Calamity strikes businesses in all shapes and forms, but the recent incident involving US-based data operations company Astronomer’s ex-CEO Andy Byron and ex-chief people officer Kristin Cabot deserves to be taught as a case study in workplace crisis management at B-Schools around the world.
On 18 July, Byron and Cabot, both married to other people, were caught in an intimate embrace on a jumbotron at a concert by the popular British band, Coldplay. The “mishap”, which has by now gone down in the history of scandals as “Coldplaygate”, caused an upheaval all over the internet. In no time, the couple was caught in the eye of a social media blitzkrieg, spawning much mirth, mockery and memes. Byron resigned in a few hours, Cabot followed suit days later. Last heard, Byron is considering suing Chris Martin, the lead vocalist of the band, for the viral “kiss cam scandal”.
In the meantime, Astronomer installed one of its co-founders Pete DeJoy as interim CEO, who quickly went into damage control mode by making the right noises. In his first post on LinkedIn since the incident, he praised the integrity and professionalism of his employees in the face of all the attention Astronomer has recently received.
“The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies—let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world—ever encounter,” DeJoy wrote. “The spotlight has been unusual and surreal for our team and, while I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.” It was a textbook move on managing crises in the workplace: start by clearly acknowledging the problem and accessing the extent of the damage.
Ironically, Astronomer’s reputational troubles proved to be a blessing in disguise because it was caused by poor personal choices of its leaders rather than unscrupulous business decisions. Had it involved a disaster pertaining to the company’s services or finances, it would have been much harder for even the best PR machinery to undo.
For comparison, think of the 2009 Satyam scandal, when founder-chairman B. Ramalinga Raju confessed to a massive accounting fraud, shaking up India’s IT sector as well as global investor confidence, eventually leading to Satyam’s dissolution.
No Bad Publicity
A cursory glance at Google Trends data over the last two weeks validates DeJoy’s statement. On 16 July, “Astronomer” was at -1 in terms of search interests on the engine. On 18 July it hit 100, indicating peak interest. Over the next few days, the levels of public curiosity began to decline, but by that time, the scandal had “achieved” something unexpected.
For a start-up with 300-odd employees based in Ohio that provides a niche service, a sudden spike of public interest was too good an opportunity to pass up. So, Astronomer decided to get advertising maverick Ryan Reynolds to turn the controversy into a cool marketing strategy. Reynolds’ company, Maximum Effort, recently released a video featuring actor and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, who also happens to be Chris Martin’s ex-wife, to diffuse the negative chatter around Astronomer. More leaves taken out of the book of crisis management: formulate a solid strategic response and execute it carefully.
Paltrow’s video does a masterful job of shifting attention from the speculations about the disgraced leaders at Astronomer. Instead, it focuses on explaining what the company does—which no one who is not working with or in niche tech would have likely known. At the time of writing, the video has over 67,000 likes on Instagram with nearly 85,000 shares. For perspective, the post right before this clip was snapshots of scenes from a meetup in Berlin that Astronomer posted on 9 July. It has 147 likes and 6 shares.
The ingenious strategic public response by Astronomer to its recent misfortunes shows that it is possible to counter virality with virality in the age of social media. Instead of shirking from a negative story, the company decided to own the narrative and turn it into a force for positive reinforcement. The move was perfectly timed as well—just as attention on the company was on the wane.
Is it possible to police personal interactions in the workplace, especially when people spend more time than ever before with their colleagues on a daily basis rather than at home with their spouses, partners and family? No. But is it still possible to uphold the values that make for a respectful and accountable workplace—especially when all hell breaks loose? Yes. Crisis management lessons need to evolve and keep pace with the times.
The idea that no publicity is bad publicity isn’t necessarily true. But when life gives you a scandal in the workplace, you might as well try to turn it into a business opportunity. That’s the gamble DeJoy and his crisis management team decided to lean on. It’s too early to say if it has turned its fortunes around, but at least the unexpected stunt has got Astronomer even more eyeballs than it would have probably got in all of its ten-year-long existence.
Work Vibes is a fortnightly column on ideas to help you thrive at what you do.