Two married executives at the same company got caught on a jumbotron at a Coldplay concert. Seventy-two hours later, both were gone, and a data company nobody had heard of became the most memed startup on the planet.

Ryan and Daniel go at it over what actually ended those careers. Was it the affair? The power gap between a CEO and his head of HR? Or the fact that a stranger with a phone can now end anyone's career in three seconds?

In this episode:

• Which is worse, the cover-up or the cuddle? Ryan and Daniel land on opposite sides and neither of them backs down
• Ryan's four levels of bad, from "CEO has an affair" to "CEO has an affair with the head of HR," which is the one you cannot come back from
• Why living in a fishbowl is part of the executive job description, and what happens to leaders who forget it
• How boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z each handle office romance completely differently, and which generation is actually getting it right
• What it's like to sit in a meeting where everyone knows two people are sleeping together and nobody will say it
• The gap between the values painted on the wall and the culture people actually live in, and why closing it is the hardest work a leader does

00:00 — Three Seconds on a Jumbotron

02:00 — Is This About the Affair, or About the Cameras?

07:00 — 22,000 Articles in 24 Hours

14:00 — The Cover-Up or the Cuddle?

20:00 — Four Levels of Bad, and the One You Can't Come Back From

24:00 — Everybody Knows and Nobody Says Anything

31:00 — The Values on the Wall vs. the Culture in the Room

36:00 — If You Want the Title, You Live on the Stage

Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Filler words and false starts

have been removed. Speaker attribution was reconstructed from the audio and is accurate to the

best of our knowledge.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RYAN: Well, the spicy take is boomers are hypocrites. Are you saying Gen Z are basically

swingers, Daniel? Are they just swinging?

DANIEL: It doesn't matter. We work together, we sleep together. How else are you going to get

promoted?

RYAN: Hey, that didn't work out for this one. The head of HR was sleeping with the boss and she

got fired instead of promoted.

[SHOW OPEN]

Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE HOOK

RYAN: Three seconds. Three seconds is all it took on a kiss cam for Coldplay to destroy two

C-level executives' careers and turn a data company that no one's ever heard of into the most

googled, most memed startup on the planet. Have you seen this? The Coldplay Gate? Is that what

we're calling it now? Coldplay Gate? I think I just made that up.

DANIEL: It was very interesting getting this on my newsfeed while in Japan. I saw this on

Japanese news sites. But yes, please tell me more. Maybe the question that's in my mind is, is

this really about inappropriate workplace relationships? Or is this more a reflection of what's

going on in society today, where anybody with a phone can become judge, jury and executioner

because they can record you?

RYAN: Interesting question. All right. So here's the story, for those of you who missed it. The

Astronomer CEO, Andy Byron, was caught on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert with his arm

around the company's chief people officer, Kristen. And as if that wasn't bad enough that they

ended up on the jumbotron together, they're each married to different people. They then

immediately hid from the camera with the most guilty-looking face you could possibly imagine. So

much so that Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, says they're either having an affair or

they're just really shy. So they literally got called out in front of tens of thousands of

people for likely having an affair. And the way that they hid from the camera definitely made it

look like it was an affair. Within 72 hours, the CEO had been fired, or they both resigned, I

guess. And the company that has raised about $93 million is now desperately trying to convince

their customers, and I'm sure their investors, that everything's okay and that they're still a

leading company in the data ops space.

DANIEL: I've got to tell you, I was in Japan when this whole thing hit and not really paying

attention to any US media outlets, not paying attention to anything going on back home. In rural

Japan, immersing in the culture. And I pop up on Facebook and I just start seeing this meme over

and over and over in my feed. And I'm thinking, what the hell is going on? What did I miss? What

inside joke am I missing that the internet is on this week? And come to find out, this is what

it was.

There's a couple of components. Like you said, is this being exposed? This is happening every

single day in lots of companies. And the real question comes down to, okay, is it right? Is it

wrong? Is it okay inside the company but not at the top of the organization? Is it the fact that

we can easily expose it and the internet ridicules you? There's a lot here.

RYAN: Wow. Yeah. There's a lot to talk about here.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE BIG WHY

DANIEL: What's your take? Which is worse, the cover-up or the cuddle?

RYAN: The cover-up or the cuddle. Honestly, I think the cover-up is just bad luck. You were

publicly exposed. I'm going to say the cuddle's the bad part. If you are both single and

cuddling at a concert, I don't think that's particularly professional, but I could get my head

around it. But the fact that you're both married to other people, cuddling at a concert, you

deserve to get exposed. You're cheating on your spouse. You deserve it.

