Don't fan the flames, let repair extinguish them

This situation is much more serious than a resignation and a bad set of financial results.

The perception gap is the distance between what leadership believes is true about its organisation and what the people inside it know to be true. It is not unusual. It is, in fact, one of the most common and most costly conditions we find inside organisations. What makes the Co-op's version particularly damaging is that it compounded across three separate events, each one widening the gap further.

The cyber-attack in April 2025 was the first hit. It exposed the procedural layer of the organisation in the most visible way possible; members' data gone, systems down, trust of 6.5million customers violated. Even that is a recoverable position provided the human system underneath is strong enough to carry the weight of the response. The evidence suggests it was not. Senior staff were already afraid to challenge decisions. The people who might have said "this approach isn't working" had already learned not to say anything at all.

The culture story was the second hit. When the BBC reported in February that staff felt "intimidated and afraid to speak up," Co-op’s integrity was weakened further not because the culture was new, but because the gap between what leadership said it knew and what staff said they experienced became publicly apparent. The Co-op said it did not recognise those claims while its own people were saying the opposite.

The resignation is the third hit. For the people inside the Co-op who spent ten months afraid to speak, a CEO leaving is not evidence that the organisation has changed. It is evidence that someone at the top has gone. The governance, namely the structures, processes, and incentives that produced the culture, remains unchanged. But the people experiencing the disconnect between where the organisation thinks it is and where it actually is, is the hardest to repair because it lives in what people believe, not what the announcement says.

The only way to close these gaps is to measure them. An organisational repair audit using our ORI® gives incoming leadership an accurate, evidenced picture of where integrity has been damaged inside the organisation, enabling the interim CEO to hit the ground running by owning that damage and committing to targeted interventions. Repair begins with an assessment of where the human system actually is and involves this sequence:

• Acknowledgement: the culture the BBC described needs to be properly named by incoming leadership, together with the historic inability to address it properly.

• Apology: communications need to be directed specifically at staff who raised concerns and were not heard, rather than a general expression of regret addressed to no one in particular.

• Accountability: Khoury-Haq's performance cannot bear the weight of the Co-op’s challenges, because if it does, the structures and incentives that produced the culture remain entirely intact. 

• Amends: member-director turned interim CEO Kate Allum must now consider what changes need to happen in practice, what recourse now exists for those who have made disclosures (and those afraid to make further disclosures), and what the organisation will do differently when the next disruptive event arrives.

But the Co-op cannot be what it was before the cyber-attack. Its organisational integrity was fractured long before a single hacker made a move. Finding a way through this on Monday means the new boss cannot focus on getting back to where Co-op was; Allum must address the damage and build something more robust than what came before.

The Co-op's members deserve a leader who will accept that even though the guard has changed at the top, the building is still on fire.

This quarter we have been engaged alongside a number of transactions including four aborted private joint ventures in the health sector. The longevity and preventative health space is attracting significant institutional investment; players are competing for customers, solutions, and the best commercial partnerships. Where there is competition and capital, there is also pressure; and where there is pressure, transactions break down. We continue to be called when they do.

In each case, the original commercial relationship had broken down: partnerships had failed to materialise, strategic direction could not be agreed, or the personalities involved had made continuation impossible.

We stepped in to de-escalate and resolve the impasse. We stabilised each situation by preventing the matters from proceeding to litigation and kept both parties from airing their dirty laundry in the press. We applied our restorative method to understand whether repair was desirable and created clean separations through protracted discussions leading to executed termination deeds, settlement agreements, and in one case, a renegotiated commercial go-forward agreement. Across all engagements, both parties' reputations were preserved.

What we helped these leaders understand is that an aborted deal does not have to be a failure. The goal is not to get back to where they were before the deal started. It is to have greater clarity and robustness than you had going into it. The repair process interrogates the decisions that led to the breakdown, helps people get to the root of what they actually want, and creates the conditions for better decisions; decisions they can live with and build on.

If you are advising on a joint venture that feels precarious, or are enduring a transaction that is on the rocks, email [email protected]. We audit the integrity of the organisation using our Organisational Repair Index® and help you find clarity to move forward.

Most organisations will experience a disruptive event. What determines whether they come through it is not the crisis plan; it is whether the organisation's integrity is intact underneath it. Not integrity in the vague sense. Integrity in the structural, behavioural, psychological, and narrative sense; the kind that either holds or doesn't when the pressure arrives. That is what workplace repair is. And it is what my TEDx talk is about.

Repair requires an organisation where people at every level can navigate complexity with confidence.

The WayFinders Group is supporting UK delivery of ReLEAD, the Responsible European Leadership Network, a free civic leadership development programme proven across Europe, starting in May 2026.

Participants complete a core module in civic skills, building the awareness and engagement that organisations need when the world outside starts to create pressure inside. They then choose a thematic module: building resilience and wellbeing, communication in challenging times, or environmental sustainability and social impact. These are precisely the capabilities that determine whether an organisation can absorb a disruptive event or is flattened by one.

It is fifteen hours over ten weeks, during working hours, combining self-paced learning with facilitated group workshops and Open Badge certification. It is designed for medium /  large UK companies or organisations with at least 50+ employees.

ReLEAD are looking for employees ready to help their organisations navigate complex societal questions with confidence. The deadline to register interest is fast approaching. Email [email protected]  to find out more.

The WayFinders Group measures and repairs damage to the human system so that organisational integrity is restored.