a team the little time that I've spent with all of you guys on the phone and in person you guys seem like real team I also heard a startling statistic you guys have been together as a team for five six seven years so you are a rarity and as Hillary said that is in many ways going to drive the experience of your jobs in your career you can have ideas of like the title you want the company you want to work for but your day to day experience of how much you like your job is going to depend on the function or the dysfunction the team which leads to an obvious question how do you set the tone for the team how did you learn to build your framework for how to lead a team the honest answer to that is with difficulty and by trial and error you know this team has been together this this exact group for a long time but in the time I've been at Nike we've had other members of this team and they were absolutely excellent as individuals but we did not have the team dynamic that we have now for one reason or another there was chafing or it just didn't work and I couldn't really put my finger on why but you could tell and what's really important is to not overlook those things and pretend things are working when they're not and try to move yourself to a place where it feels really good and what I would say about this team is we really truly trust each other we don't go at things alone we go at things together I almost never hear I don't think I can't remember the last time I heard among this team that it was like well it went that way because X Y or Z didn't include me in the decision we're extraordinarily inclusive we also valued diversity and and I don't mean that by the typical numbers I mean its diversity of thought Jorge is not a lawyer but he questions us sometimes when we're talking about talent that's legal talent by just the language we're using and what he knows about those people so you can't pigeonhole everybody has a role to play both as de specialists in the thing they're great at and as a generalist across doing the work that we all do as a collective and you know a team is really formed as true character comes out during the tough times so I'd love to hear from you know how do you guys work through the turbulence you know whether it's with each other or a tough issue or you take an you know fire from all sides you know no turbulence at Nike it's really I was just my answer super mood salmon yeah so jumpin I so I handle a lot of the turbulent issues and I could say that the the one way we do it is is one I think we all sort of care about each other and we go in and and we bounce ideas off each other the other thing is I think we approach it with somewhat of a sense of humor we know that you know the situation's that we're dealing with are serious we know they have great implications for the company but we also know that you know we are dealing with each other as human beings and we respect each other and I think we are able to take those tough situations and work through them the other thing is we have serious debates about what we should do and that means you have to debate the boss and you have to and the boss has to be able to accept that and and you know and it was even on one of my performance reviews about how much the boss respects the fact that we go at it tooth and nail sometimes over issues but we always and it's not like that in every other group and we always come to a better decision because we're we're able to have those discussions not take them personally and exit with a better a better idea of what we should do I also think that we don't take the sky is falling approach to things I mean it really is there's turbulence like every single day it feels like and it's rare that somebody comes in with panic it's more it's like a measured way of looking at things and I think that helps the both the issues and also the dynamic yeah I get the more emotional side of it which is the the political side and and I think it's it manifests itself into policy so it's it's the front end of the lawmaking right it's it's the laws being made and and I think that we I think one of the other learnings is that Nike is very engaged on social issues and and and that we are our consumers our employees expect us to have a point of view on issues that are very much in the public eye and and that it's also important to to I think one of my learnings is also that you you cannot take a u.s. lens and apply it uniformly around the world and it's important to embrace how other cultures do business how they think how they are political operations work other governments work how business works in other countries we are a US incorporated company but we are a global brand and I think the cultural sensitivity is is critically important to our success globally so let's go a little deeper on this I mean Hillary obviously you think long and hard about Team Dynamics and making sure it works if you were interviewing me for a job to potentially join your team you want to make sure that I was going to fit into this group assume I'm competent sort of table stakes of the actual job what questions are you gonna be asking me what's the framework in your head for thinking it's this guy gonna fit on the team because if he doesn't fit on the team the antibodies are gonna reject me pretty quickly right called that Oregon rejection and we have a fair amount of it at the company and even in our department it's less about the specific question that I would ask you and more about the nature of our dynamic the team can talk about this I'd probably tease you a little bit and see if you could handle it I have you say something and I disagree kind of vehemently and see if you were just Dovan to agree with me and paper it over or whether you would engage and have the conversation I would more test real-time live for the dynamic that makes this team work and those are keys to those dynamics that's that's not true on every team but that's my personality and it's this team's personality and you can tell pretty quickly whether somebody's going to be uncomfortable standing up to you and in my role you know to Rob's point it's death if people don't tell you when you're wrong