This story seems like weak beer indeed. It's not like she was firing hundreds of people over Zoom, reneging on paying severance, or any of the other examples of recent CEO misbehavior.

That happens mostly in our wonderfully super ethical industry of Tech.

What a classic non-apology that was.

> I feel terrible that my rallying cry seemed insensitive. What I’d hoped would energize the team to meet a challenge we’ve met many times before landed in a way that I did not intend and for that I am sorry.

In other words, I'm sorry that you all took it the wrong way.

How could one do a "real" apology? How would it be different?

“I’m sorry for seeming like an asshole. I seemed like an asshole because I was, in fact, being an asshole, without caveat. You’ve every right to call me out on it. As a show of sincerity, and to show these aren’t just empty words, I’ll return this $3.9 million bonus I received.”

It’s funny and sad that this sort of _blazingly obvious_ and simple response is a difficult-to-imagine outlier.

Right exactly.

This can be generalised easily into a template for a genuine apology:

I'm sorry for doing X - I was wrong. I'll try to do Y better in future.

Note:

- It acknowleges fault, takes personal responsibility and doesn't blame others

- It doesn't make excuses

- It makes a commitment to improvement with concrete action

Everyone makes mistakes. If you think you don't make mistakes or always shift blame onto others you have a problem.

As a fun parlour game, look at this list and think how many of these attributes CEOs you have worked with share https://www.choosingtherapy.com/signs-of-a-psychopath/

1. You apologize for your actions, not for the way they were taken. "I'm sorry for what I did", instead of "I'm sorry for how you interpreted what I said".

2. You don't belittle the feelings of others using words like "I'm sorry my rallying cry seemed insensitive" instead of "I'm sorry that my rallying cry was insensitive".

3. You attempt to make amends.

The weak non-apology aside, I can guarantee that this person does not feel a shred of sorrow. This is how the vast majority of CEOs think. You can see her sheer frustration at 0:55 in the video, she's so genuinely affronted that her employees would dare to ask about bonuses that her speech speeds up considerably.

This is to be expected. Typical power structures, especially those in corporate America favor the promotion of liars, backstabbers, cheats, and controlling people to leadership positions at a far higher rate than calm, friendly, nice ones.

This goes doubly so now that workers have a bit more power -- remember that outside tech, the job market is still pretty tight for employers, similar to 2021. Honestly, following Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, anyone who is capable of getting themselves into a leadership position should on no account be allowed to do the job.

If you want to change this, there are few options -- but a good one is to stop rewarding these assholes with your money. I am going to avoid Herman Miller as much as I can in the future for personal or professional furniture.

I think something people in this community should consider is incorporating their ventures in more equitable and democratic ways (as B corps, as worker's cooperatives, etc). It won't be possible for everyone (particularly people relying on angel funding, who will presumably be met with great skepticism) but I think it may be possible to create some new expectations about how a company runs, and that small worker's coops may have an advantage in tech. Tech requires lots of cross-disciplinary cooperation, so I think small, flat co-ops may come to better decisions faster and have an advantage over other firms.

They're only ever sorry they were caught.

She's also sorry you're still paying attention.

Can we just get on with it now? ;-)

Her speech didn’t bother me at all. Company needs to make money and apparently it isn’t, yet people still want bonuses. Pay them and hurt the company, or don’t pay but maybe lose your best employees.

This is why only a few people are capable of running companies. The reality of profit and loss - aka “math” - is too much for most people.

> The reality of profit and loss - aka “math” - is too much for most people.

If it was just math, a lot more people would be better at it. But your own statement shows how there’s much more to it than math: “Pay them and hurt the company, or don’t pay but maybe lose your best employees.”

No math is going to tell you how to decide that situation. And business is full of such decisions, which collectively can make or break a company.

The commentary around this frames the situation that cold hearted capitalists don’t understand the feelings of employees. Or some sort of emotional issue. The reality is the company is failing, can’t pay people what you don’t have.

> The reality is the company is failing, can’t pay people what you don’t have.

If the company is failing, then leadership should be cutting their losses and engaging in deep layoffs. Downsize production to adjust for lower demand, preserve working capital, focus on efficiency. Upsetting your employees is the worst of both worlds: your employees perform worse, and you don't save any money on compensation while that happens. So you make a deep cut, take the emotional hit, make it clear that it's the only cut you're going to make, and then ramp the company back up.

Telling people they're in "pity city" doesn't pay the bills either. It's obviously made things worse. Patronizing your employees is needless and poor leadership.

That said, it's far from the most egregious thing I've heard, I'm not going to spend many cycles thinking about it. But I can understand why the employees would be upset by it.

The company isn't even failing. Yes, growth is way way down but revenue and net income are still fine.