DANIEL: Yeah. If you're going to be stupid enough to do something in public, you're asking for

it. Maybe that's why they went to a Coldplay concert as opposed to a professional sports game,

because they don't have kiss cams at concerts. Oops. I guess now they do.

RYAN: Apparently they do. They've got cuddle cams. And you can lose your career and lose your

marriage if you end up on the cuddle cam with the wrong person.

DANIEL: I like what you said. I don't like it, but I agree with it. But this has been happening

for a very long time. This is not new news. Part of what's interesting is how different

generations handle interoffice relationships.

RYAN: So let me ask you this, because I agree. Is it the fact that they were married? For some

reason, I thought she wasn't married and he was. But I guess they both were.

DANIEL: No, they both have families, married with families separate from each other.

RYAN: Got it. Okay. So is it the fact that they were married, or is it the fact that this was

the CEO and the chief people officer? Would we have the same reaction if they were both single?

DANIEL: I think that's a question. The other question is, if they're peers and they're both VPs

at the same company and they're cuddled up in the corner, but there's not a power differential

of one person working for the other, I think that's a lot easier for people to stomach. But

you're talking about two problems here. One is the fact they're both married, and so neither of

them should have their arms around each other. And secondly, this power struggle. He's the boss,

she works for him, but she's in charge of HR, so she should know better. There are a lot of

layers of problems here.

RYAN: I agree. And what if it was the CEO and the CFO?

DANIEL: Still gross.

RYAN: I agree. But what I'm saying is, would the paradigm change? Would the story change to

they're embezzling money? Would it be more about a money problem than a culture and HR problem?

This comes down to the dichotomy of leadership. If you're going to be the CEO of a company,

these are the risks you take when you make stupid decisions like that.

DANIEL: All right. So lots of places to go. Let's start with this one. If you look at the CEO,

one of the challenges is that you're living in a fishbowl. You can't go anywhere where you are

not being recorded, and you can't do anything, good, bad or ugly, that might not be recorded.

RYAN: A thousand percent. You're on display. You're on stage.

DANIEL: People know who you are. They know what you do, especially if you're at any sort of

larger company. Maybe if you're running a small business, not so much. But people know who you

are and you're going to be in the spotlight more. And so you have to live, in my opinion, at a

higher level of integrity, because the things that other people can get away with because

they're not in the spotlight, you don't have that luxury.

RYAN: And I've got a question for you. Whether he officially resigned or was fired, do you think

he should have been fired? I think he should have been fired. If I was on the board, I would

have fired him.

DANIEL: Why?

RYAN: I agree with you.

DANIEL: Why? I think the fact that he's having an affair. Well, all right, let me step back,

because I don't care. Or is it the affair? What happens if he's having an affair with the chief

people officer of a totally different company, or a total stranger? Is it the fact he had an

affair, or is it the person? Because the fact is, it was a C-level executive at the same

company.

If I was on a board, I wouldn't like the fact that my CEO is having an affair. Is that a

fireable offense? If he's having an affair with some random person, probably not. I don't like

it. I'd probably pull him aside and have a conversation about it. But I don't think I would

threaten his job with it. But if he's doing it internally with an employee who works for him,

that is toxic from a cultural standpoint. It creates all sorts of weird dynamics. And I've never

seen it end well. It's a time bomb. It's just a question of when it's going to go off. And I

would be proactive and get that dynamic out of the organization as quickly as possible, because

it's going to create problems.

RYAN: I agree. And let me take it a step further. We're all about making work not suck, right?

DANIEL: Absolutely.

RYAN: When you are the CEO of a company, you are the top leader. Yes, you may have a board above

you, but you are the leader of the organization. And when you do something stupid like this,

that sets a bad example for culture. But now what's the insecurity of the employees? You loosely

mentioned the ramifications. They're trying to convince their investors and their customers

they're still relevant, that they've got a product. You just fired the CEO of the company. I'm

not saying it's completely rudderless. I'm sure someone on the board stepped in and they're

doing things. But you just put a lot of people's jobs at risk. And so that's why I say I agree

that he should be fired. That's part of the dichotomy of leadership. If you're going to be in

that role, you've got to realize you're on stage, and stupid things like that have a bigger

impact than just where you get your personal joy from.

The affair aside, I think a lot of us would agree that you should do the right thing. This is

being lazy. Get a divorce and do things right. But it just shows the quality of leader. What's

the capability of leading the company if you can't manage that correctly?

DANIEL: There's a huge question it raises about your decision-making. And in the best-case

scenario, you both had too much to drink and you were just being flirty and there isn't a real

affair here. But still, that's a bad look. That's a really bad look. I don't know the actual

details. I'm sure there's probably an article somewhere that can tell us exactly how bad their

affair was. But this is just a bad look.