like if everybody just runs around here telling me my ideas right Nike would be in a heap of trouble so I kind of use those in the moment pushes just to see how people respond I think the other thing we do is more than one person will interview you right so you get the perspective from others and we've all been in positions where one of us have been on an inner an interviewer for a candidate and someone else's team to get that insight from other subject matter experts okay and quick question to Hillary if I could make you invisible and then send you into leadership team meetings at other companies so that you could watch them in action what are the key poker tells for you about whether the team is a high functioning team or not actually I'd be looking more at the dynamic before the meeting starts an immediate after the meeting ends are these people enjoying each other's company are they innately like gathering and saying I'm struggling with this what do you think or is it more formal because it's in those informal moments that you really see how people are gelling together and you get a sense about how they're going to interact this goes back to diversity we need I mean we have different different people on this team Colin I would say is our kind of emotional leader he's very dry but he travels the world and he is very compassionate you know some of the other team mates who will go unnamed or have a little bit more of an acerbic edge and use their elbows more and all of that's good we need all of it you know we need the brainiacs and we need the people who are practical and so I'd be looking for the balance and for the comfort level I mean Trust is all theirs at the class I'm teaching it's called becoming a trusted advisor it's not just about you know the general counsel to the CEO it's you can't be trusted unless you trust and I trust these people with my life and they trust each other and that's what makes us successful so I'd be looking for those in dish' that's great I don't want to hear from everybody else so the tip is is if all of you are ambitious you wouldn't be here if you weren't some of you may have aspirations to just be sole contributors lone wolves and your jobs and your careers but if you are ambitious you may likely be leading teams yourselves so I want to hear from the other group because all of you lead teams correct okay so what is your lesson maybe you've learned it from Hillary and your own group that you're taking it to your own work but what is your best insight on how to run an effective team yeah well I think it I think it does start with trust and I think Trust is built when you are vulnerable so you know in my latest role with my team one of the things I go into I'm not a subject matter expert in all of the areas that I manage so acknowledging that I may not be the best supply chain lawyer but I have Josh who is this amazing supply chain lawyer so I talked to him about I'm not going to help you with the technical law but I can help you with communication I can help make sure the right stakeholders are involved if there's roadblocks in the way I can help remove them for you so on the non legal side that's where I can add value to Josh on other areas where I may be a subject matter expert I might lean in more on the technical side and maybe have less on some of the other softer skills so I think it's about being vulnerable with your team trying to be really honest giving them fair tough feedback always in the spirit of helping them get better I mean there is nothing better than when your teammate shows up well there is no better reflection of you even if you just want to be self-interested about it right I look great when Josh looks great and that feels great and so I think being authentic being connected being vulnerable those skills are things I'm not sure they didn't teach me when I was at law school but I find it to be the most valuable skill that I bring we're all going to be lawyers the question is will you be a leader so I'd really encourage you and this is so fantastic that you have this and sponsor it because it's such a sort of underdeveloped skill that a lot of law new lawyers have when they come out of law school I would echo that but I also just creating a vision for the team and and also a state of constantly improving your own role in the function and learning from your team and and that you hire for experience and education but you also want judgment and instinct and and you want their input and and understanding that so much of what we have to make decisions on is very subjective right you want their values how do you see it how do you re view it and and really welcoming their input and I think to Hillary's point getting a team that's smarter and more capable than you and the in the field and we kind of run a a team of island nations right we have people scattered all around the globe some people are just one person embedded in an organization but you've got to give them the latitude and you've got to trust them to carry the the weight of the company and to represent the company and and to empower them to to do their work and and really just let them do it and and let them feedback and I think just be willing to constantly improve your own the vision you're creating for the team well either aspirations to towards leadership and I join Nike 22 years ago I'd spent quite a few years working in law firms and Scotland and then to my great surprise I interviewed for and got a job I think his amia headquarters as the first sports marketing attorney for that part of the world so I thought I'd landed my dream job and when I joined Nike I thought this is my future for the next 25 years working on big soccer club deals and tennis player deals and you name it every every sports category I'd have been happy with that I think but we had a leader in Europe who was brought in from the left there was a lot of turbulence in the legal team and I spent time you know building relationships with my small group of peers and European legal team and I'd also you know invest a time and building relationships back at world headquarters and so I was given the opportunity to assume leadership of the of the