The Magic Of Metaphor

First of all what is a metaphor? Here I use the term metaphor and simile interchangeably but technically a simile is simply saying that one thing is like something else and a metaphor is saying that one thing is something else. A simile is thus a metaphor but a metaphor is not necessarily a simile. Enough of the terminology! Roll your mouse over the picture to the right to find a metaphor.

Sometimes exaggeration or humour might be involved to help make the point. Many men might use the metaphor of their mother-in-law being a dragon. They are not saying that she literally breathes fire and flies but that she might be a little fierce and protective of her daughter (or dominating her husband!!). You get the point.

Metaphor can help us all in a number of ways. For instance I am a very visual person so when people insist on describing things to me using just words I have to try very hard to take in all of the information. If, however, someone says that the situation is like say, finding a needle in a haystack then I comprehend the situation quite quickly i.e. I know the amount of effort required and the likely outcome. To reach a wider audience you might need to try using metaphors that rely on different language for those people who respond to audio or kinesthetic stimuli.

I often use a particular type of metaphor when explaining the usefulness of using creative or alternative techniques to examine a problem situation. I'm sure that many readers will have experienced the horrors of hunting for a house or flat. You have a look at the particulars and one person focuses on the kitchen, another on the garden and another on the bedrooms or garage. All of these individuals are seeing the same situation but from different viewpoints. So just like viewing a property we can examine other scenarios (physical or otherwise) from different perspectives. One or more of these might even provide a solution (in the case of a problem) or suggest a course of action.

Keen followers of Agatha Christie's fictional character Miss Marple will be familiar with her technique of mapping happenings of the wider world with things she could understand that occurred in her own village of St Mary Mead. So already we have a list of things that metaphors can help us with:

• Giving explanations to those unfamiliar with a concept
• Examining problem situations from an alternative perspective
• Reframing situations
• Communicating concepts to a wider audience
• Learning or making sense of a concept that we are not currently familiar with

Another interesting use for metaphor is within stories and for use as a more sophisticated business tool but that is an article all of its own. But how about the application of metaphor, will it work for everyone and will it work everywhere?

We can use metaphor directly in:

• Business
• Politics
• Creative Industries and the media
• Any other areas that rely on human interaction

Metaphor works best when individuals can 'connect' easily with metaphors i.e. they are used to metaphor or storytelling and their lives are not littered with distractions. In developed countries we are buried underneath mountains of gadgets which we either rely on to automate our lives or which we take great delight in exploring in detail - we either want it to work or we want to read the instructions in detail. We do not wish to know that our new MP3 player is like a pepperoni pizza (or perhaps a more appropriate metaphor). I am speaking generally here, those who are emotionally intelligent will be using metaphor regularly.

In developing countries there is less technology and less complexity in life generally (but life is often very hard) and so people are often closer to their emotions. Storytelling and metaphors will work well here and have a very powerful effect. Rather like the argument that I put forward in a previous article regarding creativity in developed and developing countries, education also plays a part. So once again, who is best placed to take advantage of techniques such as this? Developed countries have a head start in the race to develop and are thus nearer the finishing line, but developing countries have the potential to be the faster runners!!!

Modelling innovation culture using social media

I have my own unique model of Innovation which helps with obtaining 'buy in' and best of all, it leads to a method of measuring the capacity to innovate which is a much more sensitive measure than waiting for KPIs to change. I had been puzzling for a while about how to model the spread of Innovation and the transfer of knowledge as well as other issues such as communication and trust. Little did I know that I had already considered this without really understanding.

Recently, I attended a talk by Dr Kelly Page of Cardiff University about New Media and Web 2.0. I became particularly excited by some of the concepts and analysis surrounding Social Media such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

In an (ideal) Innovation culture there is little or no hierarchy and knowledge flows at varying rates and often 'on demand'. There are groups of interest and depending on technology, trust relationships can also be built. Rather than humans adapting to technology (remember the first mobile phones, the birth of the Internet), technology is now being developed to match and mimic the behaviour of groups of people in a social environment.

Analysis of this behaviour is interesting. Looking at traffic on say Twitter, a group interested in a particular topic will have what looks like random connections. These are not random and are built upon interest, trust and knowledge amongst other things. Within Organisational Development we might say that these connections do not map onto an organisational structure chart but map onto informal advice, trust and communications networks.

So interactions within Social Media look like those in an ideal Innovation culture, and playing with this idea we can adapt our model for a range of situations. But these changes are incremental. We know that introducing certain technologies into society often changes society itself (electricity, telephone, motor car) so will introducing technologies such as Social Media actually lead to changes in society and in particular our businesses?

