Metaphors and Their Abuses

by Rick Brenner

Our everyday conversation is more colorful and fun when we use metaphors. Examples: We get "revved up." We "roll out" a "product family." But metaphors have their dangers. They can be subtly abused. They can "wag our minds."

We understand metaphors so easily that they sometimes escape our notice. For example, we use the term "ante up" in the workplace environment to denote an act of supplying an initial commitment of resources. "Ante" is a term actually taken from the world of gambling, specifically poker. I don't know about your organization, but most organizations I've worked with don't really think of their projects as gambling.

As a second example, when we gently introduce someone to an insight or idea, with the hope that they'll consider it and elaborate upon it or take some future action, we talk of "planting a seed." No physical seed is actually planted — we don't have to come back water it, or supply nutrients or control pests. The analogy is just that.

To "get a reading" of the frequency of use of metaphors in speech in your organization, keep track of them for three days. You'll be astounded. If you send them to me, I'll add yours (anonymously) to this list.

Because metaphors suggest analogies, they can be dangerous. The danger arises when we apply the analogy without thinking, in ways that really aren't supportable. For example, even though we talk about "revving up" people, motivating people requires much more than flipping a switch. And once people are "revved up," they can become very creative — so creative that it sometimes happens that they see even better ways to do what you might have wanted, or they might even find something wrong with the original idea. Rotating machinery hardly ever does that kind of thing. When we think about real people as if they were as simple as rotating machinery, we can go dangerously wrong — the metaphor "wags our minds" like the metaphorical tail wagging the dog.

Some metaphors come in groups — a whole set of terms that fit a single analogy. These are especially powerful, because they can become pervasive. One example is the analogy between products and people.