The Other Brother
How rivalry clarified identity and built two great companies
Photo by Supradoc on Unsplash
There’s a version of leadership wisdom that insists conflict should be resolved quickly. Name it, smooth it over, get back to some form of agreement. Mature cultures seek harmony and treat tension like a bug, not a feature.
I don’t buy it. Some of the most formative counterforces in organizational history were not destroyed, but followed. The story of the Dassler brothers—Adi and Rudi—is one of those uncomfortable examples.
In Herzogenaurach, a small German town divided by a river, the split between the Dassler brothers began with suspicion. During World War II, a misunderstood remark in an air-raid shelter was taken personally, deepening fractures already forming from differences in temperament and wartime tensions. By 1948, the brothers’ shoe factory partnership was over. The town became divided; families, factories, even friendships aligned with one brother or the other. Adi turned inward to perfect the product; Rudi turned outward to conquer the market. What began as a breakdown became a boundary, and that boundary became the line each would spend a lifetime trying to outrun.
When the brothers split, the result was two companies—Adidas and Puma—each driven by a singular need to outdo the other.
The Adi and Rudi story includes an Antagonist that is personal, familial, and identity-laden. Each brother became the other’s reference point. The rival. The foil. The force against which the future emerged.
The Antagonist clarified who each company was becoming, and who it could not be.
This is where it gets uncomfortable, and understandably so. Family rivalry feels like the wrong moral lesson. No one wants to argue that broken relationships are a prerequisite for greatness. I’m not arguing that either. I’m arguing something narrower. And harder.
The Antagonist was already there.
Adi and Rudi didn’t seek rivalry to become successful. They were together in business for 30 years before World War II interfered. But their rivalry revealed a divergence that had been present all along. Different instincts. Different orientations. Different ways to win. Once that Antagonist surfaced, the system reorganized around it.
What’s easily missed in the Dassler story is not that antagonism existed, but that each brother followed it to its logical conclusion. They allowed the tension to pull them toward differentiation instead of forcing reconciliation for its own sake. The Antagonist became directional.
That’s the part leaders tend to avoid.
In organizations, antagonists often show up as people we struggle with. Partners who frustrate us. Executives whose instincts consistently oppose ours. Founders who pull in a different direction. We label these dynamics as problems to fix instead of signals to interpret.
But sometimes the Antagonist is right in front of us, pointing toward our future.
The danger is unexamined rivalry.
When antagonism remains unnamed, it turns toxic. When it is acknowledged and followed with discipline, it can become fuel. In the Dassler case, the Antagonist sharpened identity, accelerated innovation, and produced two enduring shoe brands.
In the Dassler story, the Antagonist was the other brother. That doesn’t mean every conflict should end in separation. The Dassler brothers could have reconciled rather than wait for their sons to do so a generation later.
The Antagonist can emerge as a fault line of difference—where values, instincts, and visions diverge. Ignore it, and it will work anyway, just underground.
Engage with it honestly, and it may reveal what you’re actually building.
The Antagonist is already at work. Are you?
Antagonist Check
Who functions as an Antagonist in your leadership story—not as an enemy, but as a clarifying force?
If this Antagonist were directional rather than disruptive, where might it be pointing?
How could you rally as a team against unexamined rivalry?
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Hi, I’m Brad Abare. If the challenges I write about sound familiar, it’s because I spend my time helping executives and their teams work through them. Over the past 30 years, I’ve been a founder, principal, board member, CEO, and chief of staff. If you’re interested in a conversation about working together, I accept a limited number of new engagements each year. You can send me a message here.