The answer is most definitely yes. By trying extreme versions of our new model we can safely say that hierarchies will die and that concepts such as vision and values will truly have shared ownership. Ultimately it will make our businesses more profitable as those working in them will be empowered and will all share responsibility for success. Those who cling onto the old hierarchies will find themselves bypassed in advice, trust and communications networks, they will be lonely. Watch this space for new developments (or should I say MySpace?).

Making Good Use Of Institutional Failings

Normally we tend to diagnose failings within our organisations and then combat them with remedial programmes that often dismantle and then rebuild certain aspects of the organisation. Note that these characteristics are independent of the individuals that work within the organisation.

A well publicised example of such a failing was the accusation of institutionalised racism that was leveled at the Metropolitan Police here in the UK. No one individual was accused of being racist but the structure, processes, distribution of power, expressions of vision and beliefs was deemed to be supportive of racism.

So what might some of the characteristics of an institutional failing be and how can they be used to help us? I have alluded to one or two already but here is a short list:

• Strong beliefs and a mechanism for communicating them
• Well or clearly defined structures and processes
• Power centred on a few individuals
• An active 'grapevine' for informal communications
• Well aligned communications, trust and advice networks
• High degree of focus (not necessarily concern for) on people

This is not an exhaustive list but is representative of many undesirable institutional failings. Our natural tendency is to remove such characteristics through one or more change programmes and possibly staff development of some sort. For a large organisation the changes must be far reaching, difficult to plan (and control) and of course expensive. Had we been looking at undesirable furniture or waste paper then we would automatically think of recycling. Why not recycle these unwanted organisational characteristics and use them for a positive purpose?

One possible idea might be to create 'institutionalised creativity', a type of creativity that is inbuilt and pervades every part of the organisation in such a way that employees do not consciously think about it. Lets make use of a strong beliefs system (but change the beliefs), take advantage of clearly defined structures (but turn them into looser frameworks), use the company grapevine (as part of this process), be focused (but change this slightly) and make use of the centres of power (but make these sponsors of creative or innovative behaviour).

Such a programme may not be easy, but is it better than turning a whole organisation upside down?

An afternoon of Strategy

Can Strategy really be put into the same category as a good book, your favourite CD or a celebrity chef? Can you really do it justice in an afternoon? The answer is most definitely yes and you can make it just as pleasurable with or without a teapot and a plate of custard creams.

No, I have not lost my marbles, I just believe that many organisations spend too much time sitting around a polished table poring over management accounts, making poor decisions and crafting strategies that they are unable to communicate to their workforces. And what is the result, a thick document that ends up in the shredder, and even worse does not help the organisation in any way at all.

So how is this feat to be achieved, read on.

First of all we have to make an assumption that those running the organisation are at least technically competent, even if their management and leadership styles are less than ideal. They should have a good idea of the state of the company, the competition, the environment and of course the employees.

Step 1, stare hard at your organisation and look at all aspects of it, not just the balance sheet or profit and loss account. How adaptable is it, have you got the right skills, is it too big or too small or perhaps suited for other markets? Record this information in a suitable fashion, maybe using sketches, mindmaps or pictures (you will see why shortly).

Step 2, gaze into the future (how far in advance is up to you) and create a really good idea of what the organisation needs to be like in order to fend off the competition, where it will be, how it will work, what markets it will be in. If your time horizon is short then you can simply extrapolate from existing data. If you have a long time horizon then you may need to consider scenario planning or some sort of Futures Programme. Don't be influenced too much by the present, your organisation should be succeeding on its own a a point in the future.

Step 3, create a storyboard. A simple version may consist of 6 boxes on a sheet of flip chart paper. Number the boxes 1 to 6 and put the output from Step 1 into box 1 and the output from Step 2 into box 6. This is easier if you use visual items such as pictures but adapt everything to suit yourselves. You can even add or remove boxes if you wish. By now you will have guessed that the Step 4 is to fill in the intermediate steps but going backwards from the future to the present, by asking 'how did we get here?' rather than 'how do we get there?'. This way you will always get to your desired end point!

The results of steps 1 to 4 is a storyboard that many in the creative industries will be familiar with. It tells a story which is how we prefer to take in information. It also allows others to add their own perspective without actually changing the story (try doing that with a strategy document). This raw document can also be used immediately by Human Resources and Marketing to communicate this strategy to employees and other stakeholders and it can be updated regularly.

This method really does work, why not give it a try?