When you see a line of dominoes arranged carefully, all of them poised to fall with the slightest nudge from one, it’s mesmerizing. The same can be said about a well-written story that builds from scene to scene, all leading up to a climax.
Domino is a generic term for any set of gaming pieces, and there are many different types of domino games. Generally, each domino has a number of pips on its face that represents a suit (e.g., spades, hearts, diamonds), although a single tile may belong to more than one suit. A standard 28-piece domino set has a combination of six suits plus the blanks (or 0s).
Hevesh’s mind-blowing creations involve hundreds, even thousands, of individual dominoes that are set up in intricate patterns. When she starts her process, she considers the theme or purpose of an installation and brainstorms images that could be used to represent that theme. Once she decides on a design, she goes through an engineering-design process: She plans out the track where she wants each domino to fall and calculates how many dominoes she will need for her design. She also considers what sort of shape the track should be and if she want the dominoes to form specific shapes when they fall.
Once Hevesh has her track planned out, she creates a model of the track using a piece of paper and then uses a pencil to mark on the paper how she wants each domino to fall. She will often use arrows to show the direction that each domino should move. As she completes this step, she checks the model to make sure it will work and then begins constructing the actual dominoes.
While she constructs her dominoes, she listens to her own motivational playlist, which she says helps her focus on each task and stay motivated. She also makes it a point to ask for feedback from her team members and customers. This ties back to one of her core values, which is championing employees and customers. She believes that by listening to her team members and customers, she can help Domino’s grow.
Like the falling dominoes, a company can take a tumble if it doesn’t address its issues quickly enough. Domino’s leadership change in 2004 was a wake-up call for the pizza chain, and its new CEO David Brandon immediately put into place changes that addressed employee concerns. These included a more relaxed dress code, new leadership training programs, and a system that allows employees to directly communicate with corporate leaders about problems that they see or hear about in the workplace. By doing this, Domino’s was able to improve employee morale and increase engagement. This in turn helped the company address its customer complaints.