Why don't autobiographies answer the real questions?

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...and why is it we don’t really care?

I’m a bit of a sucker for the soft-soap interview profiles that appear in the business pages of the weekend newspapers. I love the perspective of the successful businessman looking back over his life, patting himself on the back for the terrific decisions he took, one after another. Occasionally, one will muse upon the wrong swerve his career took – but that’s inevitably an opportunity to point out how deftly he got things back on track. What a satisfying story to tell!

Psychologists tell us that the story we tell about ourselves contributes to our sense of self. Am I single because I’m an uncompromising woman of taste who refuses to lower her standards? Or a contrary bint who doesn’t half rate herself. Hm. I’ll take the former option, thank you.

Right at the apex of successful businessmen of our time is Phil Knight who co-founded Nike. Before I read Shoe Dog, the only thing I think I knew about Nike was that it represented the apotheosis of marketing and advertising, the high arts that make western consumer culture possible. 

So the man who paved the way for my generation’s obsession with Nike Airs must be a slick salesman with a cynical eye on the bottom line, right?

Well, no. I learned in Shoe Dog that straight out of college (Stanford business school, natch) in the early 1960s, he struggled to make a living selling encyclopaedias door to door. And in the early years of Nike, every high-stakes encounter – whether it was with the Japanese company making the first batch of running shoes Knight imported to the States or the banks whose credit policies seem designed to stymie the young entrepreneur’s ambition – seemed to be prefaced by acute anxiety and bouts of impostor syndrome. 

Still, at least the nascent mogul is a good people person, with an acute ear for human interaction and high emotional intelligence that he deploys to good effect? Er, no. Knight is a classic introvert with no feel for how to approach anybody who isn’t like him. One of his first recruits is salesman Johnson who pours his heart and soul into driving sales… and into a constant stream of letters to his boss, pleading for validation, which Knight ignores, perplexed at this display of neediness.

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I gather that Shoe Dog is touted as a slightly left-field choice of airport read: Knight presents himself as an innocent abroad (literally, in his account of the post-college trip around the world treated to him by his father, a trip that broadened his horizons and gave him the breathing space to consider going into business). He gives people credit where it’s due (it was the over-eager Johnson who came up with the name ‘Nike’ – the Greek goddess of victory – as he scrabbled for a new brand name). And he tries to define success in terms that are not purely monetary, arguing that he and his top executive corps, the self-styled Butt-Faces who are all slightly too quirky to have ever thrived in conventional corporate environments, strived not for financial gain alone but to be the best in their field.

In these respects, Shoe Dog is inspirational: hey, I’m an introvert too: maybe I could start a small company and turn it into a multi-billion dollar concern too! And just by caring about things!

But it doesn’t quite hang together. The missing element that makes it all hang together is probably the most powerful force: the fact that Knight enjoyed considerable advantages. 

He had the licence to go travelling after college (unencumbered by student debt), free accommodation at his parents’ house as he gets his business started, and the opportunity to teach at a local community college when he needed to step back from his corporate job and devote some time and energy to the new business. All have been gifted to him due to the circumstances of his birth. Yet although the final chapter (which is very touching) is marked by grace and humility as he looks back over his life, I don’t think Knight adequately addresses the role his good start in life played in helping him get his dream off the ground. 

And my takeaway from Shoe Dog? If you want to earn a vast fortune, get ready to work your ass off, and be sure to be born into a world of privilege. 

Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight, is published by Simon & Schuster. You can buy it at Dubray or Eason