Analysis of Mark Parker's Career
Ups
In 2006, Mark Parker became the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Nike, Inc. and since then Nike's annual revenue increased up to 60 percent. In addition, Nike's profit of 57 percent is another visible achievement of Parker. Parker became a prime wheel that helped the Nike, Inc. to double its market cap. Moreover, Parker has embraced innovation as well as prioritizing designs, which became the success of Nike. He is one of three-person design collaboration, alongside Japanese style-maker Hiroshi Fujiwara, designer Tinker Hatfield, and Nike spokes-icon Michael Jordan to form HTM team, which acts as Nike's core Research and Development team.
Parker is a sneaker designer, athlete, innovator, and as well as the company lifer. He was even part of the team that developed early iterations of Air Jordans (FORTUNE, 2015). One might say that Parker is a former runner but he still occasionally designs limited-run shoes. This makes him outshine other CEOs in his managerial style and makes him achieve an intriguing record of success. In addition, during his tenure as CEO, he has managed the sportswear giant to be in the fashion industry's orbit. He has effectively appealed to the street style generation with notable products such as Nike's Air Max, Free Run, and Fly Knit product lines. This made the Fast Company to declare him as the most creative CEO in the year 2012 (Safian, 2012).
In the year 1998, Parker became the Vice President of Global Footwear. At this position, Parker drove Nike's purchase of Cole Haan, which was the first series of achievements that included Converse and Hurley. Before he became the CEO, he functioned as co-president from March 2001, until 2006 to his promotion to chief executive (The Business of Fashion, 2016). To date, Parker continues to help in the designing processes and lasting legacy of Nike, Inc.
Downs
Despite the tremendous achievements, Mark Parker's career journey as Nike's CEO and President has been faced with various challenges. Nike, Inc. has faced various cultural issues that have tarnished the company's reputation and consequently that of the chief executive, Mr. Parker. For instance, before the 2006 World Cup, there were allegations that Nike was exercising child labor as Pakistani children were photographed stitching the soccer balls (Banjo, 2014). In addition, there have been some allegations of Nike exploiting and abusing the workers. For instance, in Taiwan, more than 10,000 workers, mostly women, were reported to earn as less as 50 cents an hour (Braddock, 2011). This illustrates that Nike has been reducing the labor and operating costs in the foreign countries to minimal standards. Mr. Parker as a CEO could be blamed for not been in a position to balance the worker safety and cost in the overseas countries. Consequently, this can be perceived as one of the most challenges in Parker's career.
One of the most challenging issues Mr. Parker has experienced in his career was when the Nike pushed the suppliers with policing and monitoring tools to achieve unilateral force for systematic change. During that time, Mr. Parker and other members of the Nike management has not learned that external pressure alone is not an effective driver for meaning reform. They needed partners and collaborations with civil society, industry and government to achieve a systematic change.
Mark Parker's Current Role
Since January 2006, Parker has been a renowned CEO and the President of Nike, Inc. He has also been leading the company in other management roles such as development, product design, brand management, and marketing. In 1979, Parker joined the company as the initial footwear designers and had been influencing and facilitating innovation in the Nike Inc. For the last 30 years, he had helped in the establishment of the engineering expertise and innovation concepts into such crucial roles as Vice President of Global Footwear, Vice President of Consumer Product, and Co-president of the Nike Brand. Parker is not only helping the company to enhance its Nike Air franchise and product design breakthrough, but also leading the constant growth of the company's brand. He is also responsible for Nike's growth in the global business portfolio such as Hurley International LLC and Converse Inc. (Nike, Inc., 2016).
Parker's role in Nike, Inc. can be described and transformational, charismatic, and aesthetic leadership. Since he was appointed as a company's CEO, the company has been able to achieve a revenue growth of 60 percent and profit growth pf 50 percent, which is a performance beyond expectations. Therefore, this gives him a quality of a transformational leader. According to Hansen, Ropo, and Sauer (2007), a leader who aims to achieve large-scale changes in organizational vision and efforts that inspire, empower, and motivate the followers to reflect a transformational leadership. Parker has been in the frontline to inspire the followers through more creative and innovative designs. In addition, Parker's involvement in innovation concept of the company illustrates that he has a vision of a better tomorrow, which is an important element of transformational leadership.
