The Unicorn Project

by Gene Kim

  Thank you, Sarah

  Shocked, Maxine stares at the email. She cannot quite fully comprehend the enormity of what just happened. Sarah has effectively decapitated the Horizon 3 effort. To defend Horizon 1 and her quest for value, she has ensured that the Innovation Council work dies before it even gets started.

  Oddly, Maxine feels neither angry nor sad—she feels numb and suspects it’s because all her mental fuses have been blown from Sarah’s incredibly bold move. With some disbelief, she realizes that Sarah has engineered her own Red Wedding at Parts Unlimited.

  She picks up her phone and frantically tries to call Kurt and Maggie, but neither one of them answer their phones. She texts them, asking them what is going on. She gets no response from either of them.

  She stares off into space for a long time, trying to think of what she can do. She looks up and notices that people are gathering around her desk—Cranky Dave, Dwayne, Brent, Shannon, Adam, Purna, Ellen … In a frantic voice, Cranky Dave asks, “What the hell is going on? Does anyone even know?”

  No one has any idea. Nobody can reach Kurt or Maggie. Or Kirsten. Or Chris. Or Bill, for that matter.

  The junior officers and bridge crew have all disappeared, leaving the redshirts completely on their own.

  For the third time, Maxine sends another text message to Kurt:

  What’s going on? Where are you? Everyone is freaking the hell out!

  “Is the Rebellion over?” Brent asks the question that’s on everyone’s mind. “Are we all going to be shut down?”

  “Get a grip,” Shannon says, rolling her eyes. But Maxine can tell that she’s shaken too, because no one actually knows what’s going on. Maxine tries to be the mature adult in the room, calming everyone’s fears, but deep down she’s rattled to the core.

  Maxine looks at Brent. Maybe this grand adventure really is over. Maybe Bill is next on the chopping block. How high up does a corporate coup like this go? Maybe Steve is gone too. Has Sarah just really won the war?

  Maxine pictures Sarah sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, grinning triumphantly with an all-new bridge crew, having completed her purge of the old guard. Maybe she’ll have all the heads of her vanquished foes mounted on posts to deter the next would-be rebels.

  Would she reach all the way down into the engine room and purge all the redshirts who were associated with Kurt and Maggie? Normally she would have dismissed this idea as absurd. Bridge crew don’t care about redshirts, right?

  But the way Sarah has conspired to undermine all their efforts makes her rethink that idea. It’s not difficult to imagine her going through the entire redshirt roster, dividing them into naughty and nice lists, with the naughty people being beamed into exile to the planet Ceti Alpha V, like Kahn and his followers had been fifteen years before he took revenge on Captain Kirk.

  Not Sarah … She’d probably arrest them all right now and just beam them into the middle of a star to prevent any possibility of future wrath, Maxine thinks. Say what you want about Sarah, but she can definitely think ahead.

  Maxine looks at her watch. There’s only forty-five minutes until the pitches are scheduled to start in the auditorium. Maggie is missing in action and won’t be able to lead the session as planned, and she’s guessing that Steve will be a no-show too.

  Who is going to save Horizon 3? She looks around.

  In that moment, she realizes that it’s all up to her now.

  She picks up her desk phone and calls Steve’s extension on the landline, getting his assistant, Stacy.

  “Hi, I’m Maxine Chambers. I was in the meetings with Steve and Dick regarding the Innovation Council, along with Kurt and Maggie. We’re all a little freaked out at the message about Kurt and Maggie being suspended. Steve was scheduled to present at the Innovation pitches at nine o’clock. Will he still be able to make it?”

  “Hi, Maxine,” she hears from the other end of the line. “Amazing timing. I was just about to call you. Steve has a message for you. He says, ‘Take charge of the Innovation Pitch meeting. Good luck!’ He will be there if he can, but he’ll likely only be able to stay for a couple of minutes.”

  Steve’s assistant asks for her cell phone number so that Steve or Dick can text her later today. After Maxine gives it to her, she says, “Hang in there, Maxine! We’re all rooting for you.”