People setting up home offices has been a hugely growing market that apparently has gone uncaptured by MillerKnoll. I wonder who sets the strategy for a company that we could blame for this failing? Whomever they are, they probably shouldn't get a bonus as that would be rewarding failure.

> The commentary around this frames the situation that cold hearted capitalists don’t understand the feelings of employees. Or some sort of emotional issue.

Uh, not really. The only one emotions we are talking about here are the CEO's, and how they are impacting communication with employees.

> The reality is the company is failing, can’t pay people what you don’t have.

There are good ways to communicate this reality to your employees. If you think what the CEO did is a good way, then I wish you good luck.

Owen made $3.9 million in bonuses on top of her fixed salary of $1.1 million in 2022 and yet you're complaining about the people actually doing the work getting bonuses?

How does that math make sense at all?

The board can fire the CEO and the CEO can fire anyone. By all means start your own company that operates differently. It isn’t surprising to me that the most effective companies are all setup essentially the same however.

The least effective companies are all setup the same way too.

CEO's get paid when the companies do well and they get paid when they do poorly. They get paid if it completely falls apart. How does that help companies perform better? How does that profit and loss math work here?

They get paid when they’re fired. They get paid when they’re accused (credibly even) of sexual harassment and misconduct. For all this talk of “math”, this particular math is just beyond my ability to grasp.

I don't see how that was in dispute or responsive to the previous comment.

> and the CEO can fire anyone.

Americans...

In civilized parts of the world you cannot fire anyone except for in specific circumstances.

> Pay them and hurt the company, or don’t pay but maybe lose your best employees.

There's always another option: restructuring (the organization, compensation structures, product portfolios and market positioning...), getting in the trenches (understanding that performance fundamentally depends on emotional state)... The "math" tells you where you are, and it can illustrate that you sometimes work within real limitations, but it doesn't define how you should react.

> This is why only a few people are capable of running companies. The reality of profit and loss - aka “math” - is too much for most people.

Who are you claiming here is capable of running a company because the reality of profit and loss isn't too much? The person receiving over $3m in bonuses despite the her company "needs to make money and apparently isn't"? It sure seems to me like she's one of those people who "still want bonuses".

Do you have any sort of sources to back those claims up? I’m not American, and I can only speak from anecdotal experience from the Danish digitalisation sector, both public and private, but I’ve never met a CEO or any sort of manager they match your description. A few were assholes, more (managers) were incompetent but none of them were backstabbers, liars or cheats, because you genuinely can’t lead people if you are. This of course doesn’t apply to a lot of other lines of work, we recently had a grocery delivery where the drivers phone had malfunctioned, so I lend him mine to call his company while I tried to tech-support his. Long story short, I overheard some of the stuff he was told by his company and it was literal basic stuff like “remember to be really nice and say thank you” in a much more demeaning manner. The driver had already been way nicer than what they told them to be, but he kept the phone call open while I was thanked again… So there are certainly businesses where the company policy is to treat employees like shit. But I haven’t met those managers, so I can speak for them, and the ones I have met got there for various reasons where the worst was that they were the only ones they wanted the position. The CEOs I’ve met either came from money or made money from starting another company, then using that money to build a new one. Or they were hired through a tough process with a lot of competition. Only one was an asshole, and he still wouldn’t lie, cheat or backstab, but he would behave like an asshole, and mostly get away with it. It was while I worked in the public sector where we had municipality owned cars with designated parking spots, and he would park in one and refuse to leave. He’d also walk over people in meetings, if they let him, but that situation should frankly never arise.

What I have encountered, and this is partly because I did a stint in management (and the necessary education that you’ll typically be required to get in Denmark if you’re promoted into management) before I went back to being a programmer as I hated managing people, was that management lives in a different world than employees as well as being an employee themselves. I think this is a video of someone who forgot that there are two worlds, and also someone who maybe forgot (or never learned) about motivational theory, and well, how to communicate with dignity and respect, but at the end of the day, an organisation has goals and CEOs and managers are responsible for reaching those goals with the resources they are given. One or the first things you’ll learn in MBA type studies is that everyone is expendable, it’s only a question of how much it’ll cost to lose them. You can see this as a negative thing, but it can mean a lot of things. In programming it tells a manager to encourage their employees to build code in a manner that’s not too dependent on its authors. We do this by employing various principles for coding standard and documentation because if we don’t, it gets really expensive when someone quits. I personally think it’s a good thing to learn as an employee as well, because it’s healthy to keep a distance from your job and your personality, so that you can better be an employee and also a person and not have that melt too much together so that it gets soul crushing for you when you get fired. Which you probably will, and often not for any reasons you could help.

