John Burke has run Trek Bicycle for practically three a long time, lengthy sufficient to have lived by way of bike booms and busts, a pandemic that briefly made his firm one of many hottest companies on the planet, and a post-COVID hangover that has left inner gross sales dashboards “all crimson” for greater than a 12 months and a half. He’s additionally learn sufficient books — about 52 a 12 months, yearly, meticulously cataloged in a private spreadsheet of 1,100 lifetime classes — to have robust opinions about practically the whole lot.
One of many strongest: an organization’s legacy is measured by its influence on the world, not its monetary returns.
“Making a revenue is the lifeblood of a enterprise,” he advised me in Las Vegas, backstage on the Nice Place to Work For All Summit. “However the success of the enterprise isn’t just measured in how a lot cash you make — it’s within the influence that you simply make.”
Burke mentioned he couldn’t converse for different firms, since he’s “been taking part in for a similar staff for 42 years,” however when he seems out at company America, he mentioned, “there’s been a decay within the function of firms during the last 25 years.” After which he acquired traditionally minded. “For those who return, an economist as soon as mentioned that making a revenue is the one duty of an organization … and that’s not Trek.”
(The precise quote was revealed in a New York Instances op-ed in 1970 as the good College of Chicago economist Milton Friedman wrote: “There may be one and just one social duty of enterprise—to make use of its assets and interact in actions designed to extend its income as long as it stays inside the guidelines of the sport, which is to say, engages in open and free competitors with out deception or fraud.”)
Simply think about, Burke mentioned, what Trek has executed for girls’s biking.
The ladies’s biking second
In 2018, he recalled, somebody walked into his workplace and advised him how ladies’s skilled biking groups had been really handled: flown within the evening earlier than races, competing on secondhand bikes, incomes virtually nothing. Burke vowed so as to add a full-scale ladies’s staff from that day onward.
From that day onward, Burke mentioned, Trek handled its ladies athletes the identical as its males — identical bikes, identical assets, identical funding. The staff received practically the whole lot for 3 years operating. After which, Burke mentioned, one thing greater occurred: each different main staff in skilled biking adopted go well with. “No Trek, no change in ladies’s biking,” he mentioned flatly. “Milton Friedman wouldn’t have authorized that call. If he was on the board, he wouldn’t have authorized it.”
It’s the type of story Burke returns to when folks ask what Trek’s fiftieth anniversary is admittedly about. The corporate is marking the event with a coffee-table guide cataloging 50 methods it has modified the world and a 43-minute documentary premiering June 18 on the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin, with creator Jim Collins in attendance. “What I’m most happy with at Trek is how we’ve modified the world, not what the monetary outcomes have been. After I’m gone, I don’t suppose anybody’s gonna make notice of that.”
Using by way of the bust
Trek’s present headwinds are actual. After a COVID-era demand explosion that strained provide chains and pushed bikes off cabinets sooner than they could possibly be constructed, the market reversed sharply — and Trek has been working by way of extra stock and restructuring strain ever since. The corporate, which generates roughly $2 billion in annual income and employs greater than 5,000 folks globally, has confronted layoffs and product line reductions because it recalibrates.
However even within the downturn, Trek has been quickly transferring up the Fortune 100 Greatest Firms to Work For listing — No. 42 in 2026, up from its first look at No. 94 in 2023. (It was really No. 4 on the perfect locations to work in retail.)
Burke mentioned he sees the 2 issues as related quite than contradictory. The survey, he advised Nice Place to Work CEO Michael C. Bush, “is the centerpiece of how we run HR.” And the perfect time to take its temperature, he argued, is when issues aren’t going nicely.
Gen Z doesn’t exist
Burke’s contrarianism extends nicely past company function. When requested what recommendation he would give to Gen Z staff, he practically exploded. Burke is a no-nonsense Midwesterner, and he insisted that work has all the time been work, similar to when he acquired his first job, diving ponds at a Wisconsin golf course to choose balls up off the soggy backside.
“There’s no such factor as Gen Z,” he advised me. “All this generational stuff is overblown. For those who return and examine the final 100 years of what’s made profitable folks, it’s all the identical.” He recalled being in Germany within the late Eighties because the Berlin Wall fell, listening to older Germans lament that the youthful era was lazy. “That’s what they’re saying immediately in America, is Gen Z doesn’t work. It’s like, that’s true. Individuals need to achieve success at work.”
“Each era has in all probability had its quirks,” he allowed, however folks have all the time needed to work exhausting to get forward, and that has by no means modified. “That doesn’t work immediately and it didn’t work 20 years in the past. It didn’t work 50 years in the past.”
A late convert to AI
On synthetic intelligence, Burke mentioned he arrived late — however he’s satisfied it’s not hype. For many of the previous few years, it felt summary. His IT director stored telling him one thing huge was coming, however the tangible purposes weren’t apparent. Then, about six months in the past, one thing clicked.
“Holy shit,” is how Burke describes the second. “Take a look at what can really be executed.”
He mentioned he thinks AI’s adoption curve will make the web and the iPhone look gradual. “The web affected enterprise like this,” he mentioned, gesturing slowly. “The iPhone, possibly a little bit steeper.” Then his hand shot up. “AI — I don’t know if society’s prepared. However we’re going to search out out, as a result of it’s unleashed. And also you’re going to know right here fairly fast.”
Trek, by Burke’s personal accounting, is just not prepared. He positioned the corporate at 13 out of 100 for AI readiness relative to its friends, however his eyes bugged out after I advised him that didn’t sound like a great ranking. “13 is sweet! It’s a terrific ranking,” Burke mentioned. “One of many issues we do finest as an organization is take an idea and unfold it all through the corporate.” He mentioned he’s tried to construct a tradition at Trek that “confronts the brutal details,” strikes quick, and all the time seeks to study. When folks inform him he’s unsuitable, he mentioned, he will get curious. “I’m extra keen on how we enhance. I’m not keen on proving that we’re proper.”
