Quantum Marketing: Embracing Holarchy and Systemic Thinking in Business

The Concept of Holarchy: Systems Within Systems

The entire Universe, from quantum particles to galaxies, is a system that consists of other systems. This structure is called a holarchy. A system that is also part of another system is called a holon.
Holarchy, you can imagine it in the form of a nesting doll (Matryoshka). Small nesting dolls are whole objects, but they are part of the structure of the whole nesting dolls.
The country’s economy, market, and business are systems with their own holographic structure.
Marketing is also part of the system, which, in turn, is the system and at first glance, it sounds pretty obvious.
However, when working with different businesses, I constantly encounter unsystematic thinking, both of ordinary specialists and top-level managers.

Common Missteps in Business Strategy

Quite often you can see the typical situation.
Let’s say, at the end of the month, advertising costs in the company exceeded revenue.
Since we went into the red this month, the manager makes, it seems, a logical decision and instructs marketers to optimize paid advertising and reduce the cost of a click.
Next month, the click is a little cheaper, but we are still in the negative, let’s cut back on advertising costs.
After a month, advertising still exceeds income, marketers begin to lay off. As a result, the rotation of personnel does not lead to anything, except for the demoralization of the team and the company suffers even greater losses.
Unfortunately, the standard situation and many old-school managers who think in the paradigm of the last century do not know how to do anything else and continue to look for a brilliant marketer. They firmly believe that there is a guru who presses the button “Dough” and money flows into the company like a river. They even pay incredible salaries to impostors who promise to push that very button.

Understanding Nonlinearity in Systems

Another feature of the functioning of systems is nonlinearity. This characteristic is also obvious, but somewhat counterintuitive.
That is, the situation may be the opposite.
For example, one of the ad campaigns performed very well and gave a 300% return on investment. The natural reaction of an “oyster” executive is to be told to double costs next month and expect doubled income.
Let it be an advertisement on some blog with an audience of 100 thousand people. 70 thousand users saw the advertisement and 10 thousand of them bought the product. That is, most of the potential audience has already made a decision. It is very strange to expect a linear increase in profits if advertising on this blog is repeated.

Moving to a Data-Driven Approach

This approach worked for hundreds of years, but in a new era of digitalization, the world is moving to higher vibrations. It’s like going to a new quantum level.
Today, more advanced managers take a data-driven approach. They understand that the audience is not eternal and with the help of statistics they can understand and predict the income and the feasibility of investing in advertising campaigns.
I don’t want to cast a shadow on the data-driven approach, but the ability to balance between data and intuition is given only to top-level managers.
An ingenious manager looks like a piano tuner. But the manager tunes the system.
Comparison with the piano is not accidental, because music is a certain kind of vibration, which is also typical for systems.
There are weak electromagnetic fields in the human body. They appear as a result of the electrical activity of cell membranes — mainly muscle and nerve cells. They also arise when the body is exposed to an external magnetic field. A person’s vibration frequency depends on emotions and thoughts.
The main characteristic of a system is precisely the connections between its parts.
A pile of bricks will not be a system until they are stacked in a row and held together with cement. But the wall will already be a system, which, in turn, is part of the system of the house.

The Human Element in Systems

In any human collective, this cement is just vibrations.
And unlike the wall of a house, a team is a complex structure that interacts with its parts through feedback loops.
All parts of the system are connected directly or indirectly, and therefore a change in one part generates a wave of changes that affect other parts and, accordingly, the system as a whole. Thus, the change returns to its original point in the changed form. Such influences on the structure are feedback loops.
This process is permanent. As a result, the organized system is able to self-regulate and self-correct.
Therefore, a marketer who was fired for allegedly failing to reduce advertising costs was many times more effective in a comfortable psychological environment aimed at self-improvement and development.

Embracing the Quantum Level of Management

A little more association with music.
String theory was a real breakthrough in physics in the second half of the twentieth century. Scientists argue that everything in the world consists not only of protons, neutrons, and electrons but of strings of different sizes and locations. The mass of each body is determined by the type and frequency of vibration of these strings.
But the manager, who is not able to properly tune the very same piano, tries to create beautiful music and only hammers harder on the keys.
That is, most transformation programs are limited to rearranging the old furniture in the old room. Some of them prescribe to get rid of individual pieces of furniture. But to make the transformation really take place, it is necessary to re-plan the very old room. You might even have to blow up the old room.
It is necessary to change the very basis of our thinking, reconfiguring corporate brains.