Sally Pitkin, governance immortal
The whole sequence of events at Super Retail Group should’ve rung alarm bells.
Zooming out from the epic debacle that is Super Retail Group's handling of an alleged secret romance in the C-suite, a fundamental principle of weighing human behaviour was ignored by the board: when asked to choose between two duelling narratives, always go back to the parties' motivations.
When your married CEO is accused of performing horizontal performance reviews on a subordinate, he has extremely powerful incentives not to come clean – and even to gaslight his accusers.
Equally, what do multiple senior colleagues – and hitherto exemplary corporate citizens – stand to gain by casting a fabricated allegation of this gravity at their boss? More aptly, what do they stand to lose?