European legal team and I then got the opportunity or 15 15 years later to move to world headquarters to lead up the emerging markets legal team at the time as a fantastic job that was adding lawyers to important markets for Nike where we hadn't had legal representation before you know I echo whatever he said I was looking for people that smarter and I know better lawyers but also really good people you know and I succeeded in that task both fantastic and legal teams I always look to bring in people who are smarter than I am or promote people who are smarter than I I wanna take you know just immense pleasure in seeing people succeed and grow within company some of the people I've included one or two people have moved into the function so I really take enormous pleasure from the success of the team I was always open to moves you know I did make it known that I was available for opportunities you know wherever they might lie so that's an important part I think of you know success on on our team being open to take on new challenges so I think that's what I've got to see on that at the moment so on on team I've had the pleasure of doing a lot of different roles over the over the years and had different teams and sometimes you inherit a team and so one of it sometimes one of the first things you have to do is kind of assess the talent and whether everybody needs is right to be there and to me usually that's kind of the first thing but then once once everybody's should be there it's to me it's very much about really knowing everybody individually understanding their strengths and using their strengths to the maximum advantage of everybody I mean it there's just always and I think that's part of what works here we really do have different strengths that we employ if you can if you can really figure that out with your team and draw them in when they are doing their best it's it usually feels good for everyone I guess the first thing I would say I started out as a console' contributor doing I was our only employment lawyer for the entire globe for a short period of time until I convinced Nike that maybe with all these employees we needed a team and and that worked out to our advantage I mean it's hard to give you know Korean employment advice from Beaverton Oregon you actually need a Korean lawyer so you know it's knowing the the areas where you need other people to fill in with their talents I think is important I also think it's really important to be available for people to come in your office and bounce questions off you and you have to make time for them this the third thing I think is where you know you're all gonna be very well educated when you leave here from business school in law school they're all very smart do not be a jerk gonna go to law firms you're gonna go to business they're gonna tell you you're gonna have you have great success and that can go to your head you cannot be a jerk it'll eventually come back on you it'll come back on you from the associates in your firm from the partners that you work with it'll come back to you from your business partners and they'll say real smart can't get along here right real smart doesn't listen always has to be the smartest person in the room if you can harness your competitive spirit and and bring up your humanity when you're working with other people I think it'll take you a long way I was gonna say something similar not as pointed maybe as the chief litigation counsel for Nike Inc but that would be that you know there is no substitute for good human beings there is no substitute for good human beings and the argument that oh but this has this technical expertise of subject matter expertise but he's a jerk you can find you can find somebody else especially when you work for a place like Nike we attract incredible talent so there's no substitute for that in terms of leadership - I'd say two other points one is you gotta let go of control so whether that's being vulnerable you just you can't control it all I may not be a lawyer a married to a lawyer I'm surrounded by lawyers I know it's about control and and it's about saying hey here the guardrails you know and helping advise and counsel you know what's the objective what's the business decision you're trying to drive toward and then let people make the decisions within those guardrails and then the third point that I would say is when it comes to leadership there's you know the leadership of the team there's a leadership across whether it's this team or across the enterprise that Hillary was alluding to but also make time we've touched on it on people development that takes time that takes effort that needs to be blocked on your calendars you need to prepare for that you need to prepare to have the tough conversation the feedback conversation you can't just go into it and I think a lot of times you know we are strapped for time and that's the one that gets the least amount of attention and we think oh I know this person I know how she did this year I know what her weaknesses are and then you go into the conversation what you haven't prepared for it so the way that it comes across is not constructive and it's not actually helping them develop just like to jump in and touch on a couple of things that were raised and by both what Jorge just said in by what Margot said and I don't want to drive by it there's a concept called managing with courage and that means having to call the question when people are underperforming and it's our collective approach is to find people's strengths and work for them and try to develop them and help them get to their maximum potential and hope that they can succeed in the job but you don't always succeed at that and it's really easy to want to avoid it having hard conversations is hard and yet when you do avoid it and you don't manage with courage you allow somebody to stay on the team who's not either pulling their own weight or for an emotional or being a jerk reason they're otherwise pulling the whole team down and it's really easy as a team leader to just want to avoid that and it's terrible because it's so unfair to everybody else on the team so we all every single one of us a lot of our time