The Unhappy Unicorn

It was an early Monday morning, Jully sat at her desk. Her fingers went through her bag in an automatic thoughtless motion, she found her laptop.
she pulled it from her bag, and placed it in front of her on the desk. She had the latest pro edition, it was a state of the art machine, constructed from Aluminum alloy, it was a masterpiece of precision work, she run her fingers across the top, the metal brushing at her fingers felt like fine fabric, almost like silk. Jully loved her laptop.

Jully was one of those early risers, she got up early and was always one of the first people to arrive to work, she loved the silence of the morning before everyone else came, before the buzz and humm of work begun, it was her sanctuary, a time she could try and make sense of it all, without disruption. Jully opened her laptop, typed in her password, her simple omni password, the one she had since she was a child. She was in, Her apps from before the weekend’s start were all there / open. She felt a jolt, as if all those apps just arose from stasis, it felt they all stared at her wondering what just happened, they didn’t feel time has passed and they reminded her all she’s stopped doing on Friday before leaving. The feeling was uncomfortable but Jully said to herself “lets start fresh”. She restarted the machine, ignoring all suggestions to reopen the apps when the machine reboots, “what a silly feature”, it occurred to her, when restarting she had never wanted to reopen the apps, that’s why she rebooted the machine — to get rid of them. She left for coffee.

The kitchen was lush, cereals, light beverages and snacks were neatly arranged offering themselves to people who passed. Sandwiches and hot cooked food was being arranged by the “food people”. They came every morning just before everyone else did, arranging the food. They did it for many startups in that area and Jully was coming early enough to see them. She recognised them and they did her, smiling, “good morning” greetings was the entire of their conversations. She made herself a short espresso with one of the many coffee machines available. and went back to her desk.

She found her computer rebooted. A fresh feeling swept over her, she was happy, she felt the burden of status week’s past to vanish and an energy surge to start fresh. She tried to think, what should she do next, she couldn’t remember. Swiftly without thought she opened her browser, got into that management tool they where using. It was a new tool, it looked much better then the last four tools her team tried in the past year, it was faster and better organized. At the beginning of the month, Her manager’s manager Joe had them start using it. It wasn’t easy, the last four tries left bad taste with everyone, no-one was up for another storm of disorientation, every new tool they tried had caused and overload and with every new try the managers made promises, promises, this will solve the problem, this will make work organized and clear. Jully was a techie, she had no problem adapting to any new tool, and so she thought not to make it harder for the managers, she had little to no believe that this will solve the team’s problem — but she had no intention to appose it. The tool opened, her list of tasks where there in front of her, “that is an improvement“ she thought — the last tools had this list hidden behind two clicks of the mouse, here it was simple, beautifully designed without clutter, She also loved that unicorn animation when she completed tasks. The glowing glittered unicorn made that task completion agitation feel less dominant. She never understood that feeling, here she was completing a task — stating it’s done and yet she felt weird — not happy, She thought for a second, this is weird — every day I open this list hoping to get it done “kill it” in the startup language — but when I do it doesn’t make me happy, it doesn’t make me feel I’ve done something. She looked at the list of tasks again, going through the list in her mind, leaping in time, forecasting the future, each task she completed in her mind gave her that twisted mixed feeling of success and …. and what, she couldn’t put her finger on that feeling. She kept on — going task after task completing it in her mind, that feeling, with each task it became stronger more intense.. more vivid. It was fear. Fear… she thought to herself, fear? Fear of what? this is what I wanted to do, what on earth she had to be afraid of. She stayed with that feeling- clinging as if to try to understand it better- yes it was fear, but not a regular one, it wan’t the regular physical fear or fear of bad consequences of one’s mistakes… It was more of a disappointing fear, fear that she’s doing the wrong thing, fear that the future is not positive. She needed a break.

She left her desk and went to take a glass of water, By now people had started dripping into the office. She looked at the clock, an hour had passed, wow.. she didn’t understand how… That feeling…. it didn’t leave her, she had to make sense of it. She went for the roof.

The roof had an open deck, brown wood covered the floor and it was vast, coming up in the translucent elevator, the roof revealed itself gradually, it covered all of the building plate floor. The elevators stood different in the empty sea of wood, along side the elevator was a small shack, designed to make one feel on a beach, with a straw roof and tiny umbrellas in glasses it achieved the effect. In the shack some of the “food people” started to prepare breakfast. Jully seldom went up on the roof to eat breakfast, she was ok with the coffee and sandwiches on her floor. Some people were there ordering, she saw as they pointed to their choices to the food people. She went off to the beach-like chairs so she could relax and make her thoughts clear.

