Morning: The chief executive of Nike wakes at his home outside Portland, Oregon, at 6am. “I do a mix of walking and running and lift some weights, have a light breakfast and then drive into work before 7.30,” he says. He spends the rest of the morning liaising with his staff. “I see management teams, category teams, advanced research and development, analysts, investors, 10 direct reports. I try to delegate as much as I can but I do dive in if something needs a push,” he says. One issue moving up Nike’s agenda is the environment. “I engage with my employees and one topic that really resonates with everybody is our responsibility to be a better corporate citizen, minimising our footprint on the planet, and helping the disadvantaged where we can.”
Afternoon: After lunch Parker spends the rest of his working day at Nike’s 200-acre campus in back-to-back meetings, separated by stints on his office exercise bike. He started out at Nike as a product designer and despite being a CEO, he still has a lot of creative input in many ways. He is notorious for doodling during meetings. “I’m a relentless sketcher. It goes back to how you process the world around you – the whole left brain, right brain thing,” he says. “Some people are data-driven. I’ve always been more visual. Generally speaking, I think designers are often undervalued and underappreciated.”
Evening: Parker often uses his evenings to catch up with some of the sports stars that Nike sponsors. “I have been fortunate in my work to connect very closely with some of the top athletes in the world. Many of those athletes share that obsessive drive. I’ve seen it in Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, and I see it in Lance [Armstrong]. I don’t do negotiations with athletes but I do participate in relationships - no, that’s not kicking ass but connecting, finding out what they are interested in.”