UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank Reminds UCLA Anderson Students That Change Is Inevitable, Asks "Are You in Front of the Change You Have to Accept?"

By Paul Feinberg

One of the few things that could get you fired at Under Armour, company founder and CEO Kevin Plank told a UCLA Anderson audience this week, is this statement, which betrays a recalcitrant mindset:  “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Companies like his must anticipate and adapt to the accelerating shifts of the marketplace, Plank said during his on-stage conversation with Dean Judy Olian in the latest edition of the Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series. Other recent speakers have included Nestle Executive Vice President Chris Johnson (’88) and United Therapeutics Chairman Martine Rothblatt (JD/MBA ’81).

“Business is a journey…(with) so many different chapters,” Plank told an enthusiastic crowd in Korn Hall. For example, he said, in its first five years, Under Armour’s revenues soared from $17,000 to $5 million. “We crossed a billion in 2010 and last year, $5 billion. Each chapter is incredibly different….(but) change is inevitable.

“Are you in front of the change you have to accept?” he asked.

Plank’s appearance was his second before an Anderson crowd in seven months.

In October, the Under Armour executive was honored as the 2017 recipient of the John Wooden Global Leadership Award in a ceremony in Pauley Pavilion. Plank and his company also have a close relationship with the broader UCLA campus:  Last July, Under Armour and UCLA announced a 15-year, $280 million shoe and apparel sponsorship, the largest such deal in collegiate athletics.

Exclusive: Under Armour Founder/CEO Kevin Plank Talks Leadership

Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of Under Armour, recently traveled to Los Angeles and the UCLA campus where UCLA Anderson presented him with the 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Award. After the event, held in Pauley Pavilion, Plank sat down with the UCLA Anderson Blog team to talk about leadership, Under Armour, and his role models. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)

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Q: In terms of your leadership style, what was the transition like, in going from entrepreneur and head of a small start-up to manager of a global company?

Number one, I feel like Under Armor is entering Chapter Three of our business. Chapter One was grandma’s basement — just fighting to survive — and Chapter Two was (when) we moved the company to Baltimore, (where) we tried to build a global company, and really worked on being a global brand. Chapter Three moves us to where we are a corporation and you lose the agility that you have as a small company, particularly a small company led by an entrepreneur.

As a small company, I’d see, or we’d smell, problems and I’d be able to have myself or my executive team jump on something and spend time on it. We could work 23 hours in a day, get it fixed and move on. Now the company is just bigger. It doesn’t mean you lose a sense of urgency, but you lose the ability to make as quick of an impact as you’d like. It just takes time, because the only way to get anything done, is by leaning on what I brag so often about, our team, and it has to be that way. I like to say that good leaders have good ideas, great leaders have great ideas and make others think of their own.

How do we position people with the right ideas, but also empower them to actually be able to make a change and create difference? We are a corporation with an entrepreneurial basis, foundation and culture. Hopefully, we can be the best of those two things, because I think every big company is trying to get small, and every small company is trying to get big. I just want to be a great company. 

Q: How would you describe your leadership style but also, if we were to ask your employees, how would they describe your leadership style? 

You’ve got to be careful, because sometimes your whisper can be a roar in an organization. But asked how they would define me, hopefully they’d say I was empowering. I’m not just saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll sit here and figure it out together.’ What you’re truly saying is that I’m just going to define for you what I think success is. And then — if that means meeting in Los Angeles on a Wednesday — I’m not going to tell you how to get there. Whether it’s a train, a plane an automobile or whatever you choose to do, you just have to be there at this time. And that’s the difference between running a larger organization verses a smaller organization.

UCLA Anderson Celebrates the Life and Legacy of a Coaching Legend, Honors Under Armour’s Kevin Plank with Annual John Wooden Global Leadership Award

By Carolyn Gray Anderson and Paul Feinberg

On Monday, November 13, 2017, UCLA Anderson recognized Kevin Plank, founder, CEO and chairman of Fortune 500 athletic apparel company Under Armour, with the John Wooden Global Leadership Award. Fittingly, on its 10th anniversary, the ceremony took place in historic Pauley Pavilion, where Coach Wooden brought the UCLA men’s basketball team to many of his 10 championships between 1964 and 1975.

UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian introduced Plank by saying, “Kevin Plank was daring enough to challenge an industry, with a vision to build a sportswear company that enables athletes to perform better. He’s not just an enormously successful entrepreneur. Taking a page out of Coach Wooden’s playbook, he’s a leader who seeks to empower men and women around the world to follow their dreams and excel as confident, passionate competitors.” Plank received the award in recognition of his ethical business leadership, philanthropic activities and commitment to community.

2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Award Honors Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank

In partnership with the late Coach John Wooden’s family, UCLA Anderson honors one exceptional leader each year with a prestigious award for exemplary leadership and service to the community. On November 13, 2017, the 10th anniversary John Wooden Global Leadership Award will be given to Kevin A. Plank, founder, CEO and chairman of performance apparel, footwear and equipment company Under Armour.

Changing the Rules of Inclusion: John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow Anna Goldberg

By Carly Milne

Growing up, Anna Goldberg (’18) often heard her parents say, “Fair is not the same.” As she grew to adulthood, the phrase became a driving force behind her efforts to push for greater equality and equity across society.

