By now, you have probably seen the Coldplay video. The CEO of Astronomer, Andy Byron, attending a concert with his CHRO. The video spread quickly. Then came the memes. Then the resignation. What might have stayed an internal HR issue is now one of the most talked-about corporate stories of the summer.
Astronomer is not a celebrity brand or a household name. It is a DataOps company that provides tools and services for managing and orchestrating data workflows, particularly using Apache Airflow. It sits squarely in the enterprise software space. But no matter how technical the business, culture is still what makes or breaks it. And right now, Astronomer’s culture is under a microscope.
This is not a commentary on personal lives. It is a look at what happens when personal decisions intersect with professional consequences, especially in leadership. The video might have gone viral, but the damage is not limited to reputational headlines. It is internal. It is cultural. It is about trust.
And it reveals something else. The way this story took off—how quickly the memes surfaced, how quickly public judgment followed—says just as much about us as it does about the company. There is a pervasive belief in our culture, especially in our office culture. A sense that a colleague’s success is a threat, and leader’s failure is satisfying. That kind of resentment doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from lived experience. From watching leaders fail employees and HR protect leadership instead of people.
Astronomer’s website traffic is way up. But that spike is not coming from prospective customers trying to evaluate a data orchestration solution. It is coming from people trying to understand how a leadership team failed so publicly. That kind of attention is hard to shake. Especially in a market where trust is everything.
The bigger question is not what happened. It is what happens next.
The board of directors now faces a defining choice. They cannot treat this as a short-term scandal to manage. They need to recognize it as a long-term culture challenge to confront. The interim CEO cannot be a placeholder. They must be a signal. A clear sign that what happens next will be different from what came before.
That difference must start with clarity. A clear articulation of what the company stands for, what leadership behavior is expected, and what kind of culture is being built moving forward. The next CEO must embody that culture in every decision, not just at onboarding, but in the daily experience of their teams.
Next comes communication. Employees do not need a PR spin. They need honesty. Clients need the same. The best way to earn back trust is not to avoid the conversation, but to own it. Say what happened. Explain what is changing. Set expectations for what behavior and accountability will look like now.
Most importantly, the company needs to create a new system of accountability. Not as punishment, but as structure. The environment that allowed this to unfold must be addressed. That includes examining how leadership is evaluated, how HR is experienced, and how values are reinforced across the organization.
Astronomer’s value proposition is built on helping companies create order and control in their data workflows. Right now, it needs to do the same internally. What is orchestrated externally must be modeled internally. Alignment starts at the top.
The Coldplay video did not create a crisis. It revealed one. Now the company has a choice. It can respond like most do, quietly replacing faces and hoping the story fades. Or it can build something better. Not just a new team, but a new experience of leadership. One grounded in trust, transparency, and real cultural clarity.
That story is still being written. What people believe about Astronomer next will depend entirely on what they experience next.
Elsewhere In Culture
https://www.ft.com/content/b221217d-1f95-41b1-92d3-d8626caedf24
While Astronomer’s leadership is facing its own reckoning, it’s not the only organization confronting hard questions about accountability, trust, and culture.
It’s easy to point fingers when a public institution like the BBC is under fire for a cascade of scandals. But what stood out to me in Tim Davie’s response wasn’t just the admission of mistakes—it was the deeper struggle beneath it: a culture not yet equipped to prevent them. When leaders say, “Our systems and processes have not always been good enough,” they’re pointing to a culture gap. Scandals don’t thrive in isolation—they grow in environments where accountability is unclear, where employees don’t feel empowered to speak up until it’s too late, and where leadership is reactive instead of proactive.
What the BBC is experiencing is a workplace culture reckoning—and it’s not unique to broadcasters. Whether you lead a public institution or a private company, the same rule applies: if your values aren’t reinforced by daily behaviors, then they’re just words on a wall. Culture is the system that drives behavior, and when that system breaks down, no amount of PR can fix it. The good news? Culture is a choice. And rebuilding it—through clear expectations, real-time feedback, and leadership alignment—can restore trust not only internally but with the public too.
When Bryan Bedford says a “malaise has set in” at the FAA, he’s describing more than a leadership void—he’s describing a culture that has lost its way. When trust erodes inside an organization, even the most skilled employees go quiet. Fear replaces accountability. Initiative dries up. Innovation stalls. That’s not just a government problem—it’s a human one. And it’s what happens when cultural beliefs within an organization don’t support psychological safety, ownership, or forward momentum. The FAA’s job is safety, but a reactive culture—one that only acts after something goes wrong—is itself unsafe.
It’s telling that Bedford called out not just structural flaws, but a mindset: “we can’t fix it, but we’ll do our best to get by.” That resignation is what culture consultants hear when burnout takes root, when top talent feels disempowered, and when the story people tell themselves about their work stops connecting to purpose. Fixing the FAA doesn’t start with a new org chart. It starts with belief change—redefining what leadership looks like, rebuilding trust from the inside out, and creating a system where speaking up, taking risks, and driving results aren’t just permitted but expected.