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The Decision

On July 8, 2010, LeBron James announced on a live ESPN special where he would play as a free agent. “This fall, I’m going to take my talents to South Beach,” he said. He left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat. The program was called The Decision.

In Cleveland, fans burned his No. 23 jerseys in the streets. Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cavaliers, called James’s decision a “heartless and callous action.” James later returned to Cleveland and won the city a championship.

To many fans it felt like betrayal. Yet James had done what free agency allows.

The Reserve Clause

On December 24, 1969, Curt Flood, the center fielder of the St. Louis Cardinals, wrote to Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. He had been traded to Philadelphia. “After twelve years in the Major Leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes,” he wrote. “I believe I have the right to consider offers from other clubs before making any decisions.”

Baseball’s reserve clause restricted the right of players to switch teams. Flood challenged it in court and lost in 1972. On December 23, 1975, the arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled for the pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally. He found “no contractual bond” between them and their clubs. The two pitchers became free agents.

Tours of Duty

In 2014 Harvard Business Review Press published The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age, by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh. The book says that “a business is far more like a sports team than a family.”

The authors say the old deal of “lifelong employment in exchange for loyal service” no longer fits. They propose that employer and employee agree on a “tour of duty,” with a specific mission and a set time frame. One review says the authors have in mind a tour of two to four years.

A Sports Team, Not a Family

The culture page of Netflix says the company models itself “on a professional sports team, not a family.” It explains: “Families are about unconditional love.” Sports teams instead focus on “picking the right person for every position,” even when that means “swapping out someone they love for a better player.”

Leaders apply what Netflix calls the keeper test. They ask: “if X wanted to leave, would I fight to keep them?” If the answer is no, the company believes “it’s fairer to everyone to part ways quickly.” The page says the team is driven by performance, “not seniority, tenure or unconditional loyalty.”

Swift Trust

In 1996 the organizational scholars Debra Meyerson, Karl Weick and Roderick Kramer described what they called swift trust. A later commentator notes that their main example is the film production crew. Strangers meet, take up their roles and start work at once, with no time to get to know each other.

The chapter describes contexts in which “swift judgments of trust are mandatory.” Such temporary systems “act as if trust were present, but their histories seem to preclude its development.” The theory describes the sequence. The team assumes trust first and checks and adjusts it later.

Median tenure

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in January 2024 the median American wage and salary worker had been with their current employer for 3.9 years — the lowest since 2002. For workers aged 25 to 34 it was 2.7 years, and twenty-two percent had been in post a year or less. Half the workforce leaves within four years. Whatever they learned goes with them, and the organization is left with whatever it happened to write down.

At-will employment

The default rule across almost all US states is that either party may end the employment relationship at any time, for any reason that is not illegal, without notice. Whatever else it does, it makes staffing decisions fast. A manager who wants to change a team can change it this week.

Transferable skills

A standard American résumé heading and a standard interview argument: the claim that what was learned in one domain applies in another. The burden is on the field to show why the skills would not transfer.

The recruiter call

American professionals in many fields receive unsolicited approaches regularly, and taking the call is normal, expected and not disloyal. The external market is present in working life continuously rather than at moments of change.