In addition, Parker's role in the Nike, Inc. illustrates the characteristics of a charismatic leader. According to Hansen et al. (2007), the charismatic leaders "go beyond the call of duty in making personal sacrifices for the good of their followers, articulating in existing vision, and engage in personal image-building." This is reflected in the Parker's case who have successfully gone beyond his fundamental roles as president and CEO to other roles such as development, product design, brand management, and marketing. As a result, this has helped him to influence and motivate his followers to attain the sustainable level of performance as illustrated by growth in revenue and profit.
Parker's role can also describe the role of the aesthetic leaders because of his intriguing skills and passion in aesthetic. According to Greenfeld (2015), Parker can be considered as one of the most influential fathers of aesthetic because of his credited basic visual language of Nike's contemporary athlete shoes. In the design of almost every iconic sneaker, Mark Parker has been involved. Therefore, Parker can be considered as a leader who is concerned with felt meaning and sensory knowledge integrated into leadership skills. For instance, Tinker Hatfield a designer who collaborates with Parke said that Parker has a calm personality and continues to state the reasons as a subtle and mild way of changing an opinion (Greenfeld, 2015). In his office, he has a collection of art that he has commissioned along with some elements of Nike history such as a 1989 Nike Boot that Michael Keaton wore during his hit "Batman" (McGirt, 2010)
Reasons behind Parker's success in his career
One of the reasons Parker has been up in his career's ladder is because he is one of the most creative and highly competitive CEOs in the world. His creativeness and innovativeness are shown by his role in the Nike creative concepts and the R & M team. He has characteristics of leaders who is transformational, charismatic, and aesthetic as illustrated above. According to Safian (2012), Parker's creativity can be described by how he moves the business at an accelerating speed because we are living in the high-velocity world and a digitally connected world, where change is inevitable. In an interview, Parker asserted that the company's management approach is not based on reading and studying the books but on the culture of sports. His leadership is aiming to help management identify the loopholes in the sport's culture and determine the ways to improve it. Parker argues that while other companies perceive the pace of change as an obstacle or a challenge, Mr. Parker and his team view this as an opportunity. His ability to embrace change rather sticking to the formulated formula for manufacturing and designing footwear is a crucial element that has boosted his success in the career. However, one has to be the catalyst to achieve the real change.
In addition, Mr. Parker believes that as an effective leader one has to embrace both bottom-up and top-down to enhance communication within the organization. Although Mr. Parker describes the traditional approach of top-down as archaic and not real, he suggests that not everything can flow from bottom to up and hence the necessity of the top-down method. For instance, he argues that sometimes when the management wants to go hard and fast, the top-bottom leadership approach can be used. He asserts, "Ideas may come from the bottom up, but the direction and support can go top-down" (Safian, 2012). In addition, has been personally involved with the R&D team to formulate ideas and push the group to make innovative and hard choices. He is the type of a leader who ask many questions to help their followers think through the ideas. He believes that he has incredibly collaborative and strong people at Nike, Inc. who knows that to do. Parker is also a type of leader who learn from the past challenges and focus on the lesson he has learned to promote sustainable business and innovation.
In addition, Mark Parker has believed in embracing transparency to promote performance. For instance, in Nike's previous reports, the company has been exposing their new sustainability targets and the progress they have made accompanied by the challenges. Therefore, Parker as Nike's CEO believes in disclosing targets and analyzing them as a way to achieve a robust mechanism to build external understand and internal integration among the company's stakeholders. Consequently, Parker utilizes transparency as an asset rather than a risk. In addition, Parker believes in collaboration as a way of enhancing the systematic change. According to Parker, collaboration is the key to success because it provide fertile grounds for nourishing and inspiring Nike's creative culture. With this light, Parker has been with the manufacturing partners to test products and promote marketing campaigns with the actual products (Greenfeld, 2015). Therefore, for CEOs to succeed in the most competitive and ever-competitive business world, they have to learn how to collaborate with brands, individuals, and industries.
What can today's senior executives learn from Mark Parker?