  Maxine hangs up the phone and stares at her desk for the briefest moment, girding herself for what she must do.

  “Come on, everyone,” she says. “We need to get to the Innovation Pitch meeting.”

  “But Maggie and Kurt have been rounded up by Sarah! Who is going to lead it?” Shannon asks.

  “We are,” Maxine says, gathering up her things.

  In the front row of the big auditorium, the focused excitement and nervousness of all the teams getting ready to present is palpable. If anyone dropped out because they saw Sarah’s email, Maxine doesn’t notice.

  Maxine climbs up on the stage, looking for the people who are running the operation. She finds the person who seems to be managing the A/V and asks for a microphone so that she can address the room at nine. That’s in three minutes.

  Brent hands her the printed schedule of the teams presenting their proposals and then tells the stage manager to start lining people up backstage. Maxine thanks Brent, who grins back. “Good luck, Maxine! Tell us if you need anything!”

  Maxine looks into the audience and sees all the committee members chosen to judge the proposals sitting in the front row. They’ll be listening to each of the teams give their ten-minute pitch. Behind them are hundreds of people who have come to watch the teams pitch their ideas.

  Maggie had taken extraordinary care to mitigate the “HIPPO effect” (or Highest Paid Person’s Opinion), referring to people’s unhealthy tendency to only care what the highest-level decision-maker thought. To counter this, Maggie instructed the entire Innovation Council to listen to each pitch, ask any questions, but keep their votes and ratings secret.

  She looks around for Steve but can’t find him. She looks at her watch. It’s time. She waves at the stage manager and motions that she’s ready to go. The stage manager says something in her headset, and then motions counting down from 3, 2 …

  “Hi, my name is Maxine Chambers,” she says into the microphone, squinting into the bright lights. “Umm, Maggie Lee was supposed to lead this meeting, but as you may have read in the email, she’s been put on an urgent mission to do an inventory audit.”

  She hears laughter in the crowd, which surprises her. She hadn’t intended that to be funny.

  “And Steve was supposed to say some words about the proud history of the company and how we must help keep our customers’ cars running. He was also going to talk about how important he thinks fostering innovation within the company is, but he’s unable to join us at the moment. We’ve assembled an amazing group of some of the most respected people in the company to judge these pitches. We had hundreds of proposals, and I read every one of them.

  “They’re all amazing, and it was so difficult to choose just thirty of them. But we did, and they will all present to you today,” she says, hoping her voice isn’t cracking and that her nervousness isn’t showing. She wishes she had worn her jacket to hide the sweat pouring from her body. “Each team will get ten minutes, and then we’ll have five minutes for Q&A. At the end of the day, the Council will deliberate, and Steve will announce the three winners at the next Town Hall.

  “My team and I will have the privilege of working with each of these teams to test the viability of their ideas,” she says with a big smile. She thinks about the events of this morning and her eyes start welling up with tears. She says, voice cracking, “We have made a bunch of sacrifices to make this happen, so I’m grateful to all of you for putting so much work into your pitches, and I promise you that we’ll do our best to make them a reality.”

  She smiles and feels teary-eyed as she hears everyone clap and cheer. She looks at the stage manage
r, who smiles and gives her a big thumbs up. Maxine looks at the sheet of paper in front of her, shaking visibly in her hands, and calls the first team up on the stage.

  As she goes backstage, she sees Brent appear next to her, saying, “Holy crap, Maxine. That was awesome. I’m so glad everyone is going to be able to pitch their ideas … Even after all that … You know?”

  Maxine smiles back, giving Brent a quick hug, thanking him for his help. She turns her attention to the team pitching. Maxine is delighted by what she hears. One store manager presents her idea of helping rideshare drivers, such as Uber or Lyft drivers, with their unique needs. Another proposes a concierge service for common maintenance tasks.

  But the first idea that generates buzz throughout the auditorium is a rating system for garages and service stations, which immediately gets the nickname “Yelp for Garages.” The idea is to have Parts Unlimited customers share their experiences about service stations with other customers.

