I wore them everyday.

But darn I just announced my “values” to the world.

I want them, but I don’t need them, but I want this.

Damn, life is not fun.

When Nike first produced its own skate shoes in 1997, the market was strongly in favour of brands such as DC and Vans. In fact skaters considered Nike one of those big money hungry corporations. The effort failed and the shoes didn’t sell at all. 

Nike attempted it again in the early 2000s. They focused on relating the brand’s voice authentically to the notoriously critical and finical skaters, and worked towards gaining trust from them. Long story short, Nike made a historic push and managed to complete yet another story of the underdog triumphing. 

Honestly, when I looked at the design of these tees worn by the medalists of the skateboarding event, I didn’t think they looked pretty. And I knew the fact that I didn’t “get it” meant one thing- these tees were created with the skaters in mind. The graphics were meant to speak to them, represent them, not me. 

More about the design: https://lnkd.in/gthhXm2

The value of I was doing, from selling shoes to selling phones, needed more rationalisation than I could stomach. The “rationalized” values were at least “one order” away from what I was actually doing daily:

Selling iPhones:
{1st Order Impact} Selling people expensive electronic gadgets
{2nd Order Impact} Enriching lives by giving them insanely great tools

Selling Nike Shoes:
{1st Order Impact} Selling people expensive shoes
{2nd Order Impact} Encouraging them to participate in sports
{3rd Order Impact} Making people live a healthier life

People Management:
{1st Order Impact} Contracting people to do tasks by paying and punishing them
{2nd Order Impact} Help them learn about themselves, find purpose, and grow
{3rd Order Impact} Changing the lives of people

“[I was] naive about the flip side of the coin.”

Tim Kendall, “The Social Dilemma”

At the core, the issue was I didn’t understand the compromises I had to make by signing up with a company. I was complicit in perpetuating the good and bad deeds of an organization. I was naive about the flip side of the coin.

I felt dreadful. I felt the need to be able to separate what Apple stood for and did from my own values. I felt I needed to turn a blind eye to the logical gap between evangelising Nike shoes and disassociating with any of its contrarian actions. I struggled to defend the brands I submitted to at dinner tables. I did not know how to explain to my kids what I did deserved to exist.

To be absolutely clear, I do have real life demands that I have to succumb to. I have to straddle in this twilight zone. I too have a mortgage to pay, kids to send to school, and unnecessary things that define me, that I need to possess.

Today we no longer need to spend a lot of intellectual energy to agree that working for a company like Philip Morris is more bad than good. That wasn’t the case during our parents’ generation. We are only beginning to understand the “flip side of the coin” of many of the brands that we consider great and benign, from Uber to LVMH to Tencent. I believe that when our kids start their careers, it will be unthinkable for them to accept these brands the way we embrace them today.

So what am I going to do about it? I don’t know. I can’t escape the realities. I am trying to see if doing more good elsewhere would negate the bad I might be contributing to. I am trying to get to net positive. Then, I read that philanthropy was merely a way to deflect moral contradictions….

Members of Nike’s family of retail concepts:
Nike Rise
House of Innovation
Nike Live
Kicks Lounge
House of Hoops
…

As a visitor, I could be categorised as a:
shopper
consumer
member
Member
Nike Member

Services I need to learn to name:
Nike Experiences
Member Unlock
Scan To Learn
Scan to Try
Nike Fit
Nike By You Personalisation Bar

Apps I might need to use:
Nike App
Nike Running Club App?

(Rewritting a press release for muggles)
This “digitally-enabled store” will study all my interactions with Nike in the www, in the store, through its apps.

Like in the movie “The Minority Report,” the mirrors, staff, notifications on my phone, everything, will interact with me and remind me “we see you; we know you.”

The store and the app will tie in with real time sport moments, such as basketball games or a marathon race taking place in the city, and trigger me to feel empathised and prideful. I will be alerted to offers and activities I don’t know I lust for.