Part of what has got to be difficult for leaders today is the fact that they could have gotten

away with that 20 years ago, because there weren't cell phones. And even if people saw it, sure

there's rumors, there's gossip, but there's no way to prove it. Now, with kind of a surveillance

society where everybody's got a camera, everyone's got a high-def camera, you're always on

stage. And if you don't realize that and adjust accordingly, it is going to bite you. So don't

do anything that you wouldn't want on the front page news.

RYAN: I can't think of a good example off the top of my head, but I know it's happened where a

CEO belittled a waitress at a restaurant or something like that. And like you said, that could

happen before, and nobody except whoever worked at that restaurant knew about it. But now

somebody whips out a cell phone and you see a high-powered or multi-billionaire treating someone

like crap, and all of a sudden it's on the internet.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BY THE NUMBERS

RYAN: For this particular one, it was 22,000 news articles written within 24 hours. More

coverage than a war gets, about a corporate scandal.

DANIEL: Right. But it's not actually illegal. It's not good morally. I think we have some

problems with it. But fooling around with your chief HR person isn't a federal offense.

RYAN: No. But I guarantee you, and maybe this is a little old-school thought here, I guarantee

you there was something in their employee handbook that said you can't do that.

DANIEL: I'm sure there is.

RYAN: Which basically says that's cause for termination. I go back down to the leadership side

of it, whether the handbook had it in there or not. If you are a leader, you cannot do things

like that. And it's really hard. It's hard to be a leader. A lot of people say it's easy. But if

anybody thinks leadership is easy, they're probably cheating something behind the scenes. Either

they're not a leader, or they're screwing their HR person behind the scenes and faking the

leadership part.

DANIEL: I would say maybe a way to frame that is, it's hard to be a good leader.

RYAN: Yes.

DANIEL: There are lots of ways to be a crappy leader. And you could probably carry that on for a

long period of time and get away with it. But to be a good leader is a very hard road.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SPICY TAKES

DANIEL: So let's talk root causes for a second. There are a couple of things going on here. One

is just the standards that we have for executives. The other side of that surveillance society

is the fact that nobody's perfect. We're all human. We all have desires. We all have needs. We

all have good days. We all have bad days. And if any one of us was watched 24/7, 365, every one

of us would have things that we'd be embarrassed to put up on a jumbotron. So is it fair to CEOs

or to anybody in the spotlight to have their entire life under a microscope?

RYAN: I guess yes and no. Maybe this is public versus private. If people are standing outside

the executive's home with a camera trying to catch them for something, the paparazzi out there

trying to get it, okay, that's invasion of privacy. But inside the public view, inside the

organization, that's different. Small business world, different dynamic. But some of these CEOs

are paid tens of millions of dollars a year. You're paid to be the leader of a large

organization. You're getting the benefit of ensuring you're doing things right.

Now, I may be sounding a little harsh here. People are human. Yes, people will make mistakes. If

an executive has an outburst in a meeting because of some anomaly going on in their life, okay,

let's give grace. Now, if someone picked up a chair and beat somebody with it, don't do that.

But I do think there's an economy there where yes, leaders should be held to a higher standard.

If you're going to be in the leadership role, you should be held to a higher standard. Should

you be held to an impossible standard? No. Should you be held to a realistic standard? Yes. I

think that's part of the job.

But I also think we're too quick to throw around the leadership title, and we're too quick to

give people leadership roles that either they aren't ready for, don't deserve, or they're not

really a leader. So we've also diluted what it means to be a leader.

DANIEL: There's probably a whole episode there of what happens when people's competence outruns

their character. We tend to put people in leadership roles that have high degrees of competence.

And it's usually their lack of character that bites them in the ass. And the whole organization

then pays for the mistake, which is unfortunate.

The second thing that I think is going on here is just the whole power imbalance between the

boss and the employee. That kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies, to think about a boss having an

affair with one of his direct reports. It's one thing when it's the CEO having an affair with a

random individual, but when it's one of your direct reports, I think that makes it worse.

RYAN: Let me ask this. What if it was his executive assistant?

DANIEL: Still bad.

RYAN: Bad, I agree. But not another leadership position in the organization.

DANIEL: All right, I'm going levels of badness here. Level one, CEO having an affair. Level two,

CEO having an affair with an employee. Level three, CEO having an affair with another leader in

the company. And level four, CEO having an affair with the head of HR. I don't think you can top

that one. That's the worst possible scenario.

