The Unicorn Project

by Gene Kim

  “An excellent point, Dwayne,” Maxine hears Erik say, once again rejoining them at the table. “You’d be surprised how deeply this sense of injustice would resonate with Steve. You’d know that if you’ve spent any time on the manufacturing floor.”

  “How so?” Maxine asks. She’s spent plenty of time working with the plant floor personnel.

  “Did you know that when Steve signed on as the COO and VP of manufacturing, he made it contingent upon the company publicly targeting zero on-the-job workplace injuries? He was almost laughed out of the room, not just by the board of directors but also by the plant personnel and even the union leadership,” Erik said, smiling. “People thought he was naive, and maybe even a bit addled in the head. Probably because a ‘real business leader’ would want to be measured on profitability or due-date performance. Or perhaps quality. But safety?

  “Rumor was that Steve told Bob Strauss, who was CEO at the time, ‘If you can’t depend on the manufacturing workforce to not get hurt on the job, why should you believe anything we say about our quality goals? Or our ability to make you money? Safety is a precondition of work.’”

  Erik pauses. “Even these supposedly enlightened days, leaders rarely talk like that. Steve had closely studied the work of Sensei Paul O’Neill, the legendary CEO of Alcoa in the 1980s and 1990s, who prioritized workplace safety above all else. His board of directors initially thought he was crazy, but in the fifteen years of his tenure as CEO, net income increased from $200 million to $1.5 billion, and Alcoa’s market cap went from $3 billion to $27 billion.

  “Despite that impressive economic performance,” Erik continues, “what Sensei O’Neill talks about most is his legacy of safety. For decades, Alcoa has remained the undisputed leader of workplace safety. When he joined, Alcoa was rightly proud of having an above-average safety record. But with two percent of their workforce of 90,000 employees being injured every year, if you worked your entire career at Alcoa, you had a forty percent chance of being hurt on the job.

  “Alcoa has far more hazardous working conditions than in your manufacturing plants,” he says. “In the aluminum business, you have to deal with high heat, high pressure, corrosive chemicals, end-products weighing tons that need to be safely transported …

  “Sensei O’Neill famously said, ‘Everyone must be responsible for their own safety and the safety of their teammates. If you see something that could hurt someone, you must fix it as quickly as possible.’ He told everyone that fixing safety issues should never be budgeted—just fix it, and they’d figure out how to pay for it later,” Erik continues. “He gave out his home phone number to all plant workers, telling them to call him if they ever saw plant managers not acting quickly enough or not taking safety seriously.

  “Sensei O’Neill tells a story about his first workplace fatality,” Erik continues. “In Arizona, an eighteen-year-old boy died. He jumped into an extrusion machine trying to clear a piece of scrap material. But when he did, a boom released, swinging around and killing him instantly.

  “This boy had a wife who was six months pregnant,” Erik says. “There were two supervisors there. Sensei O’Neill said, they watched him do it, and probably trained the boy to do exactly what he did.

  “In the end, Sensei O’Neill stood up in front of the entire plant and told everyone, ‘We killed him. We all killed him. I killed him. Because I clearly didn’t do a good enough job communicating how people must not get hurt on the job. Somehow it was possible that people thought it was okay for people to get hurt. We must all be accountable for keeping ourselves and everyone safe.’

  “As he later said, ‘Alcoans were extremely caring people. Every time people were injured, they mourned and there was always lots of regret—but they didn’t understand that they were responsible. It had become a learned condition to tolerate injuries.’”

  Erik pauses to wipe a tear from his eye. “One of Steve’s first actions was to incorporate Sensei O’Neill’s True North of zero workplace injuries into every aspect of manufacturing plant operations here at Parts Unlimited. One of his first acts on the job was to institute a policy that every workplace injury must be reported to him directly within twenty-four hours, along with remediation plans. What a magnificent example of the Third Ideal of Improvement of Daily Work and the Fourth Ideal of Psychological Safety.”

