About This Case Study
This is a retrospective strategic analysis of a real communications challenge, not actual Comms Threader output. It illustrates how strategic scaffolding structures thinking from problem to narrative.
Real Threader outputs depend on your context, uploads, and decisions. See actual tool usage in the Boeing case study or explore best practices.
OpenAI
Safety, Speed, and the Governance Crisis
The Golden Thread
Problem: This is not a governance problem. It is an identity problem. OpenAI was founded to develop AI safely for humanity’s benefit, but its commercial success created incentives that pulled it toward the behaviour of every other technology company.
Tension: Employees, regulators, and the public were told OpenAI existed to keep AI safe. The board crisis and safety team departures suggested the company had chosen speed over safety when the two conflicted.
Message: For a public that was promised AI development would be different this time, OpenAI must demonstrate that commercial success and safety oversight are structurally inseparable, not balanced through goodwill.
Platform: Embed safety governance into commercial structure so visibly that abandoning it would be operationally impossible, not merely reputationally damaging.
Story
The Brief: In November 2023, OpenAI’s board fired CEO Sam Altman, citing a loss of confidence in his candour. Within days, Altman was reinstated after a near-total employee revolt and pressure from Microsoft. The board was restructured. In 2024, multiple senior safety researchers departed, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever and safety lead Jan Leike, who publicly stated the company had deprioritised safety. OpenAI began transitioning from a capped-profit structure to a more conventional corporate model.
Challenge Reframe: This is not a governance problem. It is an identity problem. OpenAI was founded to develop AI safely for humanity’s benefit, but its commercial success created incentives that pulled it toward the behaviour of every other technology company.
Sector Convention: AI companies describe themselves as committed to responsible development, publish safety frameworks, and position commercial products as steps toward beneficial AGI while accelerating release cycles.
Audience
Priority Stakeholder: AI Researchers and Technical Talent
Stakeholder Tension: They joined OpenAI because they believed it was different from Big Tech. The board crisis and safety departures suggested it was not, but leaving means ceding influence over the most consequential technology of the era.
Message
Message Hierarchy: For researchers who need to believe their work serves humanity, OpenAI is the AI company that makes safety governance structurally binding rather than culturally aspirational, because structures survive leadership changes and cultural shifts do not.
What We Won't Say: Safety is our top priority. We are building AI that benefits all of humanity. We welcome oversight.
Plan
Comms Direction: Make safety governance structurally irrevocable through binding mechanisms that survive leadership changes, and communicate these structures as facts rather than commitments.
Frame: Narrative Territories
The Safety Constitution
Publish binding governance mechanisms that cannot be overridden by leadership or investors. Make safety structurally embedded, not culturally maintained.
Feel: Institutional, permanent, structural
The Researcher’s Compact
Create visible, enforceable protections for safety researchers to raise concerns and halt development. Make internal dissent a feature, not a crisis.
Feel: Human, principled, talent-facing
The Public Ledger
Publish real-time documentation of safety evaluations, capability assessments, and governance decisions. Let external observers verify claims in near-real-time.
Feel: Radical, transparent, accountable
What Actually Happened
Altman was reinstated within five days. The original board was replaced with a more commercially-oriented group. Safety researchers including Sutskever and Leike departed, with Leike publicly criticising the company’s priorities. OpenAI began transitioning to a for-profit corporate structure. The company continued releasing products at an accelerating pace while publishing safety frameworks that critics described as aspirational rather than binding. Regulatory engagement increased but remained largely voluntary.
Why It Failed
- The speed of Altman’s reinstatement demonstrated that commercial interests could override governance structures in days
- Safety team departures were more credible than any corporate statement, because actions spoke louder than frameworks
- The transition to for-profit structure contradicted the founding narrative more clearly than any competitor’s criticism could
- Publishing safety frameworks without binding enforcement mechanisms was treated as theatre by the research community
- The case demonstrates that governance credibility cannot survive a single visible instance of governance being overridden