So, you ever hear of a place, let’s call it “Imaginary Co.”? On paper, or well, on their shiny website and in their recruitment pitches, they sounded like the future. Truly. They talked a big game about innovation, about changing the world, the whole shebang. And I, like a few others, kinda bought into it for a while.
My Stint in the Land of Make-Believe
I got pulled into this one project there. Oh man, the buzz around it was something else. They called it “Project Unicorn,” or something equally whimsical, I don’t quite remember the exact fancy name. The idea was to build this revolutionary… well, that’s the funny part, the “what” was always a bit hazy, always shifting. But it was definitely going to be revolutionary.
The first few weeks, even months, were all about “ideation.” Sounds productive, right? We had:
- Endless brainstorming sessions. Seriously, I think we single-handedly kept the sticky note industry afloat.
- Whiteboards covered in diagrams that looked super complex but said very little.
- Workshops on “disruptive thinking” and “blue sky envisioning.”
We spent so much time talking about what we could do, what we might do, what the potential was. I remember my manager at the time saying, “We’re crafting the dream first!” Okay, fair enough, gotta have a dream.
I started out pretty enthusiastic. I’d sketch out actual user flows, try to mock up some basic interfaces, you know, try to make something, anything, a bit more concrete. I’d say, “Hey, how about we build a small prototype of this one feature, just to see if it even works?”
But that wasn’t really the vibe. It was always, “Let’s not get bogged down in the nitty-gritty yet.” Or, “We need to explore more paradigms before committing.” More paradigms! We were drowning in paradigms. We had presentations, oh boy, did we have presentations. Slides full of inspiring quotes and stock photos of diverse teams looking thoughtfully at transparent screens. We presented to stakeholders, who would nod sagely and ask for “more vision.”
The Slow Fade of Project Unicorn
After about six months of this, I started to feel it. You know that feeling when you’re pedaling a stationary bike really hard, sweating, putting in the effort, but you ain’t going nowhere? That was it. I saw some really smart people, people who could actually build amazing things, just getting… tired. Their eyes would glaze over in the tenth “synergy meeting” of the week.
My “aha!” moment, if you can call it that, wasn’t dramatic. It was just a slow dawning realization during yet another “strategic alignment” workshop. We were aligning to an alignment of a previous alignment. I looked around the room, at all the expensive consultants and the catered lunch, and thought, “This isn’t real. None of this is going to turn into a real thing people use.” It was like the whole company was an elaborate stage play, and Project Unicorn was just the current act.
And you know what happened to Project Unicorn? Nothing spectacular. It didn’t crash and burn. It just… faded. Meetings got less frequent. The dedicated Slack channel went quiet. Then, one day, people just stopped mentioning it. Poof. Gone. Like it was, well, imaginary.
Soon after, there was talk of a new “transformative initiative.” Sounded awfully familiar. That’s when I figured my time there was probably up. I learned a lot, mostly about how not to do things, and how some places are just really, really good at talking. Real good at talking. Not so much on the doing part. It’s a weird way to run a business, if you ask me, but hey, they seemed to be doing alright for themselves, always onto the next big imaginary thing.