  Another proposal that excites Maxine comes after the morning break. A senior sales manager presents an idea to create a four-hour delivery service to their service station customers. This would enable those stations to offer more repair services, knowing that needed parts could be quickly delivered as needed. A competitive startup had recently emerged offering four-hour delivery, and the Parts Unlimited business unit that sold directly to service stations already cut their revenue forecasts for next year by ten percent because of them.

  This team is convinced that Parts Unlimited can take on this competitor and win, and that it will improve their relationships with their most important service station customers. When its ringleader says, “Given all our capabilities, I think we can wipe this startup completely off the map,” the auditorium erupts in cheers.

  Some of the other presentations are also very good, but by midafternoon Maxine sees the pitch that she falls in love with, only partly because it is being pitched by Brent, Shannon, Dwayne, and Wes. She can’t resist cheering for them as they take the stage. She is so proud of them.

  Their idea is to sell an engine sensor and create a huge array of offerings around it. Initially, it will focus on earlier detection of car problems while they are small and before they can snowball into big, expensive problems, like oil changes and engine wear. Stores could provide these repair services for discounted rates to their customers, because the work could be scheduled during slow periods.

  Many months ago, Wes saw that one of the items recommended for him on the app (powered by the Unicorn Project) was an engine sensor that they recently started selling in their stores. It had been flying off the shelves. It was a surprisingly neat device. It attached to the Onboard Diagnostic Port 2 (ODB-II) that every car has these days, required by the landmark 1994 California Air Resources Board Act. This standard data connector enables monitoring of engine characteristics, including, most famously, emissions levels.

  Maxine is surprised to learn that even new electric cars like the Tesla have ODB-II ports, even though they don’t have an internal combustion engine.

  The idea is to either OEM or resell one of these sensors, and then build a world-class software ecosystem around it to help with everything from on-site diagnostics, advisory services to customers, and better preventive maintenance. They also describe ideas such as working with insurance companies to help reduce premiums and making apps to help parents track their kids’ driving habits.

  This was so compelling to Maxine that she immediately bought the sensor during the pitch on her phone. Maxine is always terrified of her kids driving too fast. At the end of the pitch, despite her desire to be impartial, Maxine leaps to her feet and cheers. In her mind, it’s ideas like this that can take Parts Unlimited to exciting, new, and vibrant places.

  There are other pitches that catch her attention too, but she knows who she is going to vote for. At the end of the day, Maxine takes the stage again and says, “Thank you all so much for presenting all these amazing ideas. We’ll be collecting all the ballots at the end of the day, and Steve will be announcing the winner at the January Town Hall. See you then!”

  She waves at everyone and hands the stage manager back her microphone. She’s exhausted. Her legs are shaking, her back hurts from standing, and she prays that she doesn’t stink from all her nervous sweating and standing under the hot lights.

  As she rejoins her fellow Rebellion members, she thinks about the day. Maxine feels relieved and energized about the Innovation pitches. As wrenching as the reorganization and workforce changes will be, if they enable exciting things like this to happen, it will be worth it. And better yet, she will always have the satisfaction of having helped make it a reality. But now, they need to figure out what happened to Kurt and Maggie and, for that matter, the rest of the bridge crew who have gone missing.

  And whether the Innovation effort will happen at all.

  It’s after five, so they all decide to meet at the Dockside as usual.

  As people arrive at the bar, Maxine keeps asking if anyone has any updates or news. Or even new rumors to share. But no one has heard anything. There has been complete radio silence. Aside from Sarah’s email, there have been no further official company communications or announcements.

  Maxine says to everyone, “Look, whatever happens, even if Maggie and Kurt have been fired, we still must do everything we can to make those Horizon 3 projects succeed. Even if it means working with those teams over the holidays. We need to help them get a running start and increase the chances of those projects succeeding … I have the names of the three winning teams here. Who’s with me?”

  “Count us all in, Maxine,” says Shannon. “Even if it means helping the competition.”