Burke mentioned his workplace has two large whiteboards and he spends his day framing puzzles for himself and his workers, “and getting the neatest folks within the firm to unravel the puzzles. That’s how I spend my time.”
The cellphone is the issue
Burke’s embrace of AI exists in sharp stress with a deep, private hostility towards smartphones. His conversion on that entrance got here from an unlikely supply: an opportunity assembly with Dr. Richard Davidson, the College of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientist and founding father of the Wholesome Minds Heart, who has spent a long time finding out psychological well being and the that means of happiness. Burke mentioned he was ashamed as a result of he tried to postpone the assembly, considering he was too busy. His assistant overruled him. “She goes, ‘You realize, that assembly with Dr. Richie is Wednesday, and you can be there.’”
As he acquired to know Davidson, he discovered of a exceptional life story: graduating from highschool at 14, then NYU at 16, then a PhD from Harvard by 21 years outdated, and a later assembly with the Dalai Lama, who advised him, “Richie, your mission in life is to carry pleasure to the world.”
“Now I’m type of slithering beneath the desk as I blew this man off,” Burke advised me in his sometimes blunt trend. However he had a query for Davidson: he requested the place psychological well being in America stood immediately, on a scale of 100, relative to 1984. Davidson’s reply: 23, down from 100 in 1984. “It’s in the bathroom. Unbelievable.” The wrongdoer, Davidson mentioned, was the cellphone.
Take into account the Masters golf event, Burke mentioned, one of many final main public occasions the place telephones are banned from the grounds. “What’s everyone doing? They’ve a smile on their face. No one’s attempting to take an image of any person else. No selfies. They’re speaking to one another.” He estimated the happiness degree is thrice what it’s at a comparable phone-permitted occasion. “It’s the best experiment on the planet.”
‘We’ve Pissed Off Simply About All people’
Burke is just not a politician and doesn’t need to be one. He served on the President’s Council on Bodily Health beneath George W. Bush and has written three books about American civic life, however describes himself as neither Republican nor Democrat. What he’s, unmistakably, is pissed off.
The $39 trillion nationwide debt strikes him as an ethical failure as a lot as a fiscal one. “Any person’s all proud they simply got here out with a $1.5 trillion protection funds,” he mentioned. “You shouldn’t be proud. You have to be embarrassed. We are able to’t afford a $1.5 trillion [budget]. Why not make it two-and-a-half [trillion dollars]? Properly, you may’t make it two-and-a-half as a result of you may’t afford it … the reply isn’t any. We’re 5% of the world’s inhabitants, and we spend 38% of the world’s protection {dollars}. It is senseless.”
On commerce and geopolitics, Burke was equally unsparing. Trek manufactures globally and has navigated years of tariff disruptions, nevertheless it framed America’s present isolation as one thing deeper than a provide chain headache. “To perform issues in life, it’s essential to have associates. To perform issues as a rustic, it’s essential to have associates. And we’ve pissed off nearly everyone.” He ticked by way of the listing: Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia. “I can’t let you know why we’re pissed off at Canada,” he mentioned. “I genuinely can’t let you know.”
The basis downside, in his view, is a management class that has confused self-preservation with public service. “We elect leaders whose major motivation is just not the success of the USA — it’s to perpetuate their very own jobs. And it’s embarrassing. It’s completely embarrassing.”
52 books, 1,100 classes
Burke mentioned he reads 52 books a 12 months, virtually completely nonfiction. His studying system, refined over the previous 4 years, is rigorous. He reads the primary sentence of each paragraph. If it grabs him, he reads the remaining. If it doesn’t, he strikes on. “I’ve by no means learn a foul sentence to start out a paragraph which turns into a great paragraph,” he mentioned. “Doesn’t occur.” (Whereas this would possibly indicate that he’s a skimmer or pace reader, this technique means that he begins roughly 100 books a 12 months, and solely completed round 50.)
When he finishes a guide, he goes again by way of his underlines and enters solely the teachings he needs to hold for the remainder of his life into a private spreadsheet — now greater than 1,100 entries deep. The system was impressed by Jim Collins, who visited Trek in 2018 and prompt writing down one lesson per guide. Burke took it additional. The impetus was a motorcycle experience together with his spouse, throughout which she requested him to summarize the teachings from certainly one of his favourite books, Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Recreation. His reply, he recalled, was “lame. Actually unhealthy retention.” He went residence, reread the guide, underlined it, and constructed the spreadsheet.
Present studying: The Algorithm, a couple of former Elon Musk lieutenant now on the board of Common Motors, centered on simplification and pace — themes Burke is making use of on to Trek’s provide chain overhaul, which benchmarks Toyota and goals to triple the corporate’s operational effectivity rating by 2028.
Nonetheless studying, nonetheless transferring
For all his impatience with American establishments — company, political, technological — Burke’s worldview is finally an optimistic one, grounded much less in ideology than in a perception that self-improvement is all the time out there to anybody prepared to do the work.
At Trek, he mentioned, the lesson applies to the corporate as a lot as any particular person in it: concentrate on what you may management, confront the brutal details, and preserve transferring. “85% of the alternatives within the enterprise,” he mentioned, citing The Founder’s Mentality, “are inside their 4 partitions. And typically you get lots of people who need to look out the window as a substitute of trying within the mirror, 85% of the alternatives within the enterprise are trying within the mirror.”