“I want to build meaningful relationships that cultivate cultures and systems where everyone can flourish,” says Goldberg, who is the president of Anderson’s Women’s Business Connection. “I will always strive to create more equity for others; but being a white person with privilege, you can create access more easily than others who haven’t had that privilege.”

As one of four UCLA Anderson students awarded a 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellowship, it may come as no surprise that Goldberg comes from a line of social activists. Her grandfather, for example, protested alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and was arrested with him. Like the civil rights leader, Goldberg’s grandfather died too young, but his influence on her family remained; when she was just 14, she traveled to Uganda with her mother and grandmother to volunteer for several weeks at a Jewish community village.

Influencing Larger Health Care Issues: John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow Brandon Scott

 

By Carly Milne

When Brandon Scott (MBA/M.D. ’18) began medical school, his goal wasn’t simply to become a doctor. Scott had already cultivated an awareness of how impactful physicians could be in influencing larger health care issues, and he began his education with the idea that he — and other physicians — could influence and improve patient care delivery.

“My number one career interest is compassion in treating patients,” Scott says. “I went to UCLA to become a doctor, and I believe in treating patients with the idea that they can become familiar with the idea of normalcy — not just healing.”

Scott’s focus is reflected in Connecting Californians to Care, the student-run organization he co-founded with two fellow M.D./MBAs. While their mission is to help create access to care, they’re also dedicated to educating clinicians and administrators in professional development beyond the med school curriculum. It’s passion like this, and a unique way of thinking in the next, that made Scott a great candidate for a 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellowship.

Woodenisms: Anderson's Favorite John Wooden Quotes

Coach John Wooden’s renowned Pyramid of Success is used in boardrooms as well as on the court, and is as popular with business executives as it is with basketball coaches. It’s often cited in articles about sports, psychology, business, education and more.

Coach was a teacher first and foremost, and a prolific author and thinker. He applied leadership wisdom he often expressed through aphorisms that resonate with members of the UCLA Anderson community, where we strive to emulate Wooden’s values and principles. As we prepare for the 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Awards, we asked students and staff to tell us which “Woodenism” they admire most.

Share your favorite Coach Wooden quote in the comments!

Viewing Leadership as Service: John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow Evan Barnes

By Carly Milne

Evan Barnes (EMBA ’18) has weathered many storms, but he didn’t do it alone — and the support that got him through his toughest times informs not only his studies, but his future as a UCLA Anderson Executive MBA graduate.

“In the military, we view leadership as service,” Barnes says. “It boils down to showing care and compassion to the members of your team. It comes from building a relationship with the team, and that’s building leadership. Leadership has to be derived from your courage, care, compassion and trust to build that unbreakable bond with your team.”

It’s this values-driven leadership that led to Barnes’ selection as a 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow.

Inclusion Is No Sacrifice: John Wooden Global Leadership Fellow Sana Rahim

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

Sana Rahim (FEMBA ’19) is the recipient of a 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Fellowship, which rewards students who embody Coach Wooden’s leadership ideals and commitment to improving the lives of others. And if, as Wooden believed, adversity is an asset, Rahim has risen to the challenge — primarily in the interest of helping other people.

Rahim is an observant Muslim American whose parents hail from Pakistan. She is a brown-skinned woman pursuing an MBA. She grew up a distinct minority in the Wyoming town of Laramie, and later moved with her family to Naperville, Illinois, where she proudly became her high school’s first homecoming queen in hijab. In adulthood, amid worldwide trends toward divisiveness along political, religious, gender and cultural lines, she has traveled widely and faced her share of prejudice and setbacks.

But the former sales manager for industrial supply company McMaster-Carr says, “Although my ‘roots’ presented me with a number of challenges, they motivated me.” Her immigrant parents instilled in her a great sense of achievement, worthiness and responsibility. These influences protected her from insecurity.

UCLA Anderson Presents 2016 John Wooden Global Leadership Award to Jim McNerney at California Science Center

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson and Paul Feinberg

On Wednesday, November 2, 2016, UCLA Anderson recognized The Boeing Company’s retired chairman, CEO and president W. James (“Jim”) McNerney, Jr., as the ninth recipient of the John Wooden Global Leadership Award. The audience of nearly 500 included UCLA Anderson Board of Visitors members and other generous supporters gathered under the Space Shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center.

“I’m deeply honored by this award,” McNerney said upon receiving the award from UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian. “John Wooden — if you’re of my generation you know who he is, what he meant and what his values were. The prior (recipients), I know them all, and I’m very proud to be included in that group.”

The distinction is awarded annually to an exceptional leader who espouses and embodies the principles exemplified by the legendary UCLA coachteacher and leadership expert John R. Wooden. In her remarks, Dean Olian expressed admiration for McNerney’s decades of business success, which in 2015 earned him Chief Executive Magazine’s CEO of the Year, a distinction he shares with the 2014 Wooden Award honoree, Bob Iger.

One of the highlights of the evening (in addition to the Chicago Cubs’ winning Game 7 of the World Series; McNerney and UCLA Anderson’s Board of Visitors Chairman Bob Murley [’74] were among those pulling for the Cubs) was a discussion between McNerney and Michael Hiltzik, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from the Los Angeles Times. Their discussion touched on a range of topics that included the current state of manufacturing in the United States and how a chief executive may impact corporate culture.