When it comes to domino, the images that most of us have are of a line-up of hundreds, even thousands, of perfectly aligned dominoes. These are the kind of dominoes that professional domino artists build to win their high-profile, high-stakes competitions—in which they try to create a spectacular domino effect or reaction before an audience of cheering fans. These setups can take weeks to plan and months to complete, and they are in danger of falling apart at the slightest nudge or interruption. Hevesh, a popular domino artist who has YouTube channels with more than 2 million subscribers, is famous for her amazing setups. Some of her creations are so intricate that it can take hours for them to fall, and she has even worked on team projects with as many as 300,000 dominoes.

A domino (also known as a bone, card, or men) is a rectangular piece of wood, ivory, or sometimes plastic, that features a square, ridged surface on one side and is blank or identically patterned on the other. The identifying mark on each domino is usually an arrangement of spots, called pips, like those on the head of a die, although some sets have all-zero or blank pips. The number of pips on each end may vary, and large sets have more than six pips.

Dominoes have a number of uses, including being used in positional games, such as domino bridge or domino tower, where each player places a domino edge-to-edge against another until the entire stack topples over. They are also used for marking the edges of a sheet of paper to guide writing or drawing. Dominoes are typically arranged in sets of equal size, and the larger a set is, the more complicated the game can be.

The Domino Effect states that when you make a change to your behavior, it triggers a shift in related behaviors. For example, if you start making your bed each day, it’s not long before you begin to maintain other aspects of your home in the same manner. The domino effect is so named because one change triggers the next, just as a single domino knocks down a whole line-up of bricks.

When it comes to Domino’s, a Domino Effect often happens when the company focuses on listening to their customers. After all, the chain is built on a foundation of “Champion Our Customers.” As such, when Domino’s heard that their pizza was not up to par, they quickly listened and made changes. These included a relaxed dress code, new leadership training programs, and college recruiting systems. As a result, the Detroit Free Press recently named Domino’s as a top workplace in Michigan.

The Domino Effect