Are you getting the BIG picture?

by Keith Ferrell

It's been a long time since anyone really believed the world was flat. Scientists figured out the true shape of our planet by careful observation of what they could see-the stars, the environment-and by faith in what they could not. A mere 70 years ago, we saw our first real "proof" with a photo of the Earth's curvature, taken from a balloon. Then, little more than three decades ago, mere seconds on the cosmic scale of things, we saw the whole world-round as round can be-from the eye-opening perspective of space. There we are, the world seemed to say. This is us, this is where we live.

Perspective. That's the great gift of all the technologies that have so dramatically altered our world-for good and, too often, for bad-over the past breakneck decades of progress. We've had 30 years' perspective of how small our planet appears from what is, ultimately, a relatively short distance as astronomical measurement goes. But that same 30 years has also seen the spread of other world-shrinking technologies whose gift of perspective is, ironically, world-expanding.

Speed-of-light satellite communications and the Internet, to name only two, have put us all side-by-side with everyone else on the planet. Yet, far from shrinking our point of view, technology is broadening it. We have a better sense of the interconnected nature of cultures, societies and economies. We are finally getting the "big picture" of our small world.

That big-picture approach can be seen in tight focus in the Special Section that follows. The companies you'll meet here span the globe, and while some of the firms are still in their youth, others stretch across much of modern history. They run the enterprise gamut-finance, insurance, distribution, transportation, retail, government and telecommunications. Yet all have in common a determined individuality.

These companies know themselves. They know how they do business-and how they intend to go on doing business. Their core philosophies and business principles can be seen in their decisions, their operations and the risks they take and changes they make in the face of markets that are themselves changing-radically, dramatically, inexorably.

Perspective is what ties these companies together. All of them understand both the local components of their operations and the global reach new technologies enable. More than that, they have the perspective of their entire enterprise-a global view, if you will, of their organization, its components and elements, its procedures and potential.

That's new-newer than the astronomical perspective we were given by Apollo 8, newer than the first glimpse of scale we got while dangling from a balloon.

But the thing about perspective shifts, as you're about to see, is that when they are dramatic enough, when the new view enables things never before possible, the resulting vision becomes inextricable from yourself, your business, your world. It's as though you're seeing things for the first time, and as though you're seeing them the way you always wanted to. Which is what perspective is all about.

Finance
RBC Financial Group: Banking on precision

Insurance
CSS Versicherung: Putting a Premium on Loyalty

Distribution
Grupo Gigante: Taking out the guesswork

Transportation
Lan Chile: Decisioning at the speed of flight

Retail
Matsuzakaya: Building VIP relationships

Government
United States Air Force: Governing the military supply chain

Telecom
Tele.ring: Dialing up customized services

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SIMON SHAW