Mark Parker has standout as a mirror that should reflect what contemporary senior executives should do. From Parker career journey, the current executive should learn that should enhance on transparency and collaboration (Welty, 2015). Additionally, the senior executives should understand that every risk and challenge is an opportunity. At the end of Parker success, he concluded that for aspiring executives to make real change, they must be a catalyst.
According to Parker, without collaboration, Nike, Inc. would not be the colossal sportswear brand that it is currently. Parker stated that collaborative mind was at the core of Nike's brand philosophy. Therefore, today's senior executives should make collaboration a core ethos in their brands. Deriving an example from the Nike CEO, collaboration is what inspires the Nike Company. Parker stated that the company has gained more benefits that are hard to measure. Therefore, the contemporary executive should be open and curious to the world. This is through effective collaboration, which is a way to nourish and inspire their creative culture. From the CEO, Mr. Parker, the today's executives should learn that collaborations are about making their products better and interesting (Welty, 2015). Therefore, the executives should go into a creative relationship with open minds. However, Parker has warned the aspiring executives as he stated that collaborations could go wrong. This might be a challenge to many today's executive. Collaboration can go wrong when the executive's connection is excessively prescriptive or inauthentic. Contemporary executives should understand that collaboration is not transactions, but they are relationships.
Parker has outshined other CEOs in his managerial style due to his great passion for his work. Therefore, current senior executives should be passionate and be committed to building a more sustainable company and future as well. In the early ‘90s, Nike was challenged by an intense scrutiny for labor conditions in their supply chain (Nike, Inc. n.d.)). As senior executives, they should learn that the path to change such a status quo calls for collaboration with numerous stakeholders. Nike opened up its door to be coached, and they learned that collaboration was essential than proprietary secrets (Welty, 2015). Therefore, today's executive should understand that transparency is an asset but not a risk.
What I learned from Mark Parker's career
Parker's career has influenced my career by knowing that every risk and challenge is an opportunity, and only collaboration can influence a systematic change. Sometimes I usually encounter challenges that make me feel weak and frustrated. However, I have learned that challenges are essential because they help an individual to learn and utilize them as an opportunity. Parker learned from the past challenges and focused on the lessons he has learned to promote sustainable business and innovation. In addition, Parker has taught me that collaboration is one of the effective strategies to enhance systematic change. Collaboration with organizations and individual creates an environment where people can work together towards achieving the set goals.
References
Braddock, J. (2011, September 8). Nike faces allegations of worker abuse in Indonesia - World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved from https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/09/nike-s08.html
McGirt, E. (2010, September 1). How Nike's CEO Shook Up the Shoe Industry | Fast Company | Business + Innovation. Retrieved from http://www.fastcompany.com/1676902/how-nikes-ceo-shook-shoe-industry
Hansen, H., Ropo, A., & Sauer, E. (2007). Aesthetic leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(6), 544-560.
Safian, R. (2012, November 5). How CEO Mark Parker Runs Nike To Keep Pace With Rapid Change | Fast Company | Business + Innovation. Retrieved from http://www.fastcompany.com/3002642/how-ceo-mark-parker-runs-nike-keep-pace-rapid-change
Banjo, S. (2014, April 21). Inside Nike's Struggle to Balance Cost and Worker Safety in Bangladesh - WSJ. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303873604579493502231397942
Matt Welty. (2015, October 3). 5 Things We Learned From Nike CEO Mark Parker's Hypebeast Interview | Complex. Retrieved from http://www.complex.com/sneakers/2015/10/nike-ceo-mark-parker-hypebeast-interview/
Greenfeld, K. T. (2015, November 4). How Mark Parker Keeps Nike in the Lead - WSJ. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-mark-parker-keeps-nike-in-the-lead-1446689666
Lashinsky, A. (2015, November 12). Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year: Nike CEO Mark Parker - Fortune. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2015/11/12/nike-ceo-mark-parker/
Nike, Inc. (n.d.). 2.1 CEO Letter - NIKE, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.nikebiz.com/crreport/content/about/2-1-0-ceo-letter.php
The Business of Fashion. (2016, April 4). 2.1 CEO Letter - NIKE, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.nikebiz.com/crreport/content/about/2-1-0-ceo-letter.php
