The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Hot takes.
Wild ideas.
Conspiracy theories.

But among them all was a post by Tom Bassett – a brilliant ex-Wieden strategist who was there when so much of what became Nike folklore was written.

The reason his voice stood out is because it wasn’t WHY the relationship ended, but why it started.

At the heart of his story was the brief Phil Knight gave for NIKE Golf.

He said: “Get NIKE to be #1 in golf or we get out the category all together”.

Having had the errrrm, pleasure(?) to meet and present to Mr Knight a few times, I can literally hear him saying/barking this … and what I love about it is the stubborn, blinkered ambition.

We seem to live in a world where the majority of conversation is around optimization … efficiency … brand assets … and basically how to get the most out of what you’ve got.

There’s nothing wrong with that, except it’s all about not being wrong than being as good as you can be.

Or said another way, being comfortable with what you’ve got as opposed to being impatient for what you want to have.

Get to #1 is a proper goal. One where the evaluation criteria is very fucking simple.

No hiding behind incremental growth or internal metrics … #1 is a criteria that dictates decisions and investment rather than the other way around.

Sure, there are ways #1 could be reframed in an attempt to look like you’re doing better than you are . Let’s face it, we see this sort of shit in the ad industry all the time, especially around award time … but Phil Knight wasn’t about skewing results but going right at them … which is why he didn’t place any additional burdens on how to achieve goal, other than demand it was true to the sport and how NIKE see’s the athlete.

Sounds easy, but it isn’t.

To do that takes a lot of confidence.

Confidence in who you are … confidence in your team … confidence in what your company stands for and confidence your company is full of people who know what that translates to in terms of behaviour, consideration and action.

And that’s why we often undermine the value of confidence and right it off as bravado.

Of course it can be that, but it is also about trust, experience, knowledge and openness.

As a chef once told me when we were doing Tobasco research at W+K, “the more confident the chef, the less ingredients they use”

And that’s why I love the clarity of Phil Knight’s objective.

He could have added a million mandatories, but he knew that would add a million reasons why his objective would then be almost impossible to achieve.

At least in a realistic timeline.

Which is why, as difficult as the objective was, he increased its chances of success by being clear as fuck and – to a certain degree – open as fuck. Enabling the team to not just tackle the project head on – rather than tap-dance around politics and restraint – but to also place responsibility back on the company in terms of what it needed them to do to help make it happen.

Not just in terms of money, but action and change.

It is one of the many reasons why I loved my time in China … why I loved Branson’s brief for the Virgin lounge … why I love working for Metallica and Mr Ji.

Sure, in China’s case, it was often more the ambition and scale than the clarity … but for the others, it is/was the single-minded, stubbornness of their objective, the trust they placed in the people they were asking to help them do it, the commitment of the whole organisation to give it the best chance of making it happen and the willingness to walk away rather than accept a poor substitute of what they wanted to change.

We need more of that.

Creative work would be more amazing for that.

Effectiveness would be more powerful for that.

But sadly we’re in a world where it’s all about hedging bets, outsourcing responsibility and managing internal politics rather than being focused, fierce and open on creating change.

Proper change.

Real change.

Massive change.

It all kind of ties in with the ‘Strategy Is Constipated, Imagination Is The Laxative’ talk Martin, Paula and I did in Cannes last year.

The obsession with playing to the process while being continually outsmarted by those who are focused on enabling the possibility.