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It was Alex Gorsky, ex-CEO of Johnson & Johnson, and he was absolutely addressing the management, because they'd paid him to show up.
Unfortunately the rest of us were also in the room.
useless-
I mean I'm not going to pretend that I know more than him, but imo it's tone deaf.
It reminds me of a mate who back in the day worked for one of the Philip Green fashion companies. Their annual townhall or whatever they were called BITD coincided with the world cup, which was on shortly after the meeting.
The company was understaffed and no one ever seemed to finish work before 7pm. Instead of taking the easy motivational win and saying everyone could have the half an hour or whatever off and go watch the football, he said that as long as they'd done all their work and checked with their manager they could. It just ended up being a slap in the face.
hugo7
Because they're explicitly relegating you to a lower status. It hits your ego and lessens your agency.
Depending how they structured the rest of the talk it's either a good take (but only if you're talking to other "leaders" about those not in the room), or fucking stupid for the reason you've outlined.
These new hot takes on an old topic always make me think of reverse funnel system.