RYAN: And what I think is interesting, and I'm trying to find the stat here, I think there have

been more CEOs fired for relationship reasons than for misconduct. Only two percent of CEOs are

actually fired for misconduct.

DANIEL: Hmm.

RYAN: Whereas more CEOs have been involved with relationship-level things that have caused them

to step down or step out. And so is this a level of Hollywood? Because there's who's screwing

who and who's dating who in Hollywood. We love the Hollywood drama. Is this just a means of

taking that desire for drama and putting it on more people, because technology allows us to

broadcast it more?

DANIEL: I do think people love juicy gossip.

RYAN: Oh, yeah.

DANIEL: I have worked for a couple of large organizations where there have been these kinds of

dynamics. Affairs that were just kind of known open secrets, where people knew that two people

were having an affair, but in committed relationships with other people. And people love to

gossip about that. It was all the talk at the coffee pot. So I think that is a reflection of our

culture.

One of the real reasons why this happens, though, is because especially in leadership, people

spend so much time at work and so value their contributions to work that they end up developing

emotional connections with their coworkers. And if there's any sort of sexual attraction there,

it just becomes really dangerous. For leaders who are spending 50, 60 hours a week in the office

with one person, you're spending more time with your head of HR than you are with your spouse.

If there's some attraction there, you're playing with fire. That's a dangerous situation.

And to the point of leaders having to have higher standards, the wise leaders will put some

boundaries around themselves to keep them from doing something stupid, because there's just a

risk there of the amount of time and emotional energy that's being invested. There's a

possibility of some sort of emotional connection.

RYAN: We've said it time and time again on the podcast. We spend loosely one third of our life

sleeping, one third of our lives working, and one third of our lives doing everything else.

Everything else is families, friends, kids, birthdays, alone time. So yeah, you do spend more

time with the people you work with than most of the time with your friends and family. And of

course, when the third that's family and friends is not going well, we tend to cling to one or

the other. If the family side is not going well, then we rely on work.

I cannot tell you how many conversations I've had over the years, and I'm sure you have too,

where somebody's having a shit show in their personal life. And what do they do? They double

down on work. They're working longer hours, they're taking on more projects, they're hanging out

with their coworkers more. So it's bound to happen. And I don't know what the stats are, but I

guarantee you, yes, this one got called out, but there are probably millions of these happening

in America alone. And I'm sure it's happening in every working country around the world.

DANIEL: And I think it's been happening for generations.

RYAN: I'm sure it's not a new thing. Go back far enough and the boss could mandate this. Go back

point it was quote-unquote legal, and it was policy to do that.

DANIEL: Yes. And some people call those the good old days.

RYAN: I don't know about that.

chain, I'm sure. But even if you look at Mad Men and shows like that, there were wildly

inappropriate things happening at the office. I do think it has been happening all along. The

rise of technology and everyone having a camera, that changes the dynamic. But I also think

generations have different views on this. Baby boomers kind of invented the idea of your work

life. But it was always hush-hush. We never talked about it. It was just a look away, a wink,

and move along.

RYAN: I've got to add, the boomers may have invented it, but the boomers were also around before

the technology to get caught. It goes back down to, and I remember doing a seminar for kids,

think about the whole issue with teens sending naked photos of each other back and forth. It's

easy.

DANIEL: Oh, sure.

RYAN: We weren't above it when we were kids, but think about it. We had to take a picture with a

disposable camera, take it down to Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, Eckerd's if anybody remembers that

place, get it developed, hope that the person developing the film didn't tell your parents, and

then you could actually pass the photo. It was an effort.

DANIEL: You had to go pick up those photos and look that person in the eye and say, yes, these

are mine, I will pay for these.

RYAN: Yeah. That was humiliating. It's not that we weren't above it. It was just difficult to do

it. So we just did other things. And so with the boomers, again, it was a culture thing.

I've got this in the notes and now I'm going to date myself. The boomers built their entire

careers on plausible deniability and three-martini lunches. What the heck is that? What is a

three-martini lunch?

DANIEL: You never had a three-martini lunch?

RYAN: No, what is a three-martini lunch? I'm guessing it's just lunch where you get trashed.

DANIEL: Three martinis is going to put you in a pretty bad spot.

RYAN: Is it basically that you drink three martinis and then you have plausible deniability

because you were drunk? So if you end up sleeping with the person, then it's, I had three

martinis, I didn't know what I was doing.

DANIEL: Yeah. Or, I don't remember.

RYAN: Well, the spicy take is boomers are hypocrites. They did all this stuff. They just didn't

have Instagram to catch them. Let's be real.

