The New CEO

CHAPTER 7Building Your Top Team

“The best leaders are those most interested in surrounding themselves with what is best and brightest.”

—Lao Tzu, philosopher

When Doug Mack started as CEO at Fanatics in 2014, he hadn't realized that fixing the company's culture would be one of his immediate priorities—and biggest challenges. Over the past two decades, Fanatics had transformed from a mall retail store in Jacksonville, Florida, to a major e-commerce retailer of official sports merchandise, with $800 million in revenues.

Doug's appointment was a natural fit. Not only was he a life-long sports fan, he'd also spent his career powering businesses forward—having founded a rich-media platform (later sold to Adobe), before going on to helm One Kings Lane, the luxury-home décor business.

He was ready for the role and was looking forward to doubling down on the customer experience to fuel the company's next phase of epic growth. But the culture at Fanatics came as a big surprise. “When you think about a digital upstart like Fanatics, your competitive advantage should be your team spirit, your camaraderie, and your hunger for speed, but we didn't have any of it,” Doug told me. “There was no bond that tied everyone together. In fact, our people talked about one another like they were from different companies.”

In some ways they were: over the past two years, Fanatics had made a series of acquisitions that had allowed it to scale significantly, but had also left it struggling to unite ...