Running with Purpose: How Brooks Outpaced Goliath Competitors to Lead the Pack

Brooks Running Company CEO Weber exhaustively recounts his career in this paradoxically snail’s-pace memoir. Having loved running since his fish-out-of-water, introverted Minnesota childhood, Weber was thrilled to be named president of Brooks Running in 2001 after being on its board, following a career at Pillsbury and Coleman. Through a mix of rebranding and marketing, he took the company from manufacturing a wide variety of sports shoes to doing running-only goods, leading it to an acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway in 2006. Weber hashes out some recent trends in running (such as doing so in barefoot-shoes), how Brooks managed the pandemic, his bout with cancer (and his work toward recovery after it was “out of my body”), and Brooks’ DEI efforts. Though the chapters have some prescriptive names (“Becoming an authentic leader”), Weber makes little attempt to distill lessons from his experiences, and his “manifesto” includes such trite and familiar items as “own a niche” and “solve for profitability.” The frequent boasts about the company, meanwhile, seem better placed for a corporate pep rally, and the mild story of Weber’s life isn’t the kind of thing great books are made of. This leadership memoir’s too heavy on the memoir and too light on the leadership. (Apr.)