DANIEL: I agree. Gen X, I'll be the spokesperson for Gen X. Here's the generational

representative. We've learned to hide workplace romances more than any generation. 86% of Gen X

employees hide their workplace relationships. We learned from the boomers that you had to keep

it secret, but we also grew up in the surveillance culture. So we've kind of adopted this don't

ask, don't tell, offline romance. You've got to think about what technology you're using, what

you're not doing. Don't flirt over Teams, because HR can track that. That's more of the Gen X

approach to office relationships.

What about millennials? You're the millennial spokesperson.

RYAN: Oh, man. We brought in work-life balance.

DANIEL: Nice.

RYAN: So not just the working part of work-life balance, but we brought our life into the work

of work-life balance. Was it 33% of millennials are open to office romance? Because it's such a

blended part. We've learned to blend our work and our life together, so it's become a more

acceptable component. Now, we're not saying it's okay to have affairs and sleep with employees.

But in general, the generation is just more open to the balance that romance brings into

work-life balance. Millennials, we want transparency, but there are also boundaries.

DANIEL: You guys want to date coworkers, but you want HR to protect you when it goes sideways?

RYAN: Well, yes.

DANIEL: You want HR to break up with them for you.

RYAN: No, that's probably Gen Z or Gen Alpha. They're the ones who want that. But with

millennials, we want to know the HR policies so that we can ensure, are we actually bending the

rules here? Can we modify the HR policies to allow me to have this romance but not break the HR

policy and get fired? So we're going to advocate change to the policy that allows it. But we

still want to be protected by the overall HR policy.

DANIEL: Let's be real. And then Gen Z, I guess they just don't care about the rules at all.

RYAN: No, they're just creating their own rules. They're totally on their own brainwave.

DANIEL: It says here, 45% of Gen Z have had physical relationships with coworkers, including

bosses.

RYAN: Wow. Not so proud. You know what I've also noticed with these, and I think it started with

the younger millennials, not so much the older millennials. There's that whole stigma of the

separation of male and female, not going to be together, you don't message your boss, you just

keep it, like you said with Gen X, completely separated. With what we're seeing with Gen Z, and

I'm seeing it with Gen Alpha in the early working stages, there's no boundary at all.

I don't know if the dynamic has changed. And I know you and I are a little more old school in

this sense of, if you're a married man, you're never alone with a woman in a room. You always

have another person in the room with you. It's plausible deniability. It's just good practice in

general. Whereas Gen Z is like, so what? We're just two humans, we're cool. That whole

separation is completely obliterated.

DANIEL: Which I don't think is going to be a great thing. Some of that I think is also a

function of age. When I was young in my career, before my career started, waiting tables,

everybody is fooling around with everybody in that kind of context. And so if you're still

really young in your career, I'm not surprised that 45% have had a physical relationship with

coworkers. The difference is how you handle it. Gen X tends to want to hide it. Gen Z, I think,

are really open about it. I think only about 50% of them have tried to hide it. The rest of them

just don't care if you know or not.

RYAN: Are you saying Gen Z are basically swingers, Daniel? Are they just open to everything?

They're just swinging?

DANIEL: We just, it doesn't matter. We work together, we sleep together. How else are you going

to get promoted?

RYAN: Hey, that didn't work out for this one. The head of HR was sleeping with the boss and she

got fired instead of promoted.

DANIEL: You don't know how she got her job.

RYAN: That is very true. Very true. Maybe that's how she got there in the first place. I've seen

that, actually.

DANIEL: 10% of Gen Z say that workplace romances have led to promotions. Dating as career

strategy.

RYAN: I don't know, you see the way Gen Z dress these days. It doesn't surprise me in the

slightest. I'm making myself sound old here.

DANIEL: Yeah, you are. You're a grizzled old man at this point. Who gets it right? And you can't

just say millennials because you're a millennial. Which generation handles this appropriately?

RYAN: I can't believe I'm going to say this. I actually think Gen Z maybe doesn't get it right,

but I think they are a more evolved form. Between boomers, X and millennials, there's a lot of

boomer baggage. And I think Z are just, the world's advanced so much between the millennial

generation and Z, that I think they're on a more evolved plane than the legacy of society. So I

don't know if it's so much that they get it right, or more just circumstantially, because of the

buffer created with the millennial generation and technology. I think they're more in line with

how reality is.

DANIEL: But I think that contributes to making work suck.