together is spent you know one-on-one talking about where it's not working and how we can collectively try to pull the person up and when we're going to call the question and it's not a pleasant thing to talk about it's not really a pleasant thing to do it is completely and utterly essential to have a well-functioning team great insights so let's take the conversation up just slightly higher altitude what is the role of the general counsel's office in conversations around culture and organizational character so the frame up for this is for a lot of people for a very long time culture was a nice to have conversation it was not a need to have conversation but as the headlines roll in from whether it's Wells Fargo or folks wagon or we work recently there are many others companies there's now headline risk around headlines and let's just say it like he's had a few itself so a lot of times the culture conversation Falls to the CEO maybe the chief human resource officer so again my question what is your role in those conversations every person in every company but certainly every leader in any and every company has responsibility for culture full-stop anybody who thinks that HR is responsible for cultures working in an organization that probably doesn't have a very good one okay we all own it so that means culture is really how the people show up every day and comport themselves so I think we lead by example in many ways we also because of where we sit we see across the company so we can see where there's disconnects between one side of the business and the other side of the business and identifying those and figuring out constructive ways to help resolve them helps elevate the culture of the business so that it can be more like the culture of this team and then I'll also say this and I think some of my team has said this before legality is often the least important topic in any conversation it's got to be about is it right does it feel right not just at a moral level but at a culture and team level does it reflect who we want to be as a company and the willingness to call it when it doesn't even if calling it can create some legal risk getting the culture right I mean we're not gonna we're not going to avoid this topic we very publicly had a cultural issue arise a year ago in the time of the me2 movement I want to rush to say we had no aggressive behavior where people were sexually harassing other people in the traditional sense of that time but we did find that there were pockets in the business where women in particular were feeling like they couldn't make their voices heard or their careers weren't being attended to and the legally most protective thing to do I don't think anybody in that group had a legit claim could have been to slide by it because pulling it out publicly for sure you were gonna pull a secure class action and we did pull a class action so we've got a big piece of litigation Rob Sam like I'd take it ten times over because we lived up to our values and we said this is not how we want it to be so there has to be that moment when you say yeah there's some legal risk here but that's like the third order concerned not the first order concern and I I think we all behave that way both on the big macro issues like the one I just discussed and on the smaller ones that come up every day we'll also sometimes call other people about being jerks you know and I think at that point where it's not just about the legalities of it if you look at culture there are more than 400 vice presidents across Nike there are only nine that are Latino or latina 9 there's nothing illegal about that it is a in the armor for sure and you know in terms of leading by example I've got I've got three small kids I've got a busy job I've got a demanding boss I've got I've got all of these things at the same time I said all right I will step up I'll be the executive sponsor for our Latino employee resource group to help to attract and retain and develop and promote Latino and Latina talent at Nike and then silver lining which is interesting some sitting next to the chief litigation counsel so relining of those nine Latinos at Nike that are vice president's five are latina so we actually have more female Hispanic vice president's than male so it's like there are bright spots look for them don't wallow in the negativity behind it and then look for the opportunity to keep moving forward okay I want to have a two-hour discussion in the next five minutes because I want to give you guys some time for questions go too high even higher altitude what is the role of corporations in society today in terms of setting policy on social issues taking a stance their employees expect them to do it more their customers expect them to do it more a lot of people say Washington isn't doing it more Collin pack a pranic what is the role of companies today well yeah and the team will tell you this that the bet of multi our conversation when the business roundtable came out with their recent comment about the purpose of the team and I'll tell you like literally at midnight I'm sending Law Review articles to the team really wouldn't stop not healthy wasn't I'm still going and the people in my class know it's it's a huge important issue it's lucky for me and for Nike the our corporate values and the history that we inherited from our founder was to not shy away from social issues some of it started in bad ways because of the labor issues that the company suffered in the late 90s forced them into that conversation and some of them started from great ways in terms of support for title 9 when that was just a tan incipit moment so for us it comes really naturally we've always believed that serving our stakeholders is serving our shareholder we have our largest shareholder is alive and sits our board table and he was the one who has always pushed us to think about the stakeholders so without going all the way down the rabbit hole I'll tell you I didn't think the Business Roundtable needed to say what it said because I don't think you have to change the fundamentals of how you think about corporate law to make stakeholders relevant serving shareholders requires serving stakeholders