Leveraging the Power of Metaphor

People reveal their organizing metaphors through the language they use when speaking about the issue at hand.


A metaphor is an imaginative way of describing something as something else—for example, "Time is money." Organizing metaphors are overarching worldviews that shape a person’s everyday actions—for instance, "Business is war."


People reveal their organizing metaphors through the language they use when speaking about the issue at hand. For example, a manager who sees business as war might say things like, "We can’t concede ground," "We’re being outflanked," or "We have to defend market share."


To change someone’s organizing metaphor, follow these steps:


Identify a compelling replacement metaphor—for example, "Business is partnership." This metaphor focuses a business’s efforts on building win-win relationships with key stakeholders rather than on defeating competitors.


Highlight the weaknesses of your audience’s worldview using their metaphor. For example, "By focusing on competitors instead of customer support, we’ve allowed our customer satisfaction levels to fall."


Provide examples of other companies that have achieved success using your replacement metaphor, as in "Company X’s sales have increased 18 percent since the company appointed account managers to collaborate with the sales team."


ACTION POINT: Replacing someone’s organizing metaphor is never easy; people cling tightly to their worldviews. But by providing powerful evidence of the flaws in an existing metaphor and the veracity of the new one, you can persuade others to at least consider a different outlook.