RYAN: Interesting. Say more.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WORK RECEIPT

DANIEL: Because I have been in meetings where there's awkward tension between two people because

they've got some sort of situationship, relationally and romantically, but now we're having to

work together and make some hard decisions. And there's this awkward thing in the room. And I

know they're sleeping together. They don't know that I know they're sleeping together. And I

can't get anything done because it's just too awkward. I would rather be ignorant in that

moment, and they're keeping a secret, than for it to be something that everybody knows and we're

all having to dance around but we can't talk about.

RYAN: What kind of organization are you running there, Daniel?

DANIEL: I didn't say I was running it. But I have been in that situation.

RYAN: I have gone into a room once and said, okay, that person's sleeping with that person, we

all know it, and move on, please.

DANIEL: How'd that go for you?

RYAN: Actually, well. After the awkwardness of it, it was just, look, we know about it. Is it

going to be in the way of work? No. Is it going to be in the way of work? No. Okay, you both

agreed. Everybody heard it. Let's stop the gossip. Let's stop the BS. Can we get back to work?

I know it's a little blunt and bullish, but it worked.

DANIEL: Maybe that's what I should have done. Maybe that's how I should handle it. I have just

found that really uncomfortable and difficult for people to work around, when there's that kind

of sexual dynamic within a team. And especially if there are unwanted sexual dynamics, that

creates a lot of problems. So I don't know if I would side with Gen Z on that one. I think I

would move more towards Gen X. Not totally to the boomer, where we completely pretend it's not

happening. But at least keep it separate. If y'all are going to do that outside of work, do that

outside of work. But don't bring it in.

RYAN: I think definitely don't be having sex on the desk in the middle of the room with

everybody, right?

DANIEL: Okay, but what about team building events? You go out to team building events, people

have a couple of drinks, and now they're getting all handsy. This is still a work event. I'm

fine with having a drink or two. But that doesn't mean you get to make out with your coworker.

RYAN: You shouldn't be doing that in general. Show up to the work event, do the work stuff, and

then go do that outside. That's just stupid.

Have you ever been to trade shows? This has been the trade show culture in every industry I've

been in. Everybody shows up and everybody sleeps with each other, and then they go home to their

respective families. Another one is the number of salespeople who are sleeping with people at

trade shows just to get business. But that's a totally different topic. That's a different

episode. That I've had to deal with more than I've ever wanted to admit.

DANIEL: I mean, it does close deals.

RYAN: I am not advocating for it. I'm not pro that. But okay, team building events. I've had the

opposite side of it. I don't think I've ever had issues. Don't get me wrong, I've had to say to

people, hey, I know you two are dating, don't be stupid at this event, don't make me fire you.

And maybe just being preemptive about it has helped in the past, where it's, don't give me a

reason to fire you, you've been warned. And then usually people are good.

The other one that I've had to deal with that is infuriating is where one person's tried to

sleep with the other, but that person doesn't want to be slept with. And that is extremely

awkward, especially when they don't back off and they're using work as the means to go after it.

DANIEL: Yeah, that makes work suck.

RYAN: Yes.

DANIEL: Especially for the person who's being pursued. But it also makes work suck for everybody

else around it, because it's just not appropriate.

RYAN: I'd probably say only 30% of the time have I had to fire somebody because of it, where

it's okay, this is harassment, HR, we've got to deal with this. I think 70% of the time it fell

into the category of reassigning a department or addressing it, and then it filters out on its

own.

DANIEL: Yeah. And humans are stupid, and we do a lot of dumb things. So what would have happened

if the CEO of this company had just been born in a different generation? What was his name

again?

RYAN: Andy Byron, the Astronomer CEO. Maybe he was just born at the wrong time. Maybe if this

DANIEL: Yeah, he would have got away with it. He'd still be with her.

RYAN: I think at his age, though, trying to hide it just makes you look guilty. Honestly, if he

had just stood there with his arms around her and been like, whoa, the camera would have panned

to the next couple, no one would know, no one would say anything, and he would have gotten away

with it. I'm not saying it's a good thing. But nobody would have thought anything about that.

The only reason they got caught is because they both reacted with extremely guilty faces and

tried to hide from the camera.

DANIEL: So what you're saying is, just absolve yourself of all guilt and all shame, and just

lean into it.

RYAN: And just own it.

DANIEL: And just own it. And it'll all be all right.

RYAN: No, that is not exactly what I'm saying. But that is probably the Gen Z mantra. It's only

wrong if you look guilty. So just don't look guilty.

DANIEL: Okay. I want to see how you handle your kids with that one.