I also think and this is my point of view now I'm not speaking for Nike this is just a Larry crane I think there's some danger in thinking that corporate leadership is a good substitute for a national policy leadership you know fortune 500 have 500 different CEOs and they turn over and I don't share values with many of them and I suspect you don't either and I'd suspect not all of you would share values with me or my CEO and so I think that way lies danger we can't let our political system off the hook and in saying that obviously because you see how we behave we don't shy away from doing what we think is right and I'd welcome other views from the team on this because it's something we think about John I think on that point that and obviously when there's a lot of volatility in the political environment that understanding that what we stand for as a company and what we believe in and what we're committed to doesn't waver we're committed to a 100 percent renewable energy and our in our sourcing and and we're committed to LGBT rights and I think I think if you look at a myriad of issues where the political environment isn't necessarily aligned what we stand for and what we believe in a company really doesn't doesn't waver and I think you can look at examples of where companies flex their economic muscle to say we don't want to expand our operations we don't want to invest in an event in a culture where our employees and our customers are going to feel threatened or discriminated against and I think you can look at South Carolina North Carolina see Indiana where this was the case on a number of LGBT rights issues where companies kind of said hey were we're not going there and so I think in the absence of public policy companies have have let their values show a little bit economically forcing change and where governors would say hey we got to change this policy because it's economically going to hurt us it's going to hurt us on jobs in advance and investment etc so I just kind of add that that that and it does play into the corporate culture when we take positions on public policy it helps shape our culture and and our values are reflected in that when we weigh in and I think Kaepernick is probably an example of that I think one other comment which is when you take positions socially mcore per a ssin is so large and there are so many people working for it that sometimes they were gonna be individual actions that are taken that are not consistent with those values they will be lawsuits filed there will be public statements made and sometimes articles written in the press that are not entirely true and you know I've been lucky to be with this company that that continues to focus on its values and sometimes we sit and we have these we sit and have very difficult questions and it's not whether or not we were legally correct but it is didn't we do anything wrong here and and I think you know we're very thoughtful about those issues and sometimes when we have done something wrong we we go clean it up and sometimes when we haven't done something wrong or the individual hasn't done something wrong we will stand behind them and that's sort of rare in corporate America where sometimes when there's an allegation yet dropped the person and walk away because that's the easiest thing for a company to do and we don't do that which makes my job very interesting but it makes me it makes me proud to be part of this team that you know we have a company that does that we have a company that stands behind it in the right way and we also recognize sometimes when people misstep and go sideways I would add just in terms of social policy and corporations role there's a lot wrong with the world today there's a lot of different things that corporations could get involved in and I think you know we also have to be true to ourselves and back to the authenticity piece of it we have made a statement that we stand around diversity inclusion environmental sustainability getting kids moving through our community work as I said before part of our purpose offense and so thinking about what are those policy areas that align to those areas to those three or something that directly impacts Nike either our employees or our consumers and use that as dating filters to think about should we engage should we not engage because if not we run the risk of you know just having Nike sign on to every possible policy statement CEO letter and then you lose the value of the brand and I think something that's special about working at a company like Nike is that it is a brand we don't make widgets you know and when you work for a brand you got to think about the brand value and the impact that that brand has and how it can amplify either for the good or for the bad the decisions that you make great insights questions please thank you so much for amazing discussion as I was looking at all of you I really had was the wondering is this the right team is this the right team because looking at the various buckets of issues that I've come up with it's labor laws it's that you know supply chain issues environmental issues I wonder how is it that you keep an ear to the ground when you look you're looking at a constellation of like across 45 countries over 70,000 employees how is it that you pick up on something before it becomes the hashtag or the headline in a time where supply chains are you know somewhat fragmented and like he said like we can't think like the US because in other countries labor laws may not even be you know something that exists thank you so behind each person you see sitting up here is a team of really strong people behind them distributed all around the world who share our values and so we use them as our sensing organization and we don't get it right all the time but we got it right a lot of the time we also on the particular labor front have a lot of tools we use to make sure we're in the factories we disclose where ever all of our factories are to encourage other people to bring things to our attention so there's a lot of different tools you use but I want you to understand that every person you look at here has you know lots of people behind them all