Vary your voice: Nike's resident "Katalyst" is helping employees at all levels to embrace the company's vision, and in turn extend the brand. (Cover Story).

Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike, calls me "The Voice." This unofficial title describes the role I play there, but I prefer the term "Katalyst." A Katalyst, to me, is "one that provokes significant change under different conditions than are otherwise possible." Given that, I see my job at Nike as being ombudsman, town crier, and "student body president" all rolled into one.

The idea started with Mark Parker, then Nike's Vice President of Footwear and now one of its co-presidents, along with Charlie Denson. Parker essentially made me an "independent contributor," a free agent to all areas of the company on behalf of Nike's brand. An initial three-month trial was a success. Now, my 10-person communications team is charged with being "The Voice" internally for Phil Knight and the co-presidents, and externally for the brand. Our primary focus is global communications, although we work wherever we feel we're needed to extend Nike's vision internally, to extend Nike's voice externally, and to touch others. Most important, we help Nike's senior leadership vary their voice.

Voice is key within a company, whether it's the voice of the people, the voice of conscience, or the voice of the brand. As the voice of the people, my team and I serve Knight's and the co-presidents' need for touch, to be in touch with what's going on, and to touch the employees. Voice and touch are the two most important things a CEO needs to lead effectively.

Phil and I don't exactly meet on a regular schedule so I can report in. That's not how we work. But he finds opportunities to ask me what's going on out there, because he recognizes a need to know. And so my job is to be out there, roaming around, making connections, having conversations, basically taking the pulse and the temperature of the organization.

You can never take voice -- or touch -- for granted. Absentee leaders, who avoid connecting and who stick to their broadcast e-mails, run the risk of narrow vision and isolated experience. Let yourself get out of touch and you become a demigod, distant and powerful, but unable to lead, because people don't follow a demigod.

Nike works hard to avoid this syndrome. Some of our senior leaders have been with the company all of their careers; it's the only world they know. Part of my job is to jostle them out of their comfort zones once in a while, to help them execute their vision by providing a wide lens and broad filters. To stay a visionary, you always need to keep a fresh perspective.

I'm not the only one who believes that. Touch is personal interaction with individuals. At the top levels, you need to ask, What are you doing to humanize yourself? How accessible are you; how vulnerable are you? How can employees trust you if they don't know what you feel? Knight himself sits and eats lunch with the people every day. He's the Velveteen Rabbit -- you know, the children's story. The message is, how do you know you're loved? Because your fur's been rubbed off and your eyes have fallen our -- you've been handled. People love Phil here. He's our emotional anchor because he's never afraid of showing his emotions, whether it's at a gathering of the entire campus on September 11 or laughing in the lunchroom.

"JUST STAY REAL"

So touch is about heart and about commitment, and every leader has the heart, potentially, to inspire commitment. Every leader has her or his rich individual story of how they rose up in the ranks -- not just a background, but intense personal experiences. I encourage leaders to let their own stories serve them, to let their bruises and triumphs shape what they will be known for. Everybody takes their dance instructions from you. Don't ever take it for granted. Just stay real. It'll never steer you wrong.

In order to "stay real," senior leaders need a voice of conscience, at least one person who has your confidence, whom you encourage to remind you of your mission, your vision, and your values. If you surround yourself with people who are just about getting the business done, then you lose track of the real business.

In your organization, the Katalyst could be your communications director, a leadership coach, or anyone who, in a non-confrontational, almost casual, way, can give you unfiltered information. Every team needs such a compass, someone allowed -- or better yet, required -- to say, when necessary, "You're screwing up. This is why. We can fix it," or, "This is great, what you're doing, just great!" An active voice of conscience invites people to invest in the company's vision because they can see values at work at the top.

So the touch, the voice of the people, the voice of conscience, all create the groundwork for the voice of the brand. They give it integrity. And they give it a demonstrable value that is visible in the bottom line. This leads to the third part of the job: to keep employees invested in the growth of the company.

The goal of a firm's voice is to be strategic with your inspiration. Vary the voice, but choose a voice that suits the message. For some messages, the broadcast e-mail works just fine. Other messages need a personal one-on-one and face-to-face. Ask yourself how deep you want to drive the message. In our group, sometimes we're just lobbying for stimulation. Sometimes we get things out virally, to cause a stir, to generate talk value. All of it helps to keep our fingers on the pulse of the company.

COMPETITION DRIVEN BY VISION

At Nike, of course, the goal is to sustain "the mind-set of an athlete." Nike's stated mission reads: "To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world." The asterisk reminds them of founder Bill Bowerman's definition of "athlete": "If you have a body, you're an athlete."

One of my favorite stories is about President Kennedy when he was touring NASA. The President met a man who, it turned out, was a janitor. When asked what his job was, though, the man answered, "I'm helping to put a man on the moon." That's what we're doing right here at Nike - we're all involved in putting a man on the moon, though in our case it's by fostering that athletic spirit of dedication to something, of competition driven by vision.

I believe strongly in the power of mission statements, of vision and values statements, if they truly infuse the organization. Can you show tangible results from your mission and vision statements? That's the test.

The keys are integrity and immersion: mean it and do it. From the first day people set foot in the company, how do you immerse them in the culture? New employee orientation needs to be emotional, about why we're here. But you can't bombard them with too much at once. You need to sprinkle it over time in doses that give them time to reflect on it.

Then, when the team wins a championship, you must make sure that everyone is honored for her or his effort. You can lose your way in revenue, revenue, revenue. People and legacy must be a part of the profit equation.

This means training and development programs plus programs around the mission and vision, introducing new initiatives to everyone in a way that fosters advocates, even evangelists, for the project. Staff should never be surprised; they should get the first glimpse -- and a reason to care.

Here, the strategic voice comes in again: vary your voice. Use a lot of different delivery systems. Make it multisensory; make it tactile; let people feel the mission. Sitting in a conference room isn't necessarily the best way to communicate the vision.

At Nike, it's no surprise that we play sports. Take the campus-wide games of tag that took place for a half hour on Fridays during lunch, or the red rubber balls that we toss around. During meetings and public speaking engagements, I use the balls as symbols of the chase for the dream. Play not only is an important component of voice, but it also adds value to whatever your business is. Play is the genesis of ideas and possibilities.

A level of playfulness is necessary to reach the vision: you must be able to imagine a new place, and play is the key to innovation. Everybody has an artist inside, but it's atrophied in many of us, because we don't get to use our play muscle enough. At Nike, it's not uncommon for us to do programming that doesn't have anything to do with anything. It just stirs emotion: joy, creativity, and wonder.

Some organizations feel like they don't have time to play. But I know it helps and makes a difference here. To chase a new vision, to imagine yourself in a new place, requires arousal, then action -- and these require play. Play also teaches you where your boundaries are. It's where social development begins. Much of what you bring to work socially and interpersonally was developed on the playground.

Even CEOs need to play. Phil Knight does. But then, he's an athlete. But then, we're all athletes, aren't we?

Kevin Carroll is "Katalyst" and director of leadership and communication at Nike, in Portland, Ore. His diverse experience includes stints as an Air Force translator (he speaks Russian, Croatian, and Serbian, among other languages), high school health educator, and head athletic trainer for the Philadelphia 76ers. He can be reached at [e-mail].