That being said. I get that this “pity city” was an eureka moment for her, but how hilarious is it that she didn’t consider how it sounded to non managers?

Well as someone who has had corporate jobs for 20+ years you need to read a little between the lines. She was goaded into the response, you hear it from the question already it is from someone who is fed-up! Because the little bit of information going around is that she received her bonus and then there sits in a call claiming that they aren't meeting targets, if the company is failing to meet targets there is no bonuses even if you are the CEO. It is why she receives the pointed question of "how are we supposed to be motivated if we don't get a bonus?" no one professional asks it like that unless they are after a response. Oh boy did they get a clip.... I'm guessing that she has rationalized her own bonus in the past by saying that she needs it to be motivated.

  I’ve never met a CEO or any sort of manager they match your description. 
  A few were assholes, more (managers) were incompetent but none of them were
  backstabbers, liars or cheats, because you genuinely can’t lead people if you
  are.

Sure. I worked for a company where the money ran out. Turns out the CEO was embezzling the money and eventually went to jail for fraud related stuff. Or look at Theranos. Nikola? Here's another ten.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/10-ceos-who-went-bo...

Every **ing CEO is like that, dude. Just look at all the massively profitable companies laying people off by the thousand so they can cow whoever's left into working harder for less in the way of bonuses/promotions.

CEOs are also extremely charismatic. When a random doofus nerd runs across one in person, they charm the hell out of the nerd and seem like the coolest, nicest person said nerd has ever met. Same goes for politicians. The fact that you're friends with a couple of CEOs basically means nothing at all.

Quite a lot of assumptions you make on my behalf. It would be nice if you could refrained from doing that in the future.

What are you even hoping to achieve with that post? Your experiences may be very different from mine, and that is just fine, but there is no reason to be rude about it.

ah, sorry man, I wasn't trying to insult you directly

Your post is basically saying "Hey, all those times in your life that a company screwed you over were actually good, and you were wrong to be unhappy about it", and I wanted to debunk that for you and anyone else who reads what you posted

> I’m not American, and I can only speak from anecdotal experience from the Danish digitalisation sector, both public and private

This is specifically why I mentioned the American corporate system. The cultures are very different. For an example that you might specifically identify, most American corporate managers would consider anything approaching Janteloven extremely woke and socialist.

Sorry still doesn't explain why none of the bonuses were given while she keeps hers..

It's not her fault that these pitiful underlings missed their bonus targets.

I can't think of a situation where the CEO could hit her targets well enough to get a bonus but no one else could. Everyone's targets should be implicitly linked to the CEO's targets.

Also, a good CEO who supported the company and the team would turn down their bonus in this situation. To lead you need to be seen to be in the same boat as everyone else, or no one will follow you.

Dont think she needs to hit any target. If the board fires her tomorrow, its almost certain she’ll still walk away with a hefty amount of money.

Do we know that that's actually true?

> Bonuses for the 2023 fiscal year have yet to be decided, according to the company.

A long time ago, I bought an Aeron chair for my home office.

Emailed the company to tell them how much I enjoyed the fact that the seat let 'air' pass through it, especially when I sat naked in it.

They deadpan responded with an email that since the chair has moving parts, I should be careful to not get anything stuck in it.

Seems like a much different company these days.

I assume that’s why they call you Latchkey One-Ball McGee

Setting aside the bonus/entitlement/tirade/apology part of this story, the basic issue in this business is not hard to see for anyone on the outside.

People are going into the office less and businesses are cutting staff. That means less need for office furniture. That's the structural backdrop this business is in. As CEO it's your job to figure out a business strategy against this backdrop.

If people are not selling product it could be

(a) The sales peoples' fault for sucking at their job/not having enough morale so they need your "rallying cry"

or (probably) (b) your fault for keeping the business making only things that people don't really need right now.

I mean there still are people making and selling buggy whips but it's a heck of a lot more niche of an industry than it was 200 years ago and if you were CEO of a buggy whip manufacturer, ripping into your sales people and saying "Stop living in pity city and get out there and sell more goddamn buggy whips!" isn't going to solve your business problems.

People are not going in to offices but they are still sitting at desks. My company might have bought less office furniture in the last couple of years but my household office furniture purchases are WAY up.

Unfortunately our remote work budgets got slashed too, so I'm definitely not in market for a Herman Miller Aeron (>2000€ chair).

True but there's a difference. When I used to go to office my desk had a top of the line ₹50,000 chair. I'd never pay more than ₹10,000 for a chair at home.

(Off topic) Oh man, I highlighted that monetary amount and my iPhone automatically converted it into $121 USD in the little popup menu

Yup, but 3+ years into WFH none of these big office furniture companies has put even an ounce of effort into rebranding and serving the home market. No one is buying a $1700 chair for their home office. I don't need a sales rep to sell me a deal. "Adapt or die" is a constant in business, and this one clearly didn't do a good job at the former.