I think I need to use its app in order to not miss anything and do normal shopping stuff, like checking prices and finding the right shoe size. I am unsure if it will be staffed with humans, and I think you can buy shoes here.

In summary, my mom would freak out in this store. So will I.

Today is the launch of the iPhone 11. Product launches at the Apple stores were the favorite moments of my stint at Apple. They were also the most significant moments of growth.

In a way, I believe everyone could relate to a product launch event at an Apple store. We probably had similar kind of experiences in our lives. These experiences could be a musical performance you had spent weeks preparing for, or a vital basketball game that you had to win, or a sales pitch that you had pulled all-nighters to perfect. These were events where the energy was high. They required a lot of planning and involved working closely as a team. They were probably hard, extremely tactical, and emotional.

Yes, the cheering and clapping in the Apple stores on days like today could come across as superficial. Or you might say, “It’s just a phone.” Some would also say, “Why dramatize and complicate this so much?” All these perceptions are true and accurate. What I have found useful is to look at what one gets to learn from these events, instead of only being analytical about them.

Apple product launches involved hundreds of people executing together. It involved a lot of planning to make sure things work. And the definition of “things working” was also very different from what one might typically imagine.

The goal was not about how many phones we got to sell. Instead, it was about how many happy customers we got to create. The expectations of our customers were very high for such expensive purchases. You wouldn’t expect much buying the fruit apple, but it was human nature to unconsciously expect a lot more when you were spending thousands of dollars on an Apple iPhone.

The circumstances in the stores were not the best for anyone to feel happy: The stores would feel chaotic and overcrowded. Setting up the new phones could take hours because everyone would be trying to back up and then restore terabytes of personal data. Plus, many of the customers were ardent fans, and they would react to delight and disappointment with equal passion.

At the same time, by launch day, our leaders would have already worked for days to plan and strategize. How do we handle the journey of thousands of very eager customers? How do we make sure we get all the thousands of new products received? What are ways to keep the store’s vibe going? The larger store teams would need to serve customers after customers, answer questions repeatedly, and showcase all the newest bells and whistles of the latest products. They had to do this for 8 hours straight, and they had to be smiling genuinely from their hearts. They had to maintain their patience and desire to listen to our customers and help them find the best products for them. Therefore as leaders, we had to perfect what I called “sustained motivation”: It is a skill to get a large group of minds to get all rallied up in one speech; it is an art to get a large group of tired folks to maintain their desire to figure out the impossible art of bringing joy and delight to others. Lastly, it was the best training I have ever had trying to execute all these with, and through a group of leaders.

I am fully aware that some would find all these overly dramatized. The way I looked at these launch events was straightforward. Like most of you, I had most of these adrenaline-filled events back in my school years. As I got older, I didn’t get to experience them as often, especially in the workplace. The complexity was never the same. The teamwork felt different. The sense of wonderment that perhaps stemmed from a genuine sense of naivety and novelty, never fully returned. I knew as I migrate from middle-age to old age, these experiences would become fewer and fewer. Therefore when I realized I had the opportunities to re-experience these moments again, I made sure I got the most out of them. And I did.

Lastly, fun in life, including work, is quite simple. Quoting Tobi Lütke, the founder of Shopify:

“It’s the amount of impact you can have on what’s going on, the amount of autonomy you get to solve problems, the tight and fast-paced relationship you have around you. It is the feeling of going through an epic journey surrounded by friends.”

I am grateful I got to experience that over and over again, whenever Apple launched a new product, or when Nike brought Kobe Bryant to Beijing/launched a pair of crazy new sneaker, in the last 15 years.

1. Brands I worked for are from:

(I have yet to work for a European company or boss.)

I sold , , , empty promises and humans.

2. Ethnicity of my bosses:

27% were female. More than half was Caucasian. 9 were Asian, of that 1 was from China and 1 was from Taiwan, the rest were from Hong Kong. 3 were African Americans.

