Leadership in the Age of Personalization
One of the most iconic products to ever hit the shelves came about only because a young, relatively inexperienced shoe designer took on a momentous task in his own individual way.
According to this account, written by Foster Kamer and originally published Feb. 17, 2016 by Mental Floss, in 1987 Michael Jordan was about to ditch Nike, until a young designer presented him with the design for Air Jordan III.
First, this designer, Tinker Hatfield Jr., hadn’t started as a shoe designer at all, he was an architect who ended up designing showrooms, offices and retail space for Nike. He started designing shoes when he won a company-sponsored design contest – even though he broke with tradition when presenting his design: he didn’t sketch the shoe on a runner. Kamer describes that as “a renegade move at a company whose mission was mainly to service runners’ needs,” and something that made executives think that he didn’t understand the brand’s mission.
Due to various departures and corporate politics, which Kamer describes in fascinating detail, Hatfield ended up with the task of designing Jordan’s next shoe – which everyone understood to be the make-or-break point of Nike’s relationship with Jordan: Jordan was half-way out the door unless they could change his mind.
Hatfield approached the project using methods that deviated from the company’s standards to date:
- He listened to Jordan and got to know him as a person, apparently something no other designer had done.
- He paid attention to what Jordan wanted and needed, which is how he decided to create a shoe that combined performance and style (a new combination at the time).
- He moved the Nike swoosh to the back of the shoe and put the Jordan Jumpman logo on the front – again breaking with tradition.
The result was the Air Jordan III, and Jordan loved it.
From the article: “Someone had found a way to take his needs as a basketball player and his ideas as a fashion connoisseur and meld them into a single design, one that was distinct from anything else on the market.”
The Air Jordan III became iconic. According to Kamer, the Jordan Brand subdivision of Nike accounts for nearly 60 percent of the American basketball shoe market. Jordan has since collaborated with Hatfield on 19 iterations of Air Jordans, and refers to Hatfield as his “right-hand man” in all things design-related.
What a great story.
But here’s the thing: Hatfield only achieved what he did – for Nike, for Jordan and for himself – because he broke free from the standards of the past and attacked the challenge at hand in his own way. He used his own methods.
Last week I wrote about actress Michelle Williams who, in her Emmy acceptance speech, praised her bosses for “allowing her to succeed because of her workplace environment and not in spite of it.”
Hatfield succeeded in spite of his workplace environment (at the time).
If he had followed the standard, acceptable path, he may not have won that design contest in the first place. He may not have risked putting that iconic Jumpman logo on the front of the shoe. He wouldn’t have known Jordan well enough to make the decisions that resulted in a shoe that delighted Jordan so much.
Let People Influence in Their Own Ways
This makes me think of my own first job. I was told how to do my job, down to what time of day I should visit my clients.
There was no room for me to develop my own methods – I was measured by how well I complied and what I delivered. Compliance was how my bosses knew I was following their rules; results were how I knew I was contributing to the success of the organization. While I did gain a lot in terms of understanding the methods of standardization, I felt I was losing who I was, because my way did not matter.
I discovered that truth the day I thought I was going to get promoted and instead got lambasted. Why? Because I dared to visit my client the night before, rather than at 6 a.m. The rules required a morning visit. It didn’t matter that I thought an evening visit would lead to better results.
I had no influence – they weren’t preparing me to be self-directed. They were preparing me to comply.
I’ve assessed thousands of mid and top leaders over 12 years, and personally worked with hundreds. Leaders everywhere tell me they have felt restricted their entire professional lives, and they want to be free to be who they are and empower others to contribute.
Yet most are stuck in a situation similar to my first job.
Leaders put people in boxes and tell them to use these methods to achieve those results. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
To be clear, “results” is not a negative word. We should expect people to deliver results. We can talk about methods all we want, but if those methods don’t lead to results, then they’re not great methods.
But too often our focus on results or on prescribed methods keep us from seeking bigger opportunities to grow in the future.
It’s easier to focus on getting results now to show progress to our daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual goals. That approach is limited and limiting. It’s about generating an outcome. It’s a means to an end: Doing what we’re told as quickly as we can, because that’s what’s being measured.
That’s the problem with the existing metrics: they focus on what is delivered in the moment, not on potential for the future. This leads to people striving to get results but not believing in the way they go about getting them.
That’s how results trap leaders and their teams in standardization. The people don’t see themselves in those outcomes, because only the results are valued. They don’t think they can influence anything greater than the bottom line, so they stop caring about their contribution and just comply. If they’re paid by the test, the call, or the transaction, they simply conduct more tests, calls, or transactions. The business model becomes centered around that.
They ignore the bigger opportunities, because the organization isn’t measuring for bigger opportunities. They say they are – leaders can talk a good game. But if pursing a bigger opportunity means that someone will have to redirect some time and attention away from the compliance tasks that are actually being measured, then there’s no real incentive – and, in fact, there is a real risk to that employee – for thinking big.
The Freedom of Methods
Essentially what I’m talking about in valuing methods is what we say we value most in America: our freedom. To do this in a traditional workplace and break free from the tyranny of results, leaders must get past the myopic linear vision of standardization and give their people freedom within a framework.
That freedom is what leadership in the age of personalization is all about. It’s ostensibly what our country is all about.
The first step toward getting rid of old metrics and creating new ones that are influenced by personalization is a leap of faith, for sure – even more so when you have dozens, hundreds, and thousands of people spread out across a dizzying employment tree filled with siloed departments contentedly delivering results.
Many of the leaders of those silos are very comfortable and happy with the status quo. They will always be the resistance when any new methods appear. These people who are often of greatest influence always resist the change – they are the people most unprepared to lead.
They know if the organization reinvents itself and they don’t, they will either be unqualified for their job or they will become extinct. They stopped taking any steps forward a long time ago. It’s time for them to step up, move over, or go. The longer they stay, the longer those outdated metrics not only define them and their people, but also distance them from what they solve for.
We just can’t keep working with the same metrics we did a generation ago. Leaders awakening to this see that methods are now more important than results.
Outdated metrics prevent new thinking and solutions, because new thinking and solutions don’t align with the metrics. The metrics shouldn’t tell you what to do. They should guide you, not cloud your decision-making. We must stop being enslaved by the metrics. Take the first steps out of your standardization traps.
Start by asking yourself some questions:
- How is your organization trapped in the tyranny of results?
- If it isn’t, how are people given the freedom to avoid it?
- Do you (or does your organization) have any metrics for measuring methods, not just results?
- When were any of the metrics you use last revised?
I think back to Hatfield and that early Nike design contest. According to the article, the contest was a challenge to design a shoe that would be functional for the track and fashionable for the street – presented as an exercise to “get Nike’s shoe designers thinking bigger.”
Hatfield did think bigger – so much so that he “positioned the shoes not on a runner but next to a European motor scooter.” He won over the person who was judging the contest, but other executives questioned his understanding of the mission and some people even thought he should be fired. Fired! For thinking big.
This story is about events from the 1980s, but it’s not dated. People tell me stories like this all the time.
We have entered an age of personalization, but our corporations still operate by the now outdated rules of the previous age of standardization. In the age of standardization, we were told what to do in the box we were given. That doesn’t work anymore in our new age of personalization, where people want to influence the business by contributing at their fullest capacity.
Leaders and organizations that stifle individuality will not be able to compete in a world where things change fast and companies need to keep up.
Leadership in the age of personalization is the ultimate abundance mindset: the genuine desire for everyone to thrive individually and inclusively – success and significance for all.
Take the following assessment to identify how prepared you are to lead in the age of personalization.
