Bjorn Gulden, the Chief Executive Officer of the sportswear company Adidas recently shared his mobile number with around 60,000 employees at a town hall meeting to boost transparency at work, as per a report in the Wall Street Journal.
When Mr Gulden, a former professional football player, took over leadership of Adidas in January 2023, the company was going through a difficult time. The German sports giant was reeling from a 724 million euro operational loss in the last quarter of 2022 and had recently cut ties with American rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye. "Some people think I'm crazy," Mr Gulden said. He highlighted that it was better for leaders to be unfiltered.
In an attempt to turn things around, he tried to address some of the employee-voiced concerns about transparency. According to the WSJ, after he disclosed his phone number, employees called him 200 times a week, requesting that he make changes to the business. He said the challenge was "to wake up the people who didn't understand we were losing."
Mr Gulden worked at Adidas in the 1990s and then worked at Puma.
After a year under his leadership, he stated that Adidas is expected to earn a profit this year. Since the announcement of his return to the company, its shares have nearly doubled, outperforming that of its American competitor, Nike, which has seen a slight decline over the same time frame.
The former footballer made some quick changes at the company beginning with the dismissal of consultants who he claimed made mistakes that sports industry experts would never make. Other changes implemented by Mr Gulden included bringing back sports like cricket, which have devoted fan bases in large markets like India; streamlining upper management communications so that he received more direct reports from department heads and doing away with a time-consuming evaluation process. After signing a brand sponsorship deal with the Indian cricket team in 2023, the firm sold 6,00,00 jerseys in India within three months.
According to the report, Mr Gulden said that his style of management could be "polarizing". He said, "Some people love that, others probably hate it"
Meanwhile, with more than $1 billion of unsold Yeezy sneakers, Mr Gulden was left with an unsolvable dilemma when he joined the company. Ultimately, he chose to sell the inventory and give a portion of the revenues to organisations that combat racism.
The Yeezy collaboration "was one of the best things ever created" by a sports company, according to Mr Gulden, even though it ended in controversy. Adidas would collaborate with celebrities to "build small Yeezies" that may help replace the void, he added, even if Yeezy is difficult to duplicate.