around the world who are diverse and are drawn to Nike because of our values and share them and help us with that very difficult to ask yeah I just don't know I'm an employment side like I said I was the only employment lawyer at Nike when I got there and that is just untenable right and now they're there they're people in China Singapore Europe and and so it's those people that sort of and they're embedded in those organizations they're part of the teams there and and they they have a lot of responsibility it's not you know I'm not answering all the questions they really act on their own and so it's it's it's really important as you develop as an executive or a lawyer that you you let people operate in that way and then the feedback of information comes back but it's a it's a global view that we get and I think the other dynamic is that it's not just the teams behind us it's other parts of the company and the teams behind them and being a heavily matrix organization you've got to be able to then connect with those individuals that might stood at Human Resources might sit on a marketing team might earn a communications team that have nothing to do with this team but they're sensing that information and bringing it up as well this is where having really strong lawyers on the ground and your key Marcus is really important because they're often the ones who have more institutional knowledge they've been raw longer so I finish you arises and you know China they will know to loop him you know the comms person the GM and the appropriate people back at world headquarters I don't involved in the in the labor side of the manufacturing side my lawyers tend to focus on on the commercial issues they are very Swift to make sure that business leaders on the ground are talking to the right people and connecting back to the right leaders our world headquarters you don't have that if your legal department is too heavily centralized which is why we have strong lawyers and and all our key markets now which is not the case when I joined Nike that's been a fantastic development over the last 20 years other questions yes I want to thank you all for being here um the first thing I want to say is I noticed you all have really nice Nike shoes I wanted to point that out we're actually dressed up today this is yeah for sure Colin I want to know how you implement Nike slogan into the work that you do either professionally or personally can I hit this yeah well one thing yeah yeah it's my shirt um one thing that and I played sports growing up I loved sports identify with the brand and at Nike everything is through our Maxim's through our slogans and through sports metaphors and so that is just another way to connect with our business to connect with each other you know we'll go into meetings and say like well it's a jump ball and everyone gets it you know so it's a different language that we use but I think it is a way to stay grounded and to stay connected it's also a guide you know I think as lawyers you could say just don't do it just wait let's evaluate it hold on but I think you have to it part of our disposition it actually is a cue to how how we we want to be aggressive we want to be competitive it is part of of who we are so that's how I see it show up that's a great answer could we still try and squeeze in one more question before we wrap up the side of the room yes Hillary decide yeah fairness we encourage lively debate I'm a big believer in the marketplace of ideas they'll all tell you that the least favorite words to come out of my bath has helped me understand why uh and then they go no here we go so but you can't run a company on consensus doesn't happen so we talk everything through we do get out we bring in other people who aren't necessarily closely related to the issue to be a part of that fray with us and then often probably more often than not we do generally find ourselves in agreement but when we don't I make the call because somebody's got to make the call and that's my job and I also want to point out that even when I don't make the call because there's so much going on like Colin said he has empowered lawyers on the ground these people are empowered I view it as my job for all of them to understand I take the bullets I don't care whether I was in the conversation or not if they make a call and it ends up being wrong and something bad happens that was my responsibility I put them in positions of power I try to empower them and then I let them go and they're really fantastic but not everything works out and the only way this trust happens is if they know I don't blame them and they don't blame the people behind them we don't we don't play a blame game we play as a team well one of Hillary's favorite sayings is this is not a democracy but she makes absolutely sure that every single voice in the room is haired and that's the most important thing when it comes to the decision and on occasion you could change her mind vacations you've changed but I would also add that the company at large is a in large part a very consensus driven company and so a lot of times as the lawyers our job is also to corral the consensus figure out who should make the decision and make sure that's happening and we do that all the time because otherwise it'd be it can become very inefficient and things can swirl and we often times to use the sports metaphor I feel like we have to reach in grab the ball and you know move it over the line and I think to that point you know the challenge sometimes is the clarity on the decision maker right and in in law it might be easier if it's a legal question than your chief lawyer should make the decision on it but there are so much like we've talked about today that is not a legal question so identifying and using the counsel to say who should be making this decision let's get clarity behind that and then get the inputs and go through the process we could talk for three hours a big Columbia thank you round of applause you

Channel: Columbia Business School

Views: 965

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Id: GUC4OPWPUcs

Length: 56min 20sec (3380 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 11 2019