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Why Steph Korey’s Return To Away As Co-CEO Is Doomed To Fail

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Away company founder Steph Korey is breaking all three key tenets of effective leadership communication. This cannot end well. The basic mantra is Be – Do – Say, lining up what you do with what you say with what you believe. The way she led before she relinquished the CEO role is most likely her default way of leading. She tried to step aside as CEO and then changed her mind, leaving a whole lot of people confused. And confusion is not the goal of effective communication.

Korey got caught. She stepped aside and is now stepping back. But who she is has not changed. Her underlying beliefs have not changed. This cannot end well.

This is why Be – Do – Say is such an important thing to keep in mind in any leadership position and especially during crucibles of leadership like onboarding into new jobs or re-starting things. Start with who you are, what you believe. Then act that way. Finally, communicate both in your words.

Let’s back up. Korey took her learnings from Kate Spade, Bloomingdales and Warby Parker and partnered with Jennifer Rubio to co-found Away in 2015. Their business success so far is indisputable. Adweek called them a “Breakthrough Brand with Ingenious Marketing.” They primarily sell luggage direct-to-consumer while also having a couple of physical stores and their own travel-focused podcasts and magazines. The company was valued at $1.4 Billion in 2019.

Yet, that success has come at a cost. As described in the Verge article that led to Korey’s stepping aside, she has a “fanatical work ethic.” She’s all-in with this venture, willing to do whatever it takes to satisfy customers, build the brand, and build the business. The trouble is that she required everyone else to be just as fanatical and pushed at least some of them way too far.

As Zoe Shiffer put it in the Verge article, “The result is a brand consumers love, a company culture people fear, and a cadre of former employees who feel burned out and coerced into silence.” Not sustainable.

So, Korey brought Lululemon alum Stuart Haselden in as CEO and took the title of Executive Chairman in December 2019. Now, just 35 days later, she’s reversing course and jumping back in as co-CEO.

This gets us to the fundamental problem. Her actions do not match her words and underlying beliefs. She can’t help herself.

She said “her behavior and comments were 'wrong, plain and simple'” That reads like she believes the Verge article’s allegations and needed to step away to change the culture. But now she’s back. Actually, she never left. She just changed her title temporarily. She’s always been running the company. She is still running the company. Expect the culture to stay toxic as she still believes that everyone should share her fanatical work ethic.

Lessons for you

Take Be – Do – Say seriously. Everything communicates. Everything you say and do and don’t say and don’t do sends a message.

Say. Your words are your first level of communication. People hear or see what you say and they form an impression. Words matter. Context matters. Think things through in advance so you’re choosing the right words in the right context for the people you’re trying to communicate with so they hear what you wanted them to hear and feel the way you intended them to feel.

Early on, Steph Korey certainly said all the right things. People partnered with her. People invested in her. People worked for her. People appreciated what she said.

Do. Words matter. But actions matter more. In the end, people are going to believe what you do more than they will believe what you say. If you’re walking the talk, it’s fine. If your actions reinforce your words, people will believe both over time.

This is where Korey diverged. She said Away’s values were: “thoughtful, customer-obsessed, iterative, empowered, accessible, in it together.” There’s nothing wrong with these. But, as Shiffer pointed out, Korey actions and expectations were different.

  • “Empowered employees didn’t schedule time off when things were busy, regardless of how much they’d been working.
  • Customer-obsessed employees did whatever it took to make consumers happy, even if it came at the cost of their own well-being.”

Be. Even if your words match your actions, if they don’t match your underlying fundamental beliefs, you’re going to get caught - like Korey did.

Click here for a list of my Forbes articles (of which this is #609) and a summary of my book on executive onboarding: The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan.

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