Our basis for today's business and management stems from science and technology and, in particular, from Sir Isaac Newton's mechanistic view of the universe. In a mechanism, you look at the parts and the whole equals the sum of the parts. Today, however, we are moving towards a holistic interpretation of the universe, where the whole is present in every one of the parts. Already the holographic technologies are coming on stream and it is now up to us to create holistic concepts of management and organization. As yet this remains a metaphor, distant from our daily reality, hut nevertheless very real.
Science has already shown us that the universe operates holistically, not mechanistically. Our genetic structure provides us with a good example. According to the mechanistic model, the whole is equal to the sum of its parts and therefore. we would expect a skin cell to contain all the information about itself, a hone cell to have information only about hone, and a blood cell to know only about blood. This is not the case. Every part, contains not only information about itself, but about every other factor constituting that entire body. Our skin cells contain information about our bones, our hair, our blood and every other part of us. That is, the genetic structure functions holistically.
This approach is just as valid for businesses. If the whole exists in every part, then the entire business must exist in every product, in every service and every employee.
Consumers already have a holistic approach to companies. For if you receive particularly bad service you are unlikely, in the future, to have a favorable overall impression of the company. The lapse is not excused simply as one part of the whole which did not work. Instead, the organization as a whole is condemned. The consumer reacts holistically. Jan Carlzon from SAS, for example, has an insightful expression called "50,000 moments of truth every day". What is a moment of truth? It is each interaction between a customer and an employee. In that moment of truth, the whole company is at stake, not just that one part.
Managers and employees must realize that they cannot work effectively in a business that represents a part without understanding its simultaneous relationship to the whole. Businesses function holistically and we must adjust our theories of management and organization to take account of the fact.
Information, for example, comes in four forms: words, data, images, and sound. For example, words are associated with publishing, data with computing, images with television, and sound with telecommunication. In the past this was a valid categorization of reasonably distinct fields. Today, however, we are witnessing a confluence of these technologies as world demand moves more and more towards a systems orientation. The challenge is to interconnect typewriters, computers, images on screens, and the telephone to create something totally new. Consequently, in the information "industry" it is no longer possible to look at just one part of the whole and survive in business. The secret of success lies in a company's capacity to integrate these areas into total systems and solutions. This is a holistic concept and only now are we beginning to utilise it in our theories ofbusiness and management.