Now thinking again over her task list, her feeling became more intense, more clear, she feared, she feared her job was for nothing. she feared from the next tasks to come and she feared all her time there was wasted. Why? this was strange to her, Why? Jully was considered a top engineer, she had a high-six figure salary and was very appreciated, The startup itself was successful, it was doing great, it was a Decacorn — valued at over ten billion dollars. The newspapers were raving on it and the CEO made the glorious list of Forbes top 40 over 40. They were told they are changing the world, and from what she saw they actually were. She thought harder, she tried to deeper connect to that feeling. It wasn’t about the company, it was smaller, it had to do with her team. She felt fear for the team. And suddenly like a stroke of lightning it came to her, thoughts went through her head and everything started to connect. The endless meetings, the weekly presentations, morning meetings, emails, instant messages — all of it. She had no idea what they were doing! it was all motivational those meetings and communication, it was all empty, all this time she didn’t really know. She didn’t know what they are doing! she felt safe with the technical low level she but had no idea what was the higher big level. She didn’t knew a lot of things regarding the high-level, she had no big picture. She felt empty, like a robot, completing task after task — not knowing why, getting new tasks when old ones are completed. Every once in a while she was complimented on a task she completed, but it felt random she never new why that one was special and another was not. All those talks, all those meetings, they were just motivational — getting her to move forward, getting her excited, but for what?

Jully became aware of herself, she noticed she is very tense, almost curled up in a ball, it was chilly on the roof and she was not wearing enough to feel warm, she sat back in the beach chair and took one of the small blankets folded on the table close to her, it smelled good, like it had just being washed. She laid back covered by the blanket, it felt warm.

Now more relaxed she swept through the same thoughts again, now more clearly. She knew what she was supposed to do, she knew she’s doing a good job and she knew the company is doing great. It wasn’t that, something wasn’t working on the big scale, it was just that she didn’t knew why. The missing pieces became clear as well. For every task she completes she get handed another task. She has no idea what others are working on, When she does stumble upon some of this information, usually in a prolonged lunch break that randomly happen once a week, she feel it collides with other things and wished someone had asked her about.

The big project wasn’t clear to her, she knew what it was, but she didn’t knew how her actions helped it happen, sure she understood the details and that each task was a part of the project, but why those tasks, why not others, was the things she worked on the most important things, were there other solutions and how did her actions impact or interact with what others did. She remembered that time when working on the mobile view, someone “forgot to tell her” they changed it completely on the web version. Or when she was told to work on the pricing only to discover someone else was working on the exact same thing in the other side of the company. It was small things but they mounted up. Jully felt things can be better, she felt she deserved that the work she’s devoting so much time to, will push the company forward. She wanted to make a difference she wanted to know she matters.

The waste…. Jully thought, all those things she was given that didn’t make that difference, the fancy office, the food, the roof and yes, even her amazing computer they were all there to make work more fun, to make her work better — but the real important things were absent — she felt….. that her intelligence was not used — the company utilised her technical skills but they got non of her ability to help the big picture — they got non of what she had to give to push things forward, to solve problems — simply because they failed to explain what it is everyone around her was expected to achieve and what her part in it was.

Jully wanted to change this — it was clear to her, she was in front of her computer, she searched for similar problems others had encountered and found a tool, a new one that described the problems she had, it offered a solution, a visual solution. It was simple, it didn’t look like any of the tools she used before, instead of projects and tasks it offered a grid of states represented by colors. You could do anything you wanted with a board — add different columns of all types and form your own way to look at things. But on the other hand it offered a very specific solution manage the high-level — the big picture. The tool builders explain that no matter what you do with it you should expect to have the big picture, you should know what other people are doing and you should know the state of things — they didn’t believe in checkboxes done/no-done wasn’t enough — they said reality is always more complex — Jully thought about it — they were right — this is why communication is always outside the tools — this is why we’re having those meetings, emails and messages — non of the tools hold that information — non of the tools she knew did anything else then list work. Colors and states that’s simple and visual — she understood it — it holds all of the things she needed to know. July didn’t waste time, she started adding her work to the tool, first she created the team view of what everyone in the team needed to do — instantly she had a better picture — she saw who’s working on what and if she wanted she could see just her list — but always in the broader context. She could not resist, she started adding the company roadmap — the one she knew from emails and meetings — it was a partial view with lots of missing data, but she saw how this will make her feel good — how this will make her know where she fits in. She showed it to the team and then to the managers — they loved it — she was surprised….a fifth tool and they love it…….hmmm…. it was different…. it wasn’t the same thing any of them ever saw — it can work….over the next few weeks they worked with the tool — it was apparent that higher management also took interest, July was happy. New things started to become better as well, things she never thought of. Each week’s tasks became a goal. July knew in advance what was expected of her each week and when completed it was a celebration, an expected anticipated celebration of weekly success. People became addicted to turning boards green, it communicated results, it explained the state of things. July got satisfaction from it — she didn’t fear any more.

Suddenly her phone vibrated, she was still on the roof daydreaming, non of it was real, the mystic tool, her happy feeling it was all a dream, it was 11am and an instant message said —”where are you? we’re starting our Monday morning meeting”

We see things differently — join us. dapulse