The best companies are holographic companies.
In fact, the best organizations are holographic organizations.
What's holographic? Does that mean companies created by laser beams? Can you see
around the corners of them as you move from side to side, like those funny fuzzy
pictures you see in the hologram store in the Mall of America?
No, not exactly, but that's close. Closer still might be the Star Wars scene where
the little robot, R2D2, projects a small, grainy 3D image of Princess Leia asking
for the help of Obi-wan Kenobe.
Holo means whole or all. Graphic means picture. Whole Picture. All of the picture.
Take a real hologram, not a cheap artistic Mall of America hologram, but a genuine
laboratory-produced hologram of, say, a tree. Cut it in half, and do that 20 more
times. The resulting piece is very small, yet when you shine a laser beam through
this tiny remnant of your picture, which part of the tree shows up? The trunk? The
leaves? The bark? No.
Eerily, the entire tree shows up. It's grainy. It's lacking detail. No matter
how small you cut a piece of a hologram, every piece contains the whole picture.
If you think that sounds like magic, wait till you see what it does for your company
when every employee contains the whole picture.
When each and every employee understands the company, the mission, the product,
the financial position, the corporate culture and pretty much everything else, then
you have a holographic organization.
Not every employee's picture includes the same level of detail or clarity. But
every employee can project, a little like R2D2, the general outlines of the organization.
One very important part of that general outline is the question of where your
company is located and why it is located there, rather than being somewhere else.
If every one of your employees can't explain clearly why your company is where
it is, you've got a problem, and it's a training problem. Worse, if the management
team can't explain clearly why your company is where it is, to the exclusion of all
other locations, you've got a problem, and it's a location problem.
When you explain this in the board room, you'll need examples of this concept
so you don't get thrown out as soon as you say "holographic" or "Obi-wan
Kenobe".
There are two examples that you should be familiar with.
The first is our universe. Have you ever wondered why scientists split atoms to
learn about the Big Bang? It's because they believe that atoms have the same properties
as the universe as a whole. Whole picture. Each of the parts has embedded in it the
whole picture.
The second is DNA. Give a scientist one of your liver cells and enough money and
in a few weeks he'll produce a grainy picture of you, brown eyes and all. (Someday,
he'll be able to make another one of you ... a clone.) Each part -- through our DNA
structure -- has embedded in it the whole picture.
As for company examples, I can think of two that I have had personal experience
with: Disney and Federal Express.
In these two cases, the picture is a simple one: For Disney, the basic picture
is: "If we overwhelm the customer with happiness and opportunities to have fun
and be happy themselves, we'll make a lot of money."
For Federal Express, the basic picture is: "If we deliver packages faster
and earlier than the other guys, and look happy and efficient while we do it, we'll
make a lot of money."
Most of these employees can tell you a lot about their company, especially the
corporate culture. The ones that cannot don't stay a part of the organization.
Can you tell if you have a holographic company? Yes. Just ask your employees a
few questions. We're a location magazine, so we like the location question offered
above, but other topics will suffice.
If you like the answers you get, congratulations, you have the beginnings of a
holographic company.
If you think the answers, especially with some of your top people, are flawed,
then you should begin to inculcate your team with the goals, the values, the hopes
and dreams and desires of your organization. But go slowly. It takes time. Be patient.
In fact, don't use the force, Luke.