Philip Knight’s company was taking off. He was growing all over the country and his brand, Blue Ribbon, was becoming extremely popular amongst runners. He even got rights to be the only seller in the United States for the Onitsuka brand. At this point in his career, Knight had a business partner and one full-time employee.
His full time employee was named Jeff Johnson and he did more work than anyone else for the company. He lived and breathed for Blue Ribbon and enjoyed every second of his work. Johnson constantly sent letters and updates to Knight informing him of everything that happened in his life and his business endeavors. Knight always got the letters from Johnson but gave up on trying to keep up with the letters and writing Johnson back. He tended to ignore Johnson more than anything. This didn’t stop Johnson at all though.
Johnson continued to write because he respected his boss so much and wanted his advice and applaud on everything he did. Knight took advantage of Johnson and realized he needed to stop ignoring him so much. He wanted to help Johnson but he didn’t know how, and instead of actually helping him, he sent Johnson to the East coast to build their business out there and replaced him with another west coast employee. Johnson asked for a raise before he left for the East coast that he wasn’t granted. He got a fraction of the raise he wanted. After Johnson went back east, Knight hired another full-time employee and would’ve done anything or paid anything to have him on his team. He seemed to appreciate this employee much more over Johnson even though Johnson was the most loyal and most important employee in the Blue Ribbon company.
In business, you have to respect your employees the way your employees respect you. Mutual respect leads to a better work environment and relationship between colleagues. A lot of business is based off relationships and it is vitally important that these relationships are healthy ones. Businesses thrive in healthy communities.