By Mike Millett

Notes and
Updates

Occasional additions, corrections, and observations directly related to the book. Mike’s general essays are published at mikemillett.com.

Visibility  ·  24 July 2026 The Last to Know

On 19 July 2026 we pointed our own visibility instrument at ourselves for the first time. Eleven of our fifteen brands were invisible. One of them was the company. What that says about why a business is almost always the last to notice its own absence.

Latest

Nike is five years into a decline, not two years into a recovery.

Three record years followed the decisions that weakened the brand. The numbers that warned first were not the ones on the scoreboard.

Nike's S&P 100 exit is the last instrument to admit what the shelf said first.

Nike leaving the S&P 100 reads like an obituary, but it's closer to a late filing. The customers who caused it started leaving years ago, and you could see it on the shoe wall at Foot Locker.

Relevance Decay: How a Business Stops Mattering

The gradual loss of fit between what a business offers and what its market now wants, with no single failure to point at.

The Last to Know

We pointed our own visibility instrument at ourselves for the first time, and eleven of our fifteen brands were invisible.