CHAPTER 18

• Thursday, December 18

When she wakes up on Thursday morning, she feels well-rested and excited about the day. Part of it is from having gotten a full night of dreamless sleep. But it’s also because today is when the finalists for the Innovation ideas will be pitching the entire Innovation Council. As promised, Bill picked fifty of the most respected people from across the company, making them responsible for choosing the first three Innovation ideas to be staffed and explored.

Those three winning submitters would each have a team handselected by Maxine, and they’d have ninety days to explore the viability of the idea, investigating market risk, technical risk, and business model risk, and hopefully achieving some fantastic agreed-upon business outcomes. This would be the Horizon 3 work that they were fighting so hard to protect.

Maxine was astonished that back when Steve announced to the entire company that anyone could submit an idea, within a week they had hundreds of submissions. Being on the committee, Maxine read all of them and was inspired by their creativity and thoughtfulness. Almost all of them attempted to address real problems that their customers had, and many of them displayed ingenious ways that Parts Unlimited could help.

She marveled at how strong people’s intrinsic motives were to explore these problems. The committee deliberated and picked the top thirty proposals, and today, all of them are pitching the entire Innovation Council in the big auditorium where they normally held the Town Halls.

Each of the pitching teams had been able to rehearse with some of the committee members during the week, getting any desired coaching and guidance. Maxine loved how committee members were so generous with their time, especially right before the holidays. For the people pitching, these interactions would help create useful networks and would likely help advance their careers.

Maxine walks to her desk, eager to get the most urgent work done so she can go the auditorium and help with the Innovation pitch preparations.

As she sits down, she sees a text message from Cranky Dave:

Holy crap. Check your email.

When she pulls up her email and sees the subject line, she breaks out in a cold sweat, whispering, “Oh, no …”

From:			Sarah Moulton (SVP, Retail Operations)
To:			All IT Employees
Cc:			Company Executives
Date:			8:05 a.m., December 18
Subject:			Changes to personnel and responsibilities

Effective immediately, Maggie Lee (Sr. Director of Retail Product Marketing) has been reassigned to assist with an urgent inventory audit at our retail stores.

Because of the time-criticality of these issues, she is relieved of all duties, including any Innovation Council work. Please direct all those communications and decisions to me.

Furthermore, Kurt Reznick (QA Manager) is suspended of all responsibilities, for reasons I cannot responsibly disclose. Please direct all Innovation Council related issues to Rick Willis (QA Manager) and all other issues to Chris Allers (VP R&D).

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 manager, 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:			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.”

Maxine quickly fills Maggie, Kurt, and Bill in on what happened today and how they’d organized themselves into three teams to support the three Innovation projects.

Maxine sees Maggie burst into a big smile. “That’s absolutely amazing, Maxine. Great work. Let’s pick this back up tomorrow. But in the meantime, I’d like to buy you all a drink! It’s been a helluva day!”

“We’re still in business, everyone!” Bill says. Almost as an afterthought, he gestures to Kurt with a smile, “Well, most of us … See you in sixty days, Kurt.”

He turns to Maxine and says, “Good job on the Horizon 3 stuff today. The next month is critical, so don’t screw it up.” With a smile, he adds, “Let me know how I can help. There is literally nothing else more important.”

Despite the late night out on Thursday, work begins early on Friday, the last day before most people leave on holiday for two weeks. But everyone knows that the fate of the Innovation pilots is uncertain. No one needs any convincing to get as much done as quickly as they can. The idea of having something, anything, to show at the January Town Hall is an inspiring goal.

But the peak holiday selling season is also upon them, and work continues unrelentingly on the Unicorn Project. On the infrastructure side, people are more confident than ever because of Brent’s Chaos Engineering efforts. Over the last several weeks, they’ve increased production load testing and even injected faults into the production environment to ensure that they’ve exposed the failure modes that the incredible onslaught of orders coming from the Unicorn campaign could create.

Brent has proven to be incredibly devious in designing these tests, including unplugging a bunch of network cables during the middle of one of the drills. Incredibly, everything kept limping along instead of blowing up spectacularly like during the Phoenix launch over three months ago.

