What Happens When You Fake Orientation
Inside the viral PR failure that shows why your group's culture can't be just pretend.
I really didn’t want to add to the pile that is the recent viral sensation of adultery caught on camera, but there are lessons to it far beyond whether the Astronomer CEO and his HR head were being naughty, and those lessons apply to resistance.
beat me to some of the insights, but I want to also bring some additional thoughts from the perspective of deception analysis and counterintelligence principles. Believe it or not, the situation speaks loudly in terms of group collapse and infiltration. So let’s dig in.The Value Illusion
The company issued three PR statements. All three statements can be found on the company’s LinkedIn page.
There’s a baseline idiocy, by the way, in releasing this solely on LinkedIn. The furor is on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. If you genuinely want to reach the masses, LinkedIn is the last place you’d post it…unless, of course, you recognize that the people who will be reading it on LinkedIn are also largely part of the corporate engine and might not notice (or won’t speak up about) the horrible way you’re handling this. If you’re truly looking to address it, you go everywhere that people are talking about it. If you want to do the minimum, you put that minimum in the friendliest place you can.
So out of the gate, we see a focus on damage control as opposed to truly handling the situation in a transparent and integrity-driven way—and we haven’t even read the words yet.
Let’s take a look at what they said in the first statement.
"Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability.
The Board of Directors has initiated a formal investigation into this matter and we will have additional details to share very shortly.
Alyssa Stoddard was not at the event and no other employees were in the video. Andy Byron has not put out any statement,reports saying otherwise are all incorrect.”
McGrath immediately takes aim at the first sentence, rightfully so.
The opening salvo is the impulse response: a textbook specimen of “PR-by-template.” The phrase "values and culture" appears immediately, but no one defines what those values are. Why would or should anyone believe they exist? Where were they when the CEO and Chief People Officer, responsible for stewarding those very values, were seen violating them on camera?
He understands instinctively, as many do, that if the company doesn’t mention what their values are, they probably didn’t have any. Let’s bring deception analysis into the picture. There are a few principles that apply here.
First, we go by what was said. If they did not say something, we can’t add it; if they do say something, we cannot pretend they didn’t.
This means that their refusal to define what values they’re referring to is a signal that they don’t have any—or at least that whatever values they claimed to hold to didn’t cover this situation. You cannot adhere to what is undefined, and in that vacuum their only option is to fake it by making a weak statement about the values that “guide them.” Well, obviously these nebulous values didn’t guide them at all, because here we are.
Secondly, we must use the subject’s dictionary. What we think a word means doesn’t matter; we must use the subject’s definition.
It becomes clear that the company does not define the word “value” the same way that you or I might. People often see values as absolute do-not-cross lines that shape their character and define them as people. If someone has the value that adultery is morally wrong, for instance, they avoid the appearance of it. They even avoid situations that could lead to it because the value demands that. If a company truly believes in a specific value, then it informs their decisions.
Values that merely “guide” are not values, but suggestions.
Thirdly, priority is given in the first sentence. A subject tells you, in order, what their priorities are.
The first thing they want you to know is that they have values. You don’t need to know what they are, but they exist. The second thing they want you to know is that their leaders are expected to uphold whatever they are.
They do not, in this statement, even admit that a standard wasn’t followed. That is a critical point. Any admission that there was an infraction of any kind doesn’t come until much later. So right now, based on what words they are using, nothing bad happened.
Where it gets even more gross is that by not defining these supposed values, they are expecting the reader to do the mental work. The company is essentially letting you know that you can substitute whatever your values are, and assume that’s what they believe too. It’s rapport building, and it’s covering language. It’s also a dead giveaway that their cultural definition of “values” isn’t like yours.
The Vanishing Act of Accountability
McGrath goes on to mention something else that’s notable: the absence of Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot in the statement.
Ask yourself: If your Chief People Officer breaks the code of ethics and the organization doesn't even name her, what does that tell you about the culture? The millions in global village consuming and memeing the whole situation are left to guess.
There are several potential answers to McGrath’s question, and they’re all disturbing. The main thing I see here is that whoever penned the statement didn’t think it necessary to mention her because her part in this is not considered important. The reason for THAT will tell you a great deal about their culture.
