Sandra Coyle

Sharing this one as this week's , and giving it a bit more context than I did on Monday.

Founder liability is one of the briefs I get called into most quietly. The organization is not yet in crisis. But the board is uneasy. The senior team is walking on eggshells. And the founder, celebrated, visible, often the living embodiment of the brand, is making decisions that have nothing to do with the organization and everything to do with its future.

What makes these situations so hard is not the founder. It is the system that formed around them. Boards that grew under their authority find it almost impossible to challenge it. Staff who built their careers inside the founder's vision cannot easily separate loyalty from judgment. And the founder, whose identity is the institution's identity, genuinely cannot see themselves as the risk.

I have seen this play out across sectors, regions, and organization sizes. The warning signs are almost always the same. So is the cost of waiting.

This piece looks at the structural patterns behind founder liability and what governance has to do — and when — to protect the mission before a crisis forces the issue. If you work with or inside a mission-driven organization, it is worth your Sunday morning.

https://www.sandracoyle.com/knowledge/founder-liability

The Founder Liability — Sandra Coyle Advisory When a founder becomes a liability, boards face their hardest test. Learn how to protect your institution before the crisis arrives.

The organizations that are struggling to be heard right now are often the ones that invested heavily in visibility and lightly in credibility.

They built profiles instead of trust. And audiences, who are more skeptical than at any point in recent memory, noticed.

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer found that seven in ten people globally are now hesitant to trust anyone outside their own circle. That is the environment we are all communicating into.

I wrote about what it takes to build communications that actually hold up in that environment:

sandracoyle.com/knowledge/credibility-advantage

The Credibility Advantage — Sandra Coyle Advisory Authenticity is reshaping institutional communications. Learn why trust, ethics, and credibility matter more than quick visibility or trend-chasing.