Corporate ghostbusting: in her quest to boost information sharing and collaboration, our heroine, Dot, finds that the rules have changed

Communication World, April-May, 2003 by Dave Orman

There you are again, chasing a ghost through a parallel universe located in the ventilation system of your company offices. You know. Suddenly, you and your sidekick--a bright but rather neurotic bonsai tree--find this note: "K[phi]Au. Think milk instead."

You have no idea what it means. Neither does Dot, the unassuming (and unlikely) heroine of Carol Kinsey Goman's newest book, "Ghost Story: A Modern Business Fable."

If this all seems a little strange, you haven't seen anything yet. Consider, for example, that Dot's colleagues in this "parallel universe" include a magpie who hoards information, a 400-pound pig in an admiral's uniform who "protects" staff by keeping them uninformed, and the three-year-old head of IT who speaks only "Dribble."

OK, so maybe you do know the head of IT. But despite its odd cast of characters, "Ghost Story" contains important messages for communicators. This whimsical and entertaining fable is about the way organizations react to and assimilate change. It also illustrates the often-ignored reality that businesses are people--people who react to changing conditions in different ways.

Which brings us back to Dot and her excellent adventure, wherein she learns exactly how "the rules" have changed. In the excerpt that follows, Dot has left her friendly bonsai tree and traveled, alone, into that eerie ventilation shaft in her quest to decode "K[phi]AU" and find answers to other nagging questions. She's just been nabbed by members of the Old Guard, who lead her into a chamber where she's to be tried for Conspiracy to Introduce Change.

Inside the chamber, a room the size of a NASA rocket hangar, is a plaster pyramid that rises as high as a 10-story office building. "Some kind of memorial?" Dot wonders aloud, staggered by the scale of the thing. "Or a movie set?"

"No, it is not some kind of memorial!" an offended voice said behind her. "And it isn't a movie set, either."

Dot wheeled around, shaking with fright, and saw a whole gang of middle-aged men and women, dressed like 1950s suburbanites, all rudely staring at her with their backs turned. Which shook her even more until she realized they were able to do this because their heads all pointed in the wrong direction.

"Who in the world are you?" she managed to say to them.

"We're the Hindsights," a man in a Brooks Brothers suit answered. "And that pyramid you're being so picky about happens to be our place of work!"

"And also our spiritual home!" said another woman wearing toreador pants....

The Hindsight in toreador pants marched Dot around to the back of the pyramid, ushered her into a makeshift prison cell through a narrow crack in the wall and told her to sit down on one of the stools there, fold her hands in her lap and keep her mouth shut.

"What if I don't?" Dot said.

"Then you won't be permitted to answer the charges against you," the woman said. "You will simply be convicted and executed."

"For not folding my hands?"

"For not obeying orders. Failure to obey a superior's orders here threatens the stability of the entire organization. That is why all of us who work in the pyramid honor the hierarchy and always do what the people above us say."

"Good for you!" Dot said....

"Good morning, your honor," she heard Toreador Pants say behind her, and turned to see a large, scowling woman wearing judge's robes and a bouffant hairdo enter the cell carrying a big, black leather-bound ledger. A man dressed like a hotel bellboy followed close behind her carrying an old-fashioned folding TV tray which he promptly opened and positioned in front of Dorothy's stool...

"Now then," Big Hair said, sitting down and opening her ledger: 'According to these charges, you claim to go by the name of Dorothy. Is that correct?"

Dot didn't say anything.

"Note that the accused refused to answer," she said to the cringing man, wrote briefly in her ledger, and continued. "Furthermore, you claim to be working as a consultant in some other part of this ventilation system, ostensibly employed by a man who calls himself Grandfella."

Again Dot didn't answer. Again the woman wrote and continued reading.

"A man who also claims falsely to be the President of this organization."

Still no reply.

"Furthermore, you have gained access to Sector 19 by an unauthorized route, you have confessed to being in possession of documents containing code information which is prima fade detrimental to the safety of this pyramid, and you have admitted that the originator of this information is a notorious enemy agent known to us as the Little Man...."

More silence.

"Do you have anything to say in answer to these charges?" the woman demanded.

Dot shook her head no.

"Are you unable to speak for some reason?"

Another headshake.

"Then why won't you?" the woman insisted.

Dot lifted a "wait-a-sec" palm, took a pen from her pocket, wrote quickly on a scrap of paper and passed it across.

"If I open my mouth," Bouffant read aloud, "the pyramid will fall down." She read the note again in silence, then looked up furiously. "Are you mocking me, young woman?"