Imagine this: the captain built the ship, sailed it through two decades of storms, invented half the gadgets keeping it afloat — and then one morning the officers try to quietly row him off the side while he's not looking. That's roughly the scene playing out at Ocado right now, except instead of a plank, it's a boardroom, and instead of pirates, it's some of the City's biggest institutional investors grabbing the wheel and shouting "absolutely not."

Co-founder and CEO Tim Steiner has run Ocado for 26 years. The board, led by chair Adam Warby, had been quietly lining up his exit and reportedly approached outside candidates to replace him. Word got out. And several of Ocado's top 10 shareholders weren't having it — they've now written to the board urging directors to abandon the plan entirely.

What started as a routine bit of succession planning has turned into a full-blown public standoff over who gets to run one of Britain's best-known tech-meets-grocery companies. Drama! (The good, popcorn kind — not the kind that's good for the share price.)

Here's the substance behind the soap opera. Reports — first from the Financial Times — say Ocado's board has been working to find a successor capable of stepping in quickly, driven by Warby and board member Jörn Rausing (who is also a major shareholder, which tells you something about how tangled this is getting). The plan was reportedly close to being announced. Then opposition from major investors stalled it.

The stakes go well beyond hurt feelings. Under UK company law, shareholders holding at least 5% of voting capital could call an extraordinary general meeting — including a vote to reinstate Steiner and potentially remove Warby as chair — if Steiner is pushed out anyway. One investor reportedly described a clumsy removal as an "act of self-harm." Steiner himself could pursue legal action if he believes he's been unfairly dismissed.

Why does any of this matter to the board at all, given Steiner's strategic importance has clearly been weighed against years of weak share performance? Because Ocado's stock has fallen sharply from its pandemic-era highs, hit further by Kroger closing three Ocado-powered facilities and international clients scaling back — even as the company has landed a fresh licensing deal with Asda. Governance specialists, for their part, have long flagged Steiner's deep, founder-level grip on the technology platform as a "key-man risk" (translation: if he walked out tomorrow, nobody else fully knows how the ship's engine works).

So you've got a board trying to de-risk the company's future, and a chunk of major shareholders saying the de-risking itself is the risk. Both sides have a point. Neither side currently has the upper hand.

If you run a business — especially one you started yourself — this is a live case study in a question every founder eventually faces: at what point does the company stop being "yours" to lead, and start being something a board can take away from you?

For SMEs and growing companies, the lesson is structural, not emotional. Succession planning isn't a side project for "later" — it's a governance mechanism that needs to be agreed, documented, and depoliticised long before anyone's actually walking out the door. Ocado's mess exists partly because the process played out behind closed doors, with no clear consensus among the people who actually own large chunks of the business. The moment word leaked, the vacuum filled with speculation, legal threats, and a very public tug-of-war.

For larger businesses, there's a sharper warning: key-man risk doesn't go away just because you've decided you want it to. If your most senior leader still personally understands the engine room better than anyone replacing them, removing that person isn't a clean strategic decision — it's a gamble on whether the rest of the organisation can actually catch up fast enough.

Right now, nobody at Ocado has officially won anything. Steiner hasn't left. Warby hasn't backed down. The board hasn't named a successor. And the shareholders who fired off those letters are sitting there with their arms crossed, EGM paperwork within easy reach, waiting to see if anyone blinks first.

Founders build the ship. Boards steer it. And every so often, the crew reminds everyone exactly whose names are on the cargo manifest. Stay tuned — this one's far from docked.

— The Business Index Team