Leaving Pity City? You first, Andi Owen.

If you worked in corporate America at some point in the later decades of the 20th century, or at any time during the 21st century, you may well have labored in a Herman Miller cubicle. Or the dismal equivalent: a no-privacy, uninspired, boring, dumpy "office" from a vendor like Steelcase. (Which at least had a name that kind of gave you a hint about the soul-crunching, coffin-style digs you were in for.)  Or, even worse than a cubicle, the no-privacy, uninspired, boring, ultra-germy "open office" environment.

Sure, some cubicles were less gruesome than this model.

But no matter how they tried to modernize and slick things up, no matter how hard HR tried to convince the peons that cubicle life (let alone open workspace life) was a good thing, I don't know of anyone who had to work in one who ever bought into that particular corporate myth.

MillerKroll (of which Herman Miller is a major component), along with Steelcase and a couple of others, has dominant share in the office furniture market.

But what with covid, and work from home and a general contraction of the office furniture market, I'm guessing that things haven't been all that rosy for the office furniture market the last few years - other than the bargain-basement, sharply discounted sale of unwanted gear.

So it's no wonder that MillerKnoll CEO Andi Owen found herself in the position of having to give a pep talk to the troops. 

But that pep talk turned into more of a widely-ridiculed harangue than a standard issue, cubicle-style pep talk. 

The standard issue words were focused on attboy-attagirl encouragement to throw all in on achieving the sales goals that would let the company finish their fiscal year in the black. But then Andi Owen segued into a nastier bit, criticizing employees who were (understandably) wondering about their bonuses. 

While in most corporations, bonuses vary from year to year, depending on results, employees do have a tendency to want them, and to expect something in their virtual stocking beyond a lump of coal.

I worked in some places where the bonuses were scrooge-like. At one company, the joke each year was whether the bonus would be enough to buy a raincoat. One year, I did buy a nice turquoise necklace and matching earrings with my $300. (Nearly $900 in today's dollars, so it's pretty much my fanciest jewelry.)

Sine places, bonuses were non-existent.

And I worked in other places where the bonuses were pretty lush, no matter how piss-poor the company was doing. In one company I spent a few years with, employees at my level were on the same bonus plan as the senior executives were. The bonuses weren't of the same magnitude, of course, but we all got the same percent of salary as bonus. Since the senior executives were the ones who okayed the bonus percent, those of us on the same plan could pretty much be guaranteed a nice fat bonus. As I recall, those bonuses ran at about 40% of salary, while employees lower down in the corporate food chain might get a 10% bonus. All this, of course, went up in smoke when the company (not surprisingly) went bankrupt. But it was fun (and lucrative) while it lasted.

Anyway, here's what Andi Owen had to say on her video call about expected bonuses at MillerKnoll:

“Questions came through about, ‘How can we stay motivated if we’re not going to get a bonus...What can we do? What can we do?’” Owen began in the viral clip of what appears to be an internal meeting. “Some of them were nice, and some of them were not so nice.”

...“I’m going to address this head on,” she continued. “The most important thing we can do right now is focus on the things that we can control. None of us could’ve predicted covid, none of us could’ve predicted supply chain, none of us could’ve predicted bank failures. But what we can do, is stay in front of our customers, provide the best customer service we can, get our orders out our door, treat each other well, be kind, be respectful, focus on the future, because it will be bright.”

...“Don’t ask about, ‘What are we going to do if we don’t get a bonus?’ Get the damn $26 million dollars...Spend your time and your effort thinking about the $26 million dollars we need and not thinking about what you’re going to do if you don’t get a bonus. Alright? Can I get some commitment for that?” (Source: Yahoo)

All pretty vanilla corporate exhortation. I.e., as bland, tired, and uninspired as the MillerKnoll product, with a a bland, tired, and uninspired nod to JFK's inaugural "ask not" speech. Only in this case, employees were charged not to ask about not getting a bonus, but to focus on what they could do for the company.

(Amazing to me that corporate leaders still make appeals to the "corporate good" when everyone who's spent more than five minutes in a corporate environment pretty much fully understands that this is pretty much a one way street. I.e., whatever the palaver about employees being valuable corporate "assets," when push comes to shove (and often even before push is anywhere near shove), most corporations do not give a rat's arse about their employees. )

As leaders are now coached to add personal anecdotes and elements to the mix when they speak to employees, Andi Owen told a little story from her past corporate life to take her presentation home.

...“I had an old boss who said, ‘You can visit pity city, but you can’t live there,’” Owen concluded. “So, people, leave pity city! Let’s get it done.” 

Pity city, eh?

Wherever it is, Andi Owen can no doubt afford posher digs. 

Owen, who describes herself as a “defender of equity and inclusion” in her private Instagram account, receives the bulk of her pay package in incentive-based compensation, like most CEOs. For the fiscal year to May 2022, this amounted to $3.9 million which came on top of Owen’s $1.1 million in fixed salary. (Source: Fortune)

Bonuses haven't yet been determined for fiscal year 2023, but I suspect that Owen's bonus may well be tied to MillerKnoll getting in that last $26M in revenue she was urging her folks to achieve. 

Just stop lolling around Pity City, when you can work harder for me. 

Now, there's a motivator for you! (Talk about a commitment to equity.)

Bonuses aren't guaranteed. Times are tough. Etc., etc., etc.

But just how is this supposed to keep folks all charged up about charging ahead?

Ask not what MillerKnoll can do for you. Ask what you can do for MillerKnoll so that I can get another big, fat bonus. 

How do these people make it into leadership positions to begin with????