Professional women are to corporate culture, what canaries are to coal mines. If women in your company are singing about harassment, abuses of power, denigration and blocked career moves, like the women at Nike did, your corporate culture needs fixing. If you think the toxicity only affects women, think again.
Professional Women – Nike’s Canaries
Women at Nike had been singing for years. No one listened until the women shared data from an undercover survey that later appeared in the New York Times. BAM!! Six top executives were gone within weeks. Ironically, the head of Diversity and Inclusion was among them.
For years, these ?leaders?, mostly men and one woman, had abused their power to amass more power. According to one woman who left Nike in 2017,
“Many of my peers and I reported incidences and a culture that were uncomfortable, disturbing, threatening, unfair, gender-biased and sexist — hoping that something would change that would make us believe in Nike again. No one went just to complain. We went to make it better.”
Women’s complaints to Human Resources went nowhere and sometimes resulted in nothing more than, “We’ll speak to him”. One woman who complained was let go and one man against whom complaints were filed, was promoted.
After women sang out with a survey, as a community chorus, men started to share stories about being subjugated to other men’s bad behaviors. So you see, as it turns out, professional women were canaries in the corporate culture coal mine. It was a dark place were more bad things were happening.
Professional Women – Singing Songs of Business Problems
Did all this bad behavior affect business? Consider this from the NY Times article.
Adidas, one of Nike’s biggest competitors, has gained ground in key markets like apparel and footwear. Nike is also struggling to get traction in women’s categories, the fastest-growing segment of the market.
The women’s category was a crucial part of its revenue growth strategy but it was not given the budget to roll out the sophisticated marketing campaigns that were the hallmark of traditional men’s sports, like basketball.
Last year, Mr. Edwards, one of the exiting execs, gave the green light to launch the VaporMax shoe for women. Advertisements featured few shots of the shoes and instead had a woman twirling on what looked like a stripper pole and male athletes in sports bras striking odd poses. The campaign that cost Nike millions was killed,
Abuse of Women Forecasts Other Abuses
The 4-way combination of power, fortune, fame and sex can be a lethal attraction for those whose internal identity is weak. This four-some holds the shiny possibility of bolstering a small sense of self. But the repair doesn’t work, because the problem is on the inside. Each hit of the addictive cocktail, provides a jolt of false hope, followed by a let down. Like an addict the seeker seeks more of the wrong cure.
If you learn only one lesson from Nike, let it be this. When women in your company sing songs of goodness, enjoy the music. When they sing songs of abuse, listen carefully and take action. But don’t ever ignore the music. Better yet, proactively monitor the culture by hosting regular listening sessions with a representative group of canaries.
Don’t Be Like Nike, Act Now Before It’s Too Late
Germane Coaching & Consulting is excited to be designing private canary concerts for our clients as we publish this post. Talk to us now, before it’s too late, about doing the same for you and your leaders.
Click here to begin the conversation.