  As Erik stares at the wall for several moments, Maxine suddenly realizes why Steve talks about workplace injuries at every Town Hall. He knows he can’t directly influence everyone’s daily work. However, Steve can reinforce and model his desired values and norms, which he does so effectively, Maxine realizes.

  Maxine stares back at Erik. She’s never even talked to Steve. How could she possibly do what Erik suggests?

  From:

  Chris Allers (VP, R&D)

  To:

  All Dev; Bill Palmer (VP, IT Operations)

  Date:

  11:10 p.m., September 25

  Subject:

  Project Inversion: feature freeze

  Effective immediately, as part of Project Inversion, there will be a feature freeze for the Phoenix Project. We will make a maximum effort for thirty days to increase the stability and reliability of Phoenix, as well as all supporting systems.

  We will suspend all feature work so that we can fix defects and problematic areas of code and pay down technical debt. By doing this, we will enable higher development productivity and faster feature throughput.

  During this period, we will also suspend all Phoenix deployments, except for emergency changes, and our Ops teammates will be working on making deployments faster and safer and increasing the resilience of our production services.

  We are confident that doing this will help the company achieve its most important strategic goals. If you have any questions or concerns, please email me.

  Thank you,

  Chris

  From:

  Alan Perez (Operating Partner, Wayne-Yokohama Equity Partners)

  To:

  Sarah Moulton (SVP of Retail Operations)

  Date:

  3:15 p.m., September 27

  Subject:

  Strategic Options **CONFIDENTIAL**

  Sarah—in confidence …

  Good meeting yesterday. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to share with you my philosophy of creating shareholder value—in general, we favor “value” and operational discipline over “growth.” Our firm has created outsized returns by investing in companies like Parts Unlimited. My plan would create fantastic and consistent cash flow, at a rate higher than most people even think possible. At other companies, we’ve created considerable wealth for investors (and company executives).

  As promised, I’m introducing you to several CEOs in our portfolio of companies whom you may be interested in talking to. Please ask them about how we helped increase shareholder value.

  Sincerely, Alan

  PS: Did I understand correctly that there’s now a “feature freeze” for Phoenix? Doesn’t that put you even further behind? And now what do you do with all those new developers you talked about last time? And what will they work on?

  CHAPTER 9

  • Monday, September 29

  On Monday, there’s a spring in Maxine’s step as she walks into the building. And it’s not because of the Dockside meeting. It’s because it’s Testing Day! Her code will finally be tested and put into production.

  She carries five boxes of Vandal Doughnuts she bought on her way in. She even got some of their special “cronuts,” a crazy hybrid of a croissant and donut, her favorite.

  She’s feeling so good that she wonders whether the aroma of sixty freshly made donuts might be elevating her blood sugar levels. What a great way to break the ice with the people who will be testing her code, she thinks. It’s always easier to make new friends when you bring tasty treats.

  Everywhere she walks, people ask her, “Are they for me?”

  She happily yells back, “Nope, it’s for Testing Day!”

&
nbsp; Putting down all the donuts on a table near her desk, she slings her bag by her chair. Tom is already there, editor open, typing away.

  “Hurray, it’s Testing Day!” Maxine announces happily. “At long last.”

  “You are very strange,” Tom says, not even looking up from his monitor. He sniffs the air. “Wow, are those Vandal Doughnuts?”

  “Yes, to celebrate Testing Day!” she responds with a big smile. “I think it’s super exciting to finally see whether all our changes actually work or not,” Maxine says. “So, when do they start? Can we go watch?”

  Tom turns to face her, looking at his watch. “I suppose they probably start today. But it’s not just our changes. They’re testing changes to all the other big chunks of Phoenix—ours are just a fraction of what they need to do. They might not even get to ours today.”

  “What!?” Maxine interrupts, shocked. She had been waiting all weekend for this! “Can we see where we are in line? Can we help? In fact, where do the QA people sit? I bought all these donuts for them!”