3. 1 fired me.

4. 1 lost his company and I went down with him.

5. I went through 3 significant downturns and or re-orgs.

6. A few significant “moments”: Windows 95 launch, Beijing Olympics, a few cool products from the fruit company, the journey of LeBron James, and a beautiful little thingy that counted steps in the most fancy way possible (Nike+).

Other random memorable moments:

1. Cutting newspaper, yea, real papers. It was my first real job so to speak. It was for my mom’s company. Yea. She was my first boss. I had to find relevant articles from a stack of daily newspapers, cut them and put them into summaries for her team. It was the first time I went from “this is so pointless” to “oh someone is reading it for more than 2 minutes.”
2. The first time I became a manager, on the 2nd day of my job, one of my teammates, a tenured one, asked for a chat, and she wanted a pay raise.
3. My manager advised me not to get a sports car and should keep my civic instead. I ignored him and got my sports car. My memory of that car is when I drove back home, with the top down, carrying the boxes from my office, after they let me go.
4. When I was working for a Chinese company, one of my projects was to get the grandson of the chairman of one of our state owned bank customers to study in the UK. This project involved getting him to get a good enough score in TOEFL, picking out the school, filling out all the admission crap, taking him to the school, getting him settled down, and then taking the grandparents, who tagged along, to visit Istanbul and Cairo.
5. One of my manager feedback to me was, “You are asking for a feedback? Here is one: Stop asking for feedback.”
6. I only witnessed one of them cried. In fact he cried during a leadership meeting. He was a white man. Others called him cry baby. He didn’t last very long, but I still admire him a lot.

26 down, 26 more to go?

and then on my “favorites” page ….

and while we are at it … this was the image on the landing page:

Went to Lanai with the China extended leadership team, had a blast.
Went to Rio, with the territory GMs, had a blast.
Our daughter, Sophia, was born. Everything went so smoothly that I still find it amazing that Sharon managed to pull this one off soooo flawlessly.
GCLT visit to Guangzhou. Yep. I think we were the best … wait, we still are the best.
I fired someone.

this is a bit crazy. I probably had the most eventful six months in my life. I am actually enjoying my role, and the team. I am not enjoying being away from my family, but the rest, so far, has been great. I mean, you can fire people at will, what’s there to complain about!? and we are starting to see some results from everything we have been doing so far. and for once, i think i can actually do things I want to do … or things that I think can make a bigger impact.

I will write again in maybe another 6 years. Weibo, facebook, foursquare … all those things have kind of taken your place in my life, mr. mingster.blogspot.

Last time I talked about leaving my job at Nike, and the reasons behind that decision. Things took a very strange turn at the end of the last CSI in Beijing. I received a call, scheduled a dinner, spent that dinner with someone I didn’t know at all, finished that dinner without remembering what I ate, and after a few rounds of “negotiation”, everything I said went straight down the toilet. Oh yes, the itch could actually be scratched later, because he gave me an offer I couldn’t resist.

I then had 2 months to get my knee fixed, and … to kill with my wife. We had an absolute blast. We went to Kou Samui, cooked some Thai food, slept and ate. I then had my acl reconstruction surgery, and had 3 hours rehab three times a week. Throughout this time you were right there with me, waited for me to get out of rehab, explored new restaurants, old apartments and disappointing exhibitions. I played a lot of NBA2K11. We bought a new Mac and a lot of baby stuff. We found the best bellota place in HK, and your belly button got a little to pointy for my taste.

On top of that, I added 10 more pounds (of pure fat) and a 3 inch scar on my body, and you have successfully grown an overly fidgety thingy inside your tummy.

I am not really looking forward to my life back at Nike. However, no matter how sad this is, the one thing I have learned these past 2 months is that …. we could only enjoy this kind of lifestyle if we have the money. So there you go, I am going back, and I will work my ass off, so then sometime down the road, in the future, we can do this again. Oh, and this time we will do it with that fidgety thingy.

