How Deep Is Your Trust

Welcome to The Fixer, a weekly newsletter from The WayFinders Group. You could be making headlines for all the wrong reasons, but it may not happen to you, because you're here learning from other leaders' spectacular missteps. Every Friday, we forensically examine the corporate crises that could have been avoided with foresight, fresh thinking, and a phone call to the right people (aka us!). We also provide the next installment of our agony aunt column, and an opportunity for reader participation with our latest poll.

Author

Leah Brown FRSA
October 24, 2025

In partnership with

Friday’s Fiasco

On Monday, a DNS error at Amazon Web Services' Virginia data centre brought down large portions of the internet for over 12 hours. Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Netflix, Starbucks, and dozens of other services went dark. By 6pm, AWS announced all services had returned to normal operations.

Our advice to AWS? This is your moment to lead the conversation about infrastructure resilience.

AWS controls roughly 30% of global cloud infrastructure. When you're that critical to how the world functions, outages aren't just technical failures—they're trust fractures with millions of users and businesses who depend on you.

What’s the path to organisational repair?

Rather than defensive posturing about "residual connectivity issues," AWS has an opportunity to demonstrate genuine leadership. The restoration they need requires:

  1. radical transparency about what failed and why so that technical details can be translated into language that helps users understand the actual risk and what was done to address it

  2. acknowledgement of the concentration risk as many services here depend on one provider. The industry needs honest conversations about resilience, not platitudes

  3. a demonstration of systemic accountability by showing what specific changes you're implementing to prevent recurrence, not just that you're "reviewing processes"

  4. commitment to rebuilding trust through visible action by involving customers and stakeholders in understanding redundancy plans and how infrastructure is being strengthened

The main event isn't damage control. It's failing to using this crisis to reset expectations around cloud infrastructure reliability. AWS should use this blip to show the sector how the dominant player can lead with integrity when things go wrong. Because when you're the backbone of the internet, how you respond to failure matters as much as how quickly you fix it.

Certainly makes you want to spend more time ensuring those SLAs are watertight, doesn't it?

Future-proof your leadership
When formal processes close but relationships stay broken, our route to repair methodology transforms repeat escalations into resolved teams, with measurable results at 60/90/120 days.

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Fodder from the floor

Fix me!

Dear Leah, 

I'm Chief Strategy Officer and I'm watching our "merger of equals" turn into a hostile takeover. Six months ago, we combined with a similar-sized company in what was supposed to be a partnership. Instead, their leadership team has systematically taken control of every key function. They've replaced our department heads with their people, implemented their systems exclusively, and even changed our office culture to match theirs. 

When I raised concerns about losing our company's identity, their CEO said "integration requires some sacrifices." Our employees feel betrayed - they thought they were joining forces, not being absorbed. Morale is collapsing, our best talent is leaving, and clients are confused about our direction. The board keeps saying "these things take time to settle," but it feels like our company is disappearing entirely. Was this always the plan, or have we just handled integration terribly?

-Caught in a Hostile Takeover

Dear Caught in a Hostile Takeover,

You haven't handled integration terribly - you've been systematically acquired while everyone pretended it was a partnership. The "merger of equals" language was either naive wishful thinking or deliberate misdirection.

Face the facts

What’s the biggest barrier to post-crisis repair where you work?

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Future-proof your organisation
Book Leah to speak at your next corporate event about the leadership failures that end careers, and how to avoid becoming our next case study.

🚨 Settlement signed, team broken?
🚨 Investigation closed, wounds open?
🚨 Mediation complete, silence deafening?

You know those moments when the grievance is resolved but people still can't work together, when formal processes close but nothing's actually fixed, or when the same conflicts keep resurfacing? That's when you need The WayFinders Group. Founded by lawyer and accredited mediator Leah Brown FRSA, we repair the relationships that HR processes leave broken, turning repeat escalations into resolved teams through our restorative methodology.