> No one is buying a $1700 chair for their home office.

I bought a $1200 Steelcase chair for my home office. Well, "bought." I expensed it back to my employer, who gave me a budget for this.

Perhaps that's where Herman Miller should be focusing -- show companies that reinvesting some of their office furniture budget into employees' home offices has a significant benefit to employee productivity (because employees will actually be able to sit at their desks for a reasonable amount of time).

It's one thought amongst many.

I actually own a Knoll chair (the company mentioned in the article) and it's fantastic!

Yet there are all those companies who are paying to outfit home offices . . .

So in addition to all those existing chairs, they can sell a whole new set of chairs to almost everyone. Ca-ching!

This is not a business crisis. If they're not making money hand over fist, it is a horrible management mis-step. And the rank and file are paying for it, not management.

Exactly. There is a strategic opportunity here. Maybe you produce a new line of affordable home-office furniture for people to buy for themselves and have deals which are attractive for companies to buy for staff to work at home. Or you make a thing where the company puts some budget and general rules in and the site lets each staff member choose what office furniture (subject to the rules and budget) suits them or something. Idk I've never given the furniture business much thought. It sure looks more like a CEO/strategy problem than a sales problem though.

I could only find one manufacturer actually making whips specifically for horse buggies.

https://uswhip.com/our-products/buggy-whip/

You don't actually need a whip to drive a buggy. You use the reins, and some voice commands. If you use a whip, you're probably bad at it. This whip is specific for racing, where you do need to communicate with more than just the reins. But if you're Amish, or driving tourists around Central Park, you almost certainly do not want a whip.

There are still many other whips for equine sports, and for herding. But buggy whips are perhaps an even narrower niche than you might expect. They were always rare, even when buggies were a practical way to get around.

People are snowflakes.

Have we all just given up on the notion of strong stable leadership? It seems the mask slipped during the pandemic and no one's bothering to even pretend anymore.

The chairs were always overhyped anyway

This!

For home office, maybe seek out someone local who makes or refurbs antique chairs. Lots of options.

And the local artisans actually care about cultivating a clientele, as opposed to huge furniture execs who are focused on justifying their bonuses by blaming the rest of their company.

This global 'lust for money' appears the most abrasive on CEOs and upper class twits that cannot be (or act) humbled.

When money can't buy the middle class houses, educations and cars, it will lose or will have lost it's value.

Stronger relationships (and collecting capital) are way more important to me than money.

Who would suffer for the exiled upper classes?

Barrysteve you've got a refreshing take on a lot of topics. What do you mean by collecting capital if not gathering money?

Herman Miller made good chairs in the 2000s. Now I’m not sure if there is anything unique about them.

This is an established company. Calling for people to focus on the mission is fine, so long as the company is taking care of them reasonably.

But if the situation is that the company doesn't know whether it can take care of people, but CEO still wants people to focus on the mission... One gesture would be for the CEO to have the kind of skin in the game that the employees do -- which isn't a huge equity and bonus package, and golden parachute clauses -- but to drop CEO total comp. down to the level of the workers, until the company is sure it can cover responsibilities to its people.

That said, I'm skeptical of clickbait-type calls to pitchforks/canceling. Don't apologize because content consumers are angry in general, and itching to act out like a mob, and other people are itching to incite and monetize that mob.

Instead, please rethink the dynamic with employees, and whether you're keeping up your end of the bargain, and fix that if necessary. If employees believe in you -- even if times are rough, but you're in it with them, and have their backs -- the employees should stand up and tell the random Internet mob to get lost.

(Connection of MillerKnoll to "tech" industry, for anyone who doesn't remember the start of dotcoms: when money started being thrown around wildly... the Herman-Miller Aeron chair was an icon of dotcoms. A dotcom startup would get investment, acquire office space and likely Aeron chairs, write some code, throw a launch party, and hope for an IPO.)

I guess everyone has insane compulsion to air any and all business out online these days

Didn't they recently buy Fully, purveyors of domestically acceptable standing desks? Is this a way for them to chase those delicious WFH $/€/₹?

Wow thanks, no kidding, just bought from Fully last year and totally missed that. Although, I am somewhat of a Miller/Knoll fan having bought multiple of their chairs second hand, they do have all the features and generally last forever.

Can Fully still exist as a B-corp longterm? I hope so. My Fully standing desk supports are excellent, working great with an oversized 8’ desktop I grabbed from Home Depot. My office mate and I bought a matching pair for our private office aka post-covid coworking space. Would buy again.

https://officerepublic.news/en/2019/09/knoll-acquires-fully/