  Tom looks surprised. “Well, I’ve met a bunch of them—some of them are offshore, some are on-site, but I haven’t talked with them directly in a long time. We usually meet the QA manager at the end of next week, when they present the testing results.”

  “Next week? Next week?!” Maxine’s jaw drops. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Hey, can we follow along as they work? We’ll get notifications on our feature tickets, right?”

  “Uh, not exactly,” Tom says, frowning. “The QA team uses a different ticketing system. It does their scheduling and reporting and manages all their test cases. We don’t have access to it—at least, non-mangers like us don’t. After two weeks, they’ll send us a spreadsheet with a list of all the defects they’ve found, labeled with our feature ticket numbers. We’ll look through them, copy that information into our ticketing system, and then we’ll fix anything that needs fixing.”

  “… and then?” Maxine asks, fearing the worst.

  “QA rolls up everyone’s fixes and tests again,” replies Tom.

  “So, let’s suppose that all our changes work perfectly—when would be the soonest that our customers actually get to use what we wrote?” she asks.

  Tom starts counting on his fingers. “Two weeks for another testing cycle. Then they open up a ticket with Operations, requesting that they deploy the changes into production. Sometimes it takes a bit of time for them to work it into their schedule … that could take another three weeks.” He looks at his fingers. “So that’d be seven weeks from now.”

  Maxine crumples forward, groaning as she buries her head in her hands, her forehead on the table.

  I am so naive, she thinks. Head still on the table, she asks, “And during that whole time, we’re just supposed to work on more defects?”

  “Yep,” she hears Tom say. “You okay, Maxine?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she says, trying to not feel depressed. This is the opposite of the Second Ideal, she thinks. We’re just a stupid feature factory, pushing out widgets that customers may or may not care about. Work is not fun and full of joy, like I know it should be. There is no flow of features, there is no feedback, and there certainly isn’t any learning, she thinks.

  She hears Tom ask, “Umm, can I have one of those donuts?”

  “No,” Maxine responds. Then she has an idea. She lifts her head and looks up at Tom, smiling. “But you can help me deliver them to the QA people.”

  Finding the QA people was much more difficult than she thought it would be. Tom hadn’t been in the same room with one in over a year. His main interactions with them were through formal rituals—he turned over the code and waited for the list of fixes in a spreadsheet, rinse and repeat until the team got the formal acceptance letter that the release was ready for production.

  Of course, it was never that easy. There would be all sorts of escalations up the Dev and QA management chains because of disagreements and problems. Is this defect Priority 1 or Priority 2? When developers couldn’t reproduce the problem, they’d close the defect, only for it to be reopened by QA later. Or if QA couldn’t reproduce the fix, it would bounce back to Dev.

  Maxine and Tom stop at Kurt’s desk to tell him about their quest. “Those are a lot of donuts. What a great way to make friends,” Kurt says. “You tagging along too?” he asks Tom.

  “Absolutely,” he responds. “I’ve always wondered where our work goes after we’re done with it. It’s always felt like flushing the toilet—you put your code in the toilet bowl, press the lever, and it disappears from sight …”

  Kurt snorts. “Given the quality of the code we’ve seen in Phoenix, your metaphor seems pretty appropriate. Roy is the QA Manager assigned to Data Hub. And he’ll be tied up for at least ninety minutes,” he says, picking up his phone, tapping out a message to someone. “Go over to Building 7 to deliver those donuts while he’s preoccupied. I’ll connect you with Charlotte, who is, or was, William’s assistant. She’s like the mother hen for all the QA people.”

  Kurt finishes typing. “She’s expecting you. I think three boxes will be enough for the Data Hub team. Ask Charlotte how to most strategically deploy the remaining two boxes,” he adds with a smile.

  “She’ll get a conference room for you and bring the Data Hub QA team by,” Kurt says. “You’ll get a chance to meet all of them. And maybe you’ll find some people who are looking for help.”

