There's a scene in Nike founder Phil Knight's memoir, Shoe Dog, that I can't get out of my head. It's 1980, and Nike's just went public. Knight's steaming away in a Japanese hot spring with Masaru Hayami, the president of Japanese bank Nissho Iwai. Years earlier, Hayami saw something in Knight -- something that made him fund Nike when the company was burning through cash so fast no other bank would touch them.
I complained about my business. Even after going public, there were so many problems.
"We have so much opportunity, but we’re having a terrible time getting managers who can seize those opportunities. We try people from the outside, but they fail, because our culture is so different.”
Mr. Hayami nodded. “See those bamboo trees up there?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Next year . . . when you come . . . they will be one foot higher.”
I stared. I understood.
When I returned to Oregon I tried hard to cultivate and grow the management team we had, slowly, with more patience, with an eye toward more training and more long-term planning. I took the wider, longer view. It worked.
The next time I saw Hayami, I told him. He merely nodded, once, hai, and looked off.
Nike eventually became Nissho Iwai's most profitable company, and Hayami would go on to serve as Governor of the Bank of Japan. The bond between him and Knight lasted until Hayami's death when he asked that that a Nike banner be placed on his coffin.
I think about the story at the strangest times. Sometimes, it happens when I look at my daughter. Her rainbow shoes are on the wrong feet, and her hair's bedraggled. But there's sunshine pouring in the window, lighting up her hair. Her eyes are so bright, they look like water. I try to figure out where three-and-half-years went, how it is that I get to share my life with this beautiful little girl.
The trees are growing.
The cuckoo clock from my wife's parents ticks in the playroom. Every morning we wind it. Every day, the heavy pine cones fall. We want grand sweeping changes. But it's the tiny, incremental things we control. Eventually, a year from now, a decade, they become the stories of our lives.
Fredrick Marion writes a weekly email newsletter about life, literature and art.