RYAN: No, no, that is the exact opposite of what I teach my kids. That is wrong because it's

wrong, whether you feel guilty about it or not.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MONDAY MORNING FIX

DANIEL: Let's take vision, journey, culture, results, and try to figure out how we make this not

suck. Companies want good leaders, they want authentic leaders, but they don't really give

authentic leaders a lot of space or grace to be human. You can't lock a bunch of people into an

office for 60 hours a week, put them under extreme pressure, and then be shocked when romance

starts to happen. But you also can't allow that and still expect to be a productive

organization. So what does it look like to actually have values that guide the organization?

RYAN: Well, the values were definitely not being exhibited on that recording at that concert.

But the board fixed that one real fast by letting the two toxic-cultured individuals go.

DANIEL: I would challenge you on that one. The fact that other people saw this, other employees

in the box suite were there and not saying anything about it, I think that's a culture failure.

In healthy cultures, they should be held accountable to that. Somebody should have said, hey,

y'all, get a room. You're both married. If you choose to do this, at least do it someplace else.

RYAN: I agree, to the extent that if we knew who the individual was, if that was an executive

assistant and they were threatened with, you're going to lose your job, if there was some sort

of potential threat, and especially since she can't go to HR.

DANIEL: She's compromised. And probably doesn't have the autonomy to go to a board.

RYAN: So again, I think they created a negative culture. I agree. The real question is,

following that event, the board fired the two of them. The people that come in after that have

the opportunity to rebuild and set the culture and hold it. Now, they're going to have an uphill

battle, because that could instantly cascade into negative culture within the business. Well,

frick, if they can do it, then we can do it. But if the board brought in a good leader right

behind it and set the precedent and maintained the culture, that's key.

DANIEL: Right. And I think the board set the example by holding the company's values and

terminating the two individuals.

Ryan, we've talked many times about vision, journey, culture, results, and how there can be the

stated vision, journey, culture, results, and then the actual vision, journey, culture, results.

Some of what's going on here is that gap between what we say and what actually happens. In an

organization that says they value things like respect and zero tolerance for sexual harassment

and those kinds of things, but then the CEO and the head of HR are sleeping together, you've

clearly got this gap between what we say we believe and what we actually believe. So what does

that do to an organization when there's a big visible gap between what we say we believe and

what we actually believe? How does that impact the vision, journey, culture, results?

RYAN: Well, it's the house of cards. We've all worked in companies like this, where the core

values are up on the wall and the culture is toxic as hell. And I hate to say it, that's

becoming more and more companies these days. I don't know why we're getting there. But that's

the crux of why you and I are in business, right? Because this is hard. And just about

everybody, to some extent, is misaligned with themselves.

And I think sometimes what people try to do to fix it is bring in a CEO that just drives for

results. Maybe a smooth talker who puts some good things out there, but then encourages more

toxic culture to hit performance metrics. And the company just gets more and more toxic. And

what that really makes hard is a good leader that's trying to do things right. It almost makes

them look wrong, like they're not a fit, because they're actively trying to adjust the culture.

One of the hardest things to do in a business is adjust the culture, course correct the culture.

It's easy to charge more. It's easy to change SOPs. It's easy to change systems. It's easy to

hire and fire people. It's hard to change the culture. And a good leader will do the right

things, go through the journey to get there. A bad leader will just push for results.

DANIEL: I find the hardest part of changing culture is being honest about what the culture

really is. If we can't be honest about what our culture really is, there's zero chance we're

going to change it for the better.

RYAN: You are absolutely correct. And there are people who can be honest about the culture in a

respectful manner. But when people don't want to listen to it, or don't believe it, then you

start getting the silos, politics and turf wars of, well, that person's just wrong, or you're

just wrong. If you cannot get everybody aligned on the same page about the problems, it's ego.

When ego gets in the way, it's going to implode.

DANIEL: Yeah, plain and simple. And so the vision really becomes just lip service, because we

say we're here for this thing, but everybody knows that's not really the thing we're here for.

We're here for something else. And it's probably to make money.

Let's figure out how to fix it. Without giving advice, what would you change to prevent this kind

of disaster in another company? I think we need to get away from boomer policies.

RYAN: I think that's giving advice, Daniel.

DANIEL: All right. I'm going to give advice, then.

RYAN: I'm struggling with this one, because I think it's what you can and cannot control, and

what you can and cannot live with. If you're in a position of power, or in leadership, and you

can control it, then change it. Do something about it. If you can't, but you're willing to live

with it, then go on about your day. It is what it is. If you can't live with it, you have the

freedom to choose who leads you. Find a better organization to work with. I know that's simpler

said than done. But good and evil exist in the world. The only thing you can do is control your

environment. And if you're in a leadership position, improve it. You are a leader.

DANIEL: So what about organizational surveillance? Are you running all comms through an AI

engine looking for sexual harassment?

