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04Precedent · how it went for them

The situation“Morale has dropped and I can't tell why.”

Leaders who made the same call — what each did, and how it went.

Worked

Worked · Patty McCord, Netflix, 2000s

McCord, as Netflix's chief talent officer, noticed that the standard corporate HR apparatus — expense policies, vacation tracking, formal performance reviews — was doing something counterintuitive: it was actively eroding morale by signalling distrust.

Worked · Thasunda Brown Duckett, TIAA, 2021 onwards

Thasunda Brown Duckett became chief executive of TIAA — the $1.4 trillion retirement and asset-management firm serving the academic, medical, cultural, and research sectors — on 1 May 2021.

Worked · Michael Seibel, Justin.tv, 2010–2011

By early 2010, Justin.tv — the general-purpose live-video platform Michael Seibel had co-founded in 2007 alongside Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, and Kyle Vogt — was profitable but plateauing.