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04Precedent · how it went for them

The situation“We've hit a problem I don't understand well enough to solve.”

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

Worked

Worked · Julia Grace, Slack, 2016 onwards

In August 2016, Julia Grace was asked to build Slack's first infrastructure engineering organisation.

Worked · Mavis Batey, Bletchley Park, March 1941

In March 1941, a 19-year-old Mavis Batey was working at Bletchley Park in Dilly Knox's "ISK" section, on Italian naval Enigma traffic marked "GP" that the section had not been formally trained to decrypt.

Worked · Marc Strauss, condom keychains, late 1990s

Strauss was a fresh MBA graduate who'd launched a novelty business selling condoms attached to keychains as a gag item — the kind of thing that sells well at trade shows and retailers catering to the student market.