Good morning.
Social media is one of the technologies that has profoundly changed the life of the CEO. Twenty years ago, most found it fairly easy to lay low and avoid controversy. Today, controversy seeks them out. They live in a social media fishbowl.
MillerKnoll CEO Andi Owen is a recent victim. At a virtual town hall in April, she responded to a question about employee bonuses using the following line:
“I had an old boss who said to me one time, ‘You can visit Pity City, but you can’t live there.’ So people, leave Pity City. Let’s get it done.”
She meant to rally the troops but instead lit up the internet. A video clip of the moment went viral, was viewed more than 20 million times, and drew countless comments, mostly negative. It was every CEO’s social media nightmare.
What did she learn from the experience?
“I was very naïve going into this. My words were meant to rally and motivate. But they landed in a very different way. And the speed with which social media enabled a few negative people to amplify and take things out of context was very fast.”
The experience also convinced Owen of the need to bring people back together in person.
“When this all started, I was a big believer in how much we can do on a screen. But there is a danger in that. You really need the human-to-human connection. This highlighted for me what I missed, what I need, what I can’t sacrifice. It’s hard to be human through a screen.”
Owen said many other CEOs reached out to her to commiserate after the story went viral. “It’s a very interesting and vulnerable conversation CEOs are having,” she says. Her advice to others: “We have to be courageous, we have to be confident, we have to be empathetic.”
More news below. And check out Phil Wahba’s story for Fortune on the new CEO of Gap, Richard Dickson, who helped revive the Barbie franchise as COO of Mattel. The last Gap CEO lasted only two years, and the company has gone without a permanent replacement for more than a year. Says Wahba: Dickson “has a big job ahead of him.”
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
