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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How does that math make sense at all?
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?
Americans...
In civilized parts of the world you cannot fire anyone except for in specific circumstances.
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.
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".
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.