03 Ascend Corp · New employee onboarding
The Merger
You were onboarded this morning, you will be assessed this afternoon, and congratulations are not in order. Your Chief Executive has bought another company, and would now like to find out whether your department is as good as the one he has just paid for.
Orientation reel Reel 03 · narrated
Turn the volume up. If the phone's mute switch is on, the reel will be silent.
§ The written version
1. The situation
The Chief Executive has been away closing the deal for months, and can no longer remember which of you worked here before and which of you he has just purchased. So he has resolved this the way executives resolve most things. He has split you into two rooms at random and asked for results.
Now the part to get straight first. Your room is where you are sitting. Your department is who you actually work for. They are not the same thing, and about half your room is quietly working against you.
With one exception. Every room has a Vice President, and their department is public. Everyone knows who that VP works for, and that is who the room's work is credited to. Everybody else is a question mark. And it is being said, though the company will not confirm it, that one of the two departments is going to be cut.
Here is the whole game. The Chief Executive has written one memo. Nobody may read it. Your department has twenty minutes — which the company insists on calling a fiscal year — to work out exactly what it said. Word for word.
2. How it is run
2.1 Before the clock starts
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The briefing
The Chief Executive takes both Vice Presidents out of their rooms and shows them the memo. Fifteen seconds to memorise it. Thirty seconds to write down what they remember. Then it is taken away.
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The one to one
Back in the room, before anything is typed, the Vice President picks one colleague at random and takes them aside. The Vice President learns one thing only: whether that colleague is theirs, or the other department's. Nobody else is told, and the VP need not report it honestly.
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The note climbs
The note goes to an Associate, who types it into the room's phone. From there it climbs back up the chain — Associate, Manager, Director, Vice President — and every one of them may change up to two words without explaining why.
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The answer key
The Chief Executive files the real memo into both phones — at least fifteen words — and marks four of its words as key words. That text is locked away until the game ends. The moment it exists, the device marks the Vice President's filed version against it for free, so the room starts from what it already knows.
2.2 Once the clock is running
Twenty minutes, in four blocks of five that the company calls quarters. In each one, your department files a single guess, of any length. The Board marks it, and hands it straight back.
| Highlighted | one of the four key words, in the right place |
|---|---|
| Green | an ordinary word in the right place |
| Plain | it was never in the memo at all |
Between filings, two things will interrupt you. Action-items name a real employee, and take effect immediately. Some are in your favour. Some are not. And clues, where the Board points at something in the memo you have not found yet.
At the end of every quarter, your room votes one employee across into the other room. Choose carefully. Whoever you throw out becomes loyal to that room the moment they arrive.
And for most of those twenty minutes you are not holding the phone. You are talking. Comparing notes, working out who is with you, and lying whenever it suits you. That is the game.
3. How the game is won
| Each key word recovered | 5 points |
|---|---|
| Every other word in the right place | 1 point |
| If the departments finish level | each Vice President names every member of their own department, 1 point for each one they get right |
The higher total takes the company. Winners keep their jobs. So make sure your Vice President knows who you are.
4. Five things worth knowing
- Take notes on everybody, and which department you think they support.
- Be selective about who you tell. The room you are in might not be the department you support.
- Your Vice President is the only person who has seen the original.
- Watch what changed in the memo, rather than who is loudest about it.
- Keep the memo moving. A filing that arrives late scores only what it had.
And the Chief Executive is neutral. He will settle a dispute, but he will not take your side, and will not tell you anything.
Take your seats. The Chief Executive has the only phone with the real memo. Do not look at it.