RYAN: That just sounds like such a can of worms.

DANIEL: Oh, it does. But it's possible that you could do it.

RYAN: I guess I believe in humans a little more than that. I'm all for using tools and I'm all

for advancing things. But running conversations through AI filters to look for that, you might

as well just put a camera in front of every employee and record all their keystrokes, because

you just don't trust that anybody can do anything. I guess I have more faith in humanity than

that.

DANIEL: You've never waited tables, then, have you?

RYAN: Maybe because I'm a guy and not a girl, I've got a different problem with that one.

DANIEL: I'm just saying, exposure to the general population will change your expectations of

humanity.

RYAN: I choose to believe humanity is better than that.

DANIEL: Hey, I like that. Good choice.

RYAN: Don't get me wrong. If you run a wide-level stat, 8% of the world is evil, and we always

know there's one person that ruins it for everybody. Don't get me wrong, there is crap out

there. But I just need to believe that there's more good than bad. And I think there are too

many people stuck in the middle. So from a work perspective, you are in control of who leads

you. Unless you're the leader, and then it's your duty to fix it.

DANIEL: What about the whole idea of corporate surveillance boundaries? A little off topic, but

if I post something horribly offensive on Twitter, or X, whatever it's called now, and I'm a

leader at a company, does it matter what I say on social media if I didn't say it at work? I

think that's one of the more tricky angles of this. If you hadn't gotten caught, it's basically

just what he does in his private life.

RYAN: You're basically asking me what we should do with Elon Musk. It's a very tricky topic,

because is that work or is that personal? You're off the clock. I think it comes back down to

your position. If you are the CEO of the organization, you are a public-facing entity of the

organization and you are on the clock. And if you have the need to say something like that, do

it in a personal, private community. Walk your Facebook down to only your friends and family and

nobody else can see it. And if somebody else spreads it, that's a different thing. But if you're

just the average everyday employee and you're talking about how work sucks, that's just life.

Again, if you're a leader at the top of the organization, you're on stage.

DANIEL: And the closer you get to the top of the organization, the closer you are to the stage.

So if this is your first job out of school, people probably are not paying attention to what you

say online and how it affects your job. Unless you're publicly trashing your employer, and then

that's a different conversation.

RYAN: There's a couple of them. If you don't like being in that spotlight, then don't be the

leader. That's part of the responsibility that comes with it. If you don't want it, don't do it.

The other thing, and this one drives me insane a little more recently, is recruiters and HR

teams looking at the social profiles of candidates to determine their worthiness. Oh, this

person drinks too much on the weekends, we can't hire them. That has nothing to do with their

performance. Call their previous employers, get their references. And if their reference says,

yeah, they showed up drunk every Monday, or they called in sick every Monday, okay, don't hire

them. But don't judge somebody by what their Facebook feed looks like, which is why so many

people have locked their Facebook feeds to friends and family only. So I think we've taken some

of this to extremes and created more divide than we should.

DANIEL: I think private lives are becoming more public. That is the reality. Despite everyone's

efforts to the contrary, I don't think that's going to reverse. I think those things are going

to become more public. And so to some extent, I think Gen Z have an advantage on Gen X and

boomers, because they're a lot more honest about those things as opposed to trying to hide them

and cover them up.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE LAST WORD

DANIEL: So where are we going? Are we heading towards completely sterile workplaces where no

one's allowed to be honest about their humanity? Or are we turning work into a swingers party?

What do you think, Ryan?

RYAN: I'm sorry. I just can't get past the fact that you said, are we turning work into a

swingers party. Oh, dear Lord, help us. I think the answer is somewhere in the middle.

DANIEL: So maybe the real question here isn't whether or not workplace relationships are

appropriate. Maybe it's more about whether or not we want to live in a world where three seconds

on a jumbotron can destroy your entire career.

RYAN: I think three seconds on a jumbotron should destroy your career if you are a false leader.

If there was nothing wrong with what they were doing, then this wouldn't be an issue. And that's

the crux of it all. It's not the relationship. It's the fact that it was two senior leaders doing

something that broke the moral code of their company, their values, and their own personal

values. Because that's why they hid their faces.

And at the end of the day, again, a handful of people ruining it for others. The best we can do

to make work not suck is, if you are in a position of leadership, hold yourself accountable to

it and make work not suck for those you lead. And if you are in a workplace and work sucks, you

have the right to find a better workplace.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OUTRO

Make Work Not Suck. Our podcast talks about exactly that. Our process: vision, journey, culture,

and results. We present real-world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to

make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co-host Daniel Steer. Join us each episode and make

work not suck.

[END OF EPISODE]