Thinking Inside the Box: The HyperStress Environment

Combining the best of faith and fact-based world views, Intellitrends 20/20 and Niul Systems last year cut the ribbon on the first Intellitrends Total HyperStress Environment at Niul Systems' Headquarters in Mount Vernon, New York -- the latest and perhaps the final word on corporate architecture as stimulus to employee efficiency and dedication.

"I think stress has been given a bad name in this country," said Thomas Spunt, Niul CEO, sitting in his firmly anchored corner office at the Niul corporate headquaters. "I went to Intellitrends 20/20 and they agreed with me that most employees are giving nowhere near 110% of themselves to the company mission. They also agreed there's only so much you can solve through teamwork and cooperation."

Team HumEng (Human Engineering) at Intellitrends, in concert with Javenko Construction, the Boston-based builder of big box stores, set to work on creating a corporate headquarters that would empower employees to focus with laser-like precision on their core company value: an all-consuming commitment to the creation of shareholder value.

Niul's new headquarters features a sophisticated, computer-controlled track and hoist system which randomly rotates, elevates and redistributes employees' cubicles throughout the building in the small hours of the morning just before dawn. Employees who leave before 4 a.m. thus come back to find their cubicle has been shuffled to some other floor and some other area within the 10 story mega-shed structure.

"It's all about risk and reward" says Intellitrends' VP Kip Westlake. "By staying and pulling all-nighters night after night, you are rewarded by the fact that you don't have to waste the morning looking for your cube. Employees who do go home task themselves with the risk of wasting time looking for their offices in the morning. And since time is money, those employees risk losing the respect of their colleagues as well as their jobs."

Over the past year, the Intellitrends HyperStress Environment has increased productivity at Niul 110%, company morale 119% -- and all this with a workforce that is now half the size.

Which just goes to show that at Intellitrends 20/20, we think both outside and inside the box.

Spin Dynamics: Ahead of the Curve

At Intelltrends 20/20 we have experimented with more business paradigms than all the other consulting firms combined. One of our proudest achievements was an integrated multiplatform product which utilized the highly advanced but now surpassed "Spin Dynamics" theory of particle physics.

The Intellitrends 20/20 SpinDyn System was designed to operationalize the theory that to achieve maximum business efficiency, all elements of a business -- communications, manufacturing, human resources, finance -- need to be scrutinized on a real-time, 24/7 basis. In layman's language, SpinDyn would instantly solve for misalignments across the spectrum of the business landscape.

The SpinDyn system integrated nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, SDI (Starwars) technology, AI software developed by the KGB, insights from their Telepathic Research Labs, and Dark Matter Interception Algorithims developed in concert with leading Santeria practitioners.

The result? Profits tripled in the first year of SpinDyn system implementation. Business objectives were met and exceeded.

Upon completion of the pilot study, the Dark Matter software was scrubbed from every computer and network, loaded into a a deep space probe and sent hurtling toward the center of the sun. The corporate headquarters in now firmly encased in a 10 foot shell of super-hardened anti-juju concrete. Employees trapped within the accursed headquaters have recently been provided with digital cable. Telephone calls to family have been upped from once to twice a year.

At Intellitrends 20/20 we've moved beyond "Spin Dynamics," incorporating our learnings into other mission critical systems. Our competitors meanwhile are just beginning to explore its vexing potential.

Beyond the Bleeding Edge

"What does it do again?" asked the C-Level IT Officer at a global technology firm last week, examining the Intellitrends 20/20 XT-5000 Mimex. "Is it some kind of graphic equalizer?

We at Intellitrends 20/20 are used to answering questions like these: that's simply what happens when you're beyond the bleeding edge in management consulting. When you're agile. Flexible. Revolutionary.

Developed in conjunction with top neuroscientists, international arms dealers, and leading practitioners of Santeria, the Intellitrends 20/20 XT-5000 Mimex has been installed in the communications networks of 51 Fortune 100 companies -- an impressive record given that the first unit came off the assembly line in Haiti only 17 days ago.

"It's indispensable, really," says one of our satisfied clients at a global retailer. "I don't how we functioned without it before." Another client from a global energy firm confirmed yesterday via email: "In the post-9/11 environment, the XT-5000 is indispensable."

Now when you've been a leader in management consulting for as long as we have, you could get accustomed to this kind of praise. Even complacent. But not at Intellitrends 20/20. We never fall victim to complacency. Because in our experience, in solving one problem we often generate others.

We at Intellitrends 20/20 plan for this inevitable outcome. That's what puts us ahead of our fact-based competition and beyond the bleeding edge.

Leveraging Flag Reverence

No one knows better than Intellitrends 20/20 how to exploit employees' paradoxical reverence for and fear of the companies for which they work.

In a recent engagement, Intellitrends 20/20 held corporate flag folding workshops at a global financial firm. Working with senior management, we devised an extraordinarily intricate folding regime. (The illustration on the right is a blinded example of the execution of the first fold.)

The regime consisted of 27 discrete, non-repetitive steps. Additional non-flag elements included a darkened room and a special chant sung in a "corporate language" devised especially for the ceremony. Every employee was given a lie detector test upon workshop completion to assure complete psychological compliance.

The result? Fourteen percent of employees resigned, productivity rose 64%, and profits doubled in the following quarter.

It's this kind of outside-the-box thinking for which we at Intellitrends 20/20 are known and from which our Fortune 100 clients benefit.