Language as Concealment
You should already have a bad taste in your mouth, but it gets much worse. Here’s Statement 2.
"Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy is currently serving as interim CEO given Andy Byron has been placed on leave.
We will share more details as appropriate in the coming days."
McGrath notes that there is literally nothing addressed about the breach of whatever values they claim to have. It’s just “oh, hey everyone, we swapped bosses.” Who cares?
Again, Cabot isn’t mentioned. No one has replaced her, and she seems to no longer be part of the situation at all. This is intentional.
Lastly, the use of the phrase “we will share more details as appropriate” tells you something critical. They decide what is appropriate, and outsiders don’t get a say in that. Keep in mind that the people included in the concept of outsiders include not just the general public, but their customers, vendors, and even their rank-and-file employees. It constructs an us vs. you mentality. Don’t you worry about what we’ve got going on here; we’ll tell you what we want to and you’ll like it.
Let’s look at the last statement.
Get over it already. We have. Also, buy our products.
"As stated previously, Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.
Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted. The Board will begin a search for our next Chief Executive as Cofounder and Chief Product Officer Pete DeJoy continues to serve as interim CEO.
Before this week, we were known as a pioneer in the DataOps space, helping data teams power everything from modern analytics to production AI.
While awareness of our company may have changed overnight, our product and our work for our customers have not.
We're continuing to do what we do best: helping our customers with their toughest data and AI problems."
Here, they show that nothing is changing in terms of culture. They hearken back to the previous statements (“Listen, we already told you that we have values…”) and barely acknowledge that whatever the values were, they weren’t met. For all we know, the value was actually just “don’t make us look bad.”
Their statement that “awareness of our company may have changed overnight” is tone-deaf to the point of absurdity. They pivot to “yeah we get that you all think we are toads, but hey we still do good things for customers so let’s all just focus on that.”
Use of the phrase “what we do best” inadvertently admits that there are other things they really do poorly, but there is no mention of what those things are—or more importantly, what they’re doing to address those weaknesses. From the previous statements, I expected this language; after all, the company can’t even specify what the values were, so there’s no way to address what to do going forward. All they do is swap out bosses and forget that Cabot exists, then encourage you to forget the entire situation ever happened. Nothing to see here, folks.
That also brings a major question: Is she remaining in her position? Is there no accountability for her? Is it assumed that he bears the sole responsibility since she was the subordinate? Is there a whole other story behind the scenes? Axios reported through a source that she was on leave too but the company refuses to confirm that.
Lessons for Resisters
On the surface, this might seem like a bunch of “who cares?” kind of information. But it does matter for our purposes, because the underlying principles apply to more than just a CEO and his company leadership.
What lessons can we as resisters take from this situation and the company’s handling of it?
Values must be specific, clear, and absolute. In your group, everyone should be on board with a very clearly stated group of principles that serve as hard boundaries for how you operate. When they are violated, it will be crystal clear that a violation occurred, and you should be able to point to the exact value that was ignored.
Accountability must be prompt, seen by all, and normalized. When you have a violation and everyone saw it, then the accountability and its consequences must be equally as visible. You cannot compartmentalize the infraction or the person who committed it. Additionally, you should be incorporating accountability into your group so that it’s normal, long before an infraction occurs.
Your public image, if one exists, must be seen as a critical part of your efforts. If you’re a small, nameless group that doesn’t have a public image, even better. But if people know who you are, then you better make sure that they think positively of your group, or at least that they don’t have a negative impression of it.
Your group is only as good as its worst member. If you have ten people and nine of them are on point but you have one outlier, the destruction he can bring will cancel out everything else.
Your orientation drives everything you do. This is an absolute fact. What in the company culture made two of its highest leaders believe that their conduct was acceptable?
People in resistance often believe that only lessons forged in the resistance culture should be internalized, but the truth is that most of our lessons come from outside our sphere. Truth is truth regardless of where it comes from, and if you incorporate those truths into your orientation, you’ll be that much further ahead in creating mismatches and resulting adaptation.
When you observe how others fail, you can reorient based on the truths they missed.