A Letter to people I care about at work:

Dear all,

I am writing to you guys because (1) I am lazy and I don’t want to be calling each and everyone of you and (2), I don’t want you to hear from others about this news but me first. The worst thing that could happen in the world is you find out about your bf/gf cheating on you from someone else. er, maybe this is not a good way to put it. anyways.

I will be leaving Nike and my last day is on the 28^th of September.

Somewhat like a wedding, this is one of the few times in one’s life that you get to talk all you want and force it upon others. So here you go, a long ass email about me.

There will be a lot of basketball references, because this is a sport I love. So please bear with me.

I don’t know if you ever had a chance to listen to Michael Jordan’s speech at the Hall Of Fame ceremony last year. Even after everything he has won, he took the opportunity to ridicule everyone, to complain about not being on his high school varsity team, etc. Some said he was bitter. Some said he was not grateful. I loved it. That was Michael Jordan, a fearless competitor, and I loved the speech, because he was honest. It wasn’t one of the happy thanks this is going to bore the shit out of you speeches. So I am going to attempt to be like mike (lame…Michael Jordan reference 1).

I am not going to tell you why I am leaving yet. Coz no matter what I say, you guys are going to have opinions already, and I am going to address what I think might be the reasons you have in mind of my departure.

David is leaving because the role sucks. This business director role has pushed out two persons.

I would have left a year ago had it not been this role. I believe the reason why we as a category survive relatively easier is because of this role. I believe the reason why we the category can do something of the things we have done is because of the way we are set up. We have MJ that connects directly with Global, and then you have this role to keep things moving here in the country. Yes we all can have a GM that sits in global, but in order to keep things going, you then need a biz dir. It is a GM-test drive kind of role. I loved it, and it challenged me. so No, not because this role sucks. Nope. Anyone wanna apply?

David can’t work with MJ.

Yes, he is strange. Yes, he is smart as hell and you can’t fxxk with him AT ALL. but I want to make sure nobody gets the wrong impression. He, along with Nicole, are the best bosses I have had, ever. Don’t believe me? Go ask my team.

David is going to Puma.

Nope. That is not in the works. Ask Nicole (if you dare). If you see my ass in Puma in the next year, come find me (and I will seed you a pair of Clydes). I am not leaving Nike because of Puma. Well, I am not leaving Nike because of adidas puma lining anta peak 361 new balance under armor (please put any other sports brand here). What about in the future? shit, I ain’t gonna answer that.

So why.

The reasons are actually brutally simple.

My wife is pregnant, and she can’t stand not having her family around her, and I want to spend more time with her.

Having a kid means (1) I have no time to try anything new (2) no matter how you look at it my life has taken a strange turn because the kid is going to be more expensive as he/she grows older.

Time to be spent somewhere else > Time to be spent at Nike.

Think of all the stuff we deal with everyday at work. Think of all the great things we experience at work. Think of what else you could be doing. Think of what is that one thing you always want to do. Then, think of a ticking clock, a kid, money that is flying out of your bank going straight to the kid’s diapers, think of the time that is going to be sucked out by that kid. Viola!

Therefore I want to get out. Do something else. I will apply to schools, just in case. I will fix my damn knee, spend time with wifey going through her pregnancy, work out business plans and stuff with my friends on some business ideas, writing essays for college applications. I have some entrepreneurial aspirations, and I am going to try that, look into that. Time is running out. I am getting old. There is this itch I need to scratch (Michael jordan reference 2). I want to try baseball (Michael jordan reference 3).

Hey, am I worried that I might fail, derail my IDPs, and end up begging in the streets? of course. It is going to be strange and disorienting not having a job, but as Khoi Vinh, the ex-Design Director of the NYTIMES.com put it,

“Being on your own is like diving into cold water on a hot day. Shocking at first but quickly refreshing. I’m hoping.”