#286: John Donahoe, Former CEO of Nike, Director of Athletics at Stanford – Create strategy from the outside in

Hello friends and welcome to another episode of How Leaders Lead with David Novak. Today we have John Donahoe on the show. And when it comes to disruptive change, John Donahoe really has seen it all. He served as a CEO of Nike, of eBay, and of ServiceNow. And today he's navigating the crazy changes in college sports as the athletic director.

at Stanford University. In today's conversation, you'll learn how John navigates big changes with a strategy that focuses on what he calls outside-in thinking. You'll also hear him share vulnerably about some of the mistakes that he made at Nike and about the mindset shift that has helped him frame adversity into opportunity. Enjoy this conversation with David and John, and I'll see you at the very end of the episode with the debrief. John, I gotta tell you, you you've got one of the best golf swings I have ever seen.

Have you been able to translate that beautiful long backswing, flowing rhythm that you have into a good score lately? The good news, David, is that my experience in golf doesn't resemble my experience in business. I had a caddy about 10 years ago say to me on the 14th hole at San Francisco, he said, hey, John, can I be honest with you? And I he I said, sure, Billy, what's up? He said, John, you have a beautiful golf swing, but I have never seen anyone get less out of a golf swing than you do.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (83 minutes, 15,276 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.