“You can visit Pity City, but you can’t live there,” is pretty good advice in the context of, say, a one-on-one mentoring meeting with a promising-but-entitled young employee who’s just suffered a setback. But it’s exactly the wrong thing to say as the CEO of an 11,000-person company trying to encourage employees to meet the challenges of selling office furniture in a work-from-home economy.
Footage of MillerKnoll Chief Executive Andi Owen dispensing this advice via videoconference has leaked online, causing a social media firestorm. The company — formed after the merger of Herman Miller and rival Knoll — has emphasized that the video clip is just 90 seconds of a 75-minute town hall, and says that it has been taken out of context.
Owen faced quick condemnation in the court of social media opinion, perhaps because the version of a CEO on display in the clip fits perfectly into post-pandemic worker anxiety. Do our bosses think we’re whiners?