For several days, the Rebellion works furiously to support the holiday promotions launch. To Maxine’s relief, the holiday launch goes more smoothly than the Thanksgiving launch, and the early business results look very good.

Maggie was right—creating great promotions is a game of learning, and it’s obvious that the entire Unicorn team has learned a lot and that Parts Unlimited is benefiting tremendously from it.

As soon as holiday sales peak, the entire Rebellion shifts their focus to helping the three grateful Innovation teams. But not before having a blameless post-mortem, even though they didn’t have an outage.

For that matter, nothing even terribly bad happened. But as Kurt reminded them, the purpose of these meetings is to learn.

It was a fantastic and riveting hour, and Maxine learned about several near misses that could have resulted in something more serious happening. People enthusiastically volunteered for engineering work that could make the system even safer. That’s when Maxine realizes how many people from outside the team have come to watch.

People are always invited to join these blameless post-mortems, but she never expected so many engineers to show up. In fact, there wasn’t enough room for everyone, so many people joined online. These forums now had a reputation for being the fastest way to learn about the most innovative and exciting things in the company.

“Where is she?” asks Debra, the director of sales, looking at her watch as she paces around the conference room.

“Don’t worry, she’ll be here,” Maxine says.

“Don’t worry? Are you kidding? I’m worried about everything!” Debra says. “We’re driving up costs everywhere, and if I were a store manager, I’d be freaking out at all these manual processes we’re proposing. Bill is even suggesting that we stockpile parts at the service stations to create a safety buffer, without them even paying us for it in advance! And he’s pushing us to do our first test market pilot two weeks sooner than planned!”

“It makes sense to me,” Maxine says, smiling. “The fastest way to kill the pilot is let these service stations down. If Bill is willing to pay for the added inventory, let him. Usually he’s the one pushing for more constraints, not more slack.”

Debra stops mid step. “Right. Customer Focus. The Fifth Ideal.”

“Exactly,” Maxine says. “We’ll certainly be testing how much Steve really believes his schtick around how great customer satisfaction and employee engagement will lead to great cash flow.”

“You know, it’s incredible how enthused and engaged the store managers are,” Debra says, smiling for the first time. “We’re relying so heavily on them. They’re going to be bringing in more in-store staff to handle the load, and in a pinch, they’ll be personally delivering these parts if no one is available …

“I think it’s because the data is so persuasive,” she continues. “Thanks again for your help pulling it all together. If there’s anything I’ve learned managing salespeople, it’s that you never want to bring opinions when you’re playing a game that needs facts.”

Maxine laughs. “I didn’t do that much. It was your team that pulled together all the analysis. We just made sure that all the data they needed was in a place where they could access it.”

“I wouldn’t minimize your contribution,” Debra says. “There are so many bets we’re making. We needed purchasing histories for each of the pilot service stations, line it up with our parts availability and lead times, their distance from our distribution centers and stores, cross-shipment costs, not to mention all the uncertainties about how to build up a transportation capability … and there’s still so much we don’t know!”

Maxine nods. Despite (or maybe because of) the high stakes, Maxine is having fun, very much in the spirit of the Second Ideal of Focus, Flow and Joy. Working with the team to generate the analyses, working with the distant silos across the company, studying the transportation challenges … She imagines this is better than any MBA project, because they’re doing it for real.

Although Debra frets about all the manual processes, Maxine knows that this is all about creating a Minimum Viable Product to test their offerings and confirm their hypotheses of what capabilities are required to fulfill them. This rapid iteration and learning before they invest heavily in rolling out a big, disruptive process is a great example of the Third Ideal of Improvement of Daily Work.

Similarly, having all the expertise within the team and the data they need at-hand is a great example of the First Ideal of Locality and Simplicity, and the crazy ideas that people are willing to offer up certainly shows the presence of the Fourth Ideal of Psychological Safety.

“Why are you smiling?” Debra asks, staring at her.

Maxine just shakes her head, and instead, greets the Director of Operations as she and her staff file into the conference room.