10+ year vet here. What pains me the greatest is that the workers are paying the ultimate price. Many specific VPs- of Innovation; of Finance; of Categories - have willingly chosen to a) empire build; b) shirk responsibility to make brave choices and kick the can down the road, resulting in even greater problems; or c) created entire teams without validating their viability first. People's livelihoods and lifestyles are at stake. Portland is too small to buffer a major RIF. The VPs I have in mind are still on board. They have paid no price in the form of bonus or pay reductions for a/b/c. JD take note. I believe in you man. Dig a bit deeper - do a better job than Parker, align VP incentives to MORE than EBIT.
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There’s been a crisis of leadership at Nike for a long , long time. There are people in leadership, especially in Footwear innovation that do not care about the people they are supposed to be leading. All they care about is politics, promoting family and friends, showmanship, survivor show mentality. They are so good at covering their behinds and riding on others ideas and creativity. The good worker bees will never survive long term in Nike’s cut throat culture managed and maintained by egotistical so called people managers aided by incompetent HR
It's going to take a tremendous amount of time and work to undo the damage that MP allowed. I hope that JD is the right person to manage it and I hope the Nike board realizes that it's going to take a little longer than a few months to get it done.
I don't think Nike will ever get the old culture back, but hopefully it will get better than it has been the last 8ish years.
Sorry, OP, your belief or faith in JD is utterly misplaced. The man does not have the vision nor the ability to course correct anything at Nike. Under his leadership Nike will experience the worst culture divide and employee rift. I highly doubt that he will be around in 2 years time.