  Maxine smiles. This is exactly the support she was looking for. “Thanks, Kurt. We’ll go make friends. In fact, how about we get pizza delivered for lunch to give us an excuse to hang out even longer?”

  “Perfect,” Kurt says. “Tell Charlotte to charge it to my old QA department code. With William gone, I’m sure it’ll take them a while to shut that down. Let’s take advantage of it,” he adds with a grin. “But before you go … can I have a donut?” he asks.

  “No. Sorry, they’re for our new QA friends,” Maxine says.

  Maxine and Tom walk across the courtyard to Building 7 with the boxes of donuts. They greet the security guard. When Maxine puts her badge on the electronic card reader on the side of the closed door, the light stays red.

  Maxine swipes her card again, but again, red light. Maxine sighs. She hadn’t expected to not be able to get into the building.

  “Interesting that developers can’t get into the QA building,” Tom says. “Does that mean QA people aren’t allowed into the Dev building?”

  Maxine is about to call Kurt when she hears the door open. A cheerful, elfin woman bustling with energy greets them. Right away, Maxine finds her irresistibly likeable.

  “You must be Maxine? And Tom? Kurt’s told me so much about you both! Come on in … I was pretty sure that your badge wouldn’t work in this building. It’s only a matter of time before Kurt’s stops working too. We’re all so happy for him—well, most of us are, that is. Many of us always knew that he was destined for bigger and better things than managing a QA team.”

  Charlotte’s comment about “destined for bigger and better things” makes QA sound like an underclass. Like Kurt had escaped some sort of ghetto, Maxine thinks.

  “What a wonderful idea to throw a party for QA! I’m not sure anyone’s ever done that before. Everyone will love it. I reserved the biggest conference room for the whole day—people will swing by whenever they’re not in meetings and such. And I also ordered pizza for everyone in the lunchroom.” Maxine is impressed that Charlotte has taken care of every detail so quickly. In the conference room, Maxine sees that Charlotte has already written on the whiteboard, “We Appreciate QA!!!” with hearts on either side of the large lettering.

  After looking for a moment, Maxine asks if she can make some changes.

  “Sure thing,” Charlotte is enthusiastic.

  Maxine makes her change: “We Appreciate Our QA Team Members!!!”

  She then adds the names of Tom, herself, Kurt, and the other five members of the Data Hub development team at the bottom.

&nbs
p; “Good idea,” Maxine hears Tom say behind her. “I suppose we should invite all of the Data Hub developers to lunch too? Want me to send an email to them?”

  Maxine quickly agrees, adding, “We’re going to need more pizza …”

  “No problem, I’ll take care of it,” says Charlotte with a big smile.

  Over the next couple of minutes, members of the QA team start trickling into the conference room. Maxine introduces herself to each one. She notices that the QA people are demographically a little different than the developers. No one is in their twenties. Maxine wonders if that’s because college grads are applying for developer roles instead?

  “So, what is this celebration about?” a woman with an Indian accent asks.

  “It’s Testing Day!” Maxine smiles, delighted to be asked. “I’m so excited that the features we’ve been working on for weeks are going to be tested. I thought it would be fun to throw a party, so we could meet the people who are doing this important work and to let you know that we’d love to help in any way.”

  “Gosh, that’s really nice,” the woman says, returning Maxine’s smile. “I’m not sure if that’s ever happened before.”

  Charlotte hollers from the other side of the room, “I’ve been here for seven years, and I’ve never seen it happen. This is such a nice idea, Maxine. Let me introduce you to everyone. Purna is one of the QA leads, and these are her team members …”

  And then there’s silence. Maxine wonders if everyone expects her to give a speech. As the host of the party, maybe she should.

  “So, uh, again, thank you so much. We’re having pizza delivered for lunch, and the Data Hub developers will be joining us then,” Maxine says. “What are you all working on these days?” That’s always a good ice breaker.