  “We’re all on the same team, Shannon,” Brent says, rolling his eyes. “We’re not actually competing against each other; we’re competing against the market.”

  “You know what I meant,” Shannon says. “Who are the winners?”

  Maxine looks around and sees that everyone is nodding, committed to helping the three pilot teams. She says, “It was pretty decisive. It wasn’t even close. The judges’ top choice is the Engine Sensor project …”

  Before she can announce the others, everyone cheers and slaps Shannon, Brent, and Dwayne on the back, congratulating them. “Wes is on his way,” says Shannon. “I’m texting him the news now.”

  “… and the other two winners are the Service Station Ratings team and the Four-Hour Parts Delivery team,” Maxine says with a smile. “I’d love to help the Four-Hour Delivery project, because it deals with so many different parts of the organization. I love that stuff.”

  Cranky Dave raises his hand, saying, “I’ll help the Service Station Ratings project.” And when they divide themselves into teams, with the exception of the Engine Sensor group, Maxine smiles. “I’ll email you introductions to each of the team leads.”

  Dwayne pours beer for everyone and Maxine sips her favorite “Erik Special” wine. They order food, and she decides to invite the three teams down to join them at the Dockside. If they make it, they could get a head start on planning.

  Maxine takes a deep breath. She has now successfully discharged her obligations to get the Horizon 3 efforts rolling. She has done everything she can. The mood is a mix between relief and a somber, anxious, fretting impatient waiting, like people waiting in a hospital for a baby delivery, awaiting word on news of both the mother and the newborn. Wes eventually shows up but has no news on Bill or the others, either.

  It’s six. Surely there should be some resolution to whatever is happening up on the bridge by now, Maxine thinks.

  Thirty minutes goes by. An hour. Two hours.

  And then she hears Wes holler out, “Holy flaming tamales. Check your email!”

  Maxine checks her phone.

  From:

  Steve Masters (CEO, Parts Unlimited)

  To:

  All Parts Unlimited Employees

  Date:

  7:45 p.m., December 18

  Subject:r />
  Maggie Lee reinstated

  Maggie Lee is resuming her responsibilities for retail operations and the Innovation Council. If you have any questions about roles and responsibilities, please email me.

  I look forward to sharing more news about the exciting future of Parts Unlimited soon. See you at the next Town Hall!

  Thank you, and happy holidays! Steve

  Maxine hears cheering all around the table, but the still-uncertain fate of Kurt, let alone Sarah, dampens the mood. Wes looks at his phone and hollers out with a big smile on his face, “Bill and Maggie and Kurt are on their way.”

  Someone orders a bunch more pitchers of beer, just in time. Kurt walks through the door, smiling, both arms stretched triumphantly above his head. Behind him are Maggie, Kirsten, and Bill.

  A round of cheers erupts from their table, with the rest of the Dockside Bar joining in, as well. Eventually, they sit at the table, downing their drinks, and the tale finally comes out.

  “It was just like the movie Brazil!” Kurt says proudly, laughing. “I got killed with paperwork. Sarah opened up an investigation with HR about all the rules I broke: Failure to submit timecards. Failure to follow expense report policies. Failure to follow capital spending guidelines. Failure to follow budgeting processes. Inaccurate coding of personnel.”

  Maxine sees Bill eyeing Kurt. She wonders if he’s going to keep closer tabs on him now.

  “… and, well, there was another thing,” Kurt says. “One alleged inappropriate relationship with another manager. But we never worked for each other, she was actually senior to me, and we told HR about it right away. We’ve been happily married for five years now, so I’m pretty sure that won’t stick.”

  “Oh, Kurt,” Maxine says, relieved that it wasn’t something more serious. “Can Sarah really get away with this?”

  “For now. I’m suspended with pay for sixty days, pending further investigation,” he says. “Steve got Maggie off the hook for now too. Sarah is still at large, though. Apparently, everything is hinging on the success of the Horizon 3 projects. Steve is betting his job on it. If these efforts don’t pan out, Sarah will become the new, and likely last, CEO of Parts Unlimited as we know it.”