Auntmama became a business consultant in 1980. Her name was just Mary Anne Moorman then and she was fresh out of the machine shop at Pacific Car and Foundry. Her friend, Steve Itano was out on a graphic union strike. Steve was an ace photographer, musician, and mechanic. Moorman was a writer, a talker and a born entrepreneur. Together they created an audio visual training company called Gamma Vision Inc.
Now remember this story begins before corporations used video. So in order to display there wares, video players had to be hauled into corporate offices. Video was new, questionable. A little hamburger joint called Red Robin took a chance and hired Gamma Vision to create customer service training materials. Later this guy named Howard Schultz would do the same thing when he brought his little coffee company up from California and opened the first Starbuck’s at the Seattle market. Then came Westin Hotels who used Gamma Vision’s selection approach pioneered by Carla Swander and Nike where multimedia expert Bill Aston launched some of the early 30 projector slide shows for in house corporate marketing.
Gamma Vision grew, new consultants came on board to work with diversity and multi cultural pluralism, socio technical systems, quality, cybernetics, stratified systems theory, leadership development, guest relations, customer service and organizational transformation. The techniques, specialties and client list got longer and longer as the winds of changed whipped through industry like lightening.
But so many did not understand the changes technology would birth or the multicultural multigenerational workforce that would soon form the global empire.
But the video stories helped people see theory in practice. And one day, in the late 1990s, Moorman told a group of utility leaders a story about Claudio and Nadine who give verbal commands to their hand held computer and watched the British Museum art displayed on their coffee table screen.
The ballroom grew quiet as 1,000 executives listened to their future told in the oldest medium known to civilization: The Story. Moorman raced from conference to boardroom telling the future as if it would come to pass.
And it did. Moorman decided to keep telling stories and Itano, ever the visual genius, turned to the art of movie making.
But it is now time to tell of those companies who pioneered progress or fell victim to it. And the men and women who work everyday flexing the organizational muscle to produce the products and the services the world needs.
Watch Business Story to hear the monumental tale of those that crossed the technological divide and became the 21st century leaders.
Coming Next Week: The Washington Health Foundation gets creative with health care finance.
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