How to Find a Unicorn

In the corporate world, a unicorn is, metaphorically, the right horse to bet on. And these are exceedingly rare. Or...are we just not looking in the right places? Let's discuss meritocracy!

I believe in meritocracy, where someone who works hard and excels at their job should rise through the ranks. Furthermore, just compensation should be provided for hard work, smart work. Because of these first two beliefs, I also believe in equal treatment under the law. I also believe that immigration is a boon for the United States. How do I roll these together? I’ll explain that and some other things.

When I was in high school, a long time ago, I learned about statistics in one of my classes. I realized then that the quality of candidates who rise to the top is higher when there are more candidates in the pool. It’s a wild thing to think about, but here it is restated: if I have more people to choose from, then there’s more competition, and therefore, there’s a higher quality bar for those who manage to separate themselves from the rest.

As an aside, this is why white supremacy, or any arbitrary distinction of greatness based on characteristics beyond simply doing work and being fairly evaluated for it, will always fail to produce a unicorn. White supremacy is little more than coddling people who fear having to prove themselves.

Consider parents who ignore their child’s actual skills and interests, and use their own money and influence to buy their way into an Ivy League college, at the expense of someone else earning that place. While this may give a leg up to the child, it narrows the size of the applicant pool, leaving behind someone who might actually want to be there and who will work much harder to prove they’ve earned their spot.

I didn’t explain thoroughly enough how the size of the applicant pool matters, so I’ll take a moment to discuss this now. Imagine if all corporate leaders, for example, could only be selected from Middleton Township, New Jersey. That’s a population of approximately seventy thousand people. There are three hundred and fifty or so million people across the entire United States, and you’re looking for a unicorn: is it more likely that the person exists among seventy thousand, or among the remaining two hundred ninety million? The answer is pretty obvious.

But we don’t have to exclude the seventy thousand. If, by chance, that’s where the unicorn is hiding, then no problem, we include them as well. What if the pool was the entire three-fifty million? Then we’re almost guaranteed to find the unicorn.

Suppose instead that we arbitrarily exclude everyone not from Middleton Township, New Jersey. In that case, we’ve just reduced the probability of finding our unicorn by so much that we’re pretty much guaranteed not to see it. No offense, Middleton Township—this is a numbers game. Look to the town I grew up in, with a population of three thousand. What happens there? Not a unicorn in sight. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s improbable due only to the population size, and nothing else.

Building on that concept, consider the immigrants who come to this country legally. That increases the population pool even more and makes it even more likely that my unicorn can be found. Numbers, alone, demonstrate that you drastically increase your odds of finding the unicorn the larger your applicant pool. Period.

Therefore, it is no wonder that organizations often struggle when they attempt to halt DEI initiatives. What they’ve just decided to do is arbitrarily reduce their application, and from what I’ve seen at the federal level, they likely fired a few unicorns in the process. This isn’t a race game; it’s a numbers game. It’s simply asinine to restrict your choices this way.

Wait, what? Doesn’t DEI exclude people?

Sigh. DEI exists and is used to ensure that more candidates are considered for opportunities. To illustrate, in football coaching, the rule is that more candidates must be considered, and this must be demonstrated. That’s it. It says nothing about hiring them, and one can only actually secure the position by outpacing the other candidates. In football, this has led to a practice of interviewing people whom the owners know won’t get the job, despite solid qualifications. However, this is because they often game the system and go through the motions, allowing arbitrary exclusions to influence their decisions—not a wise approach. By ignoring candidates, they’ve reduced their potential to find the unicorn.

If we’re serious about finding a unicorn, then we have to put personal biases aside enough to search in what may seem to us to be the most unlikely of places. We must widen the net. The countries and peoples that manage to do this effectively will, again, by the numbers, have the best shot at discovering their unicorn, while the rest of us are duct-taping paper-towel tubes to the foreheads of mules and trying to play that off like it’s a unicorn. Let me ask you this:

Does anyone believe Pete Hegseth is a unicorn?

I didn’t think so.