Bridging the gap between Sales and Design - building a corporate metaphor
Eliciting the metaphor
Many companies have created corporate mission and vision statements, NIP decided to engage Training Attention to create a corporate metaphor. Each of the sixteen staff created individual metaphors for the company and the way they would like it to become. Following that, the company's four teams were facilitated to incorporate the individual maps into a single group metaphor. With this accomplished the teams discussed areas of overlap, disagreement and synergy, finishing with an inter-linked, integrated, corporate metaphor for all four teams.
What difference did having a corporate metaphor make to the teams?
Sales found that, "meetings are shorter, more constructive and we reach a common understanding quicker, we are more able to remain objective and it allows people to access their emotions without having to be overt about it."
Software developers now create their own metaphors to explain the technical design features to the sales and marketing teams, who in turn use these metaphors in their presentations to customers. In doing this, the software developers have found unexpected uses for their systems.
NIP have identified three main advantages of using metaphor:
‘Metaphors work because they transmit enormous amounts of information and richness. Presenting ideas and situations as metaphors gives the receiver the opportunity to understand the message being communicated to them, in their own terms. Perhaps more importantly, any points raised, or criticisms voiced about the metaphor (with its inherent gaps, flaws etc.) isn't personal - the scope for taking offence is greatly reduced ... there is room to manoeuvre without being pinned down ... to get all metaphorical!’
NIP say the metaphors provide a common definition language with which to discuss the project and to get to the underlying reasons why something is the way it is.
Getting started on a project – negotiating divergent models
Arriving to begin 10 days of group metaphor elicitation, Tom Krantz approached Caitlin. He was sceptical about the process:
Tom: What is this metaphor stuff for? I'm very busy and 10 days over 3 months is a long time out of my schedule. How will it be of any use to me?
Caitlin had about five minutes to get her point across, so she offered her view of the project as a metaphor:
Caitlin: If this project is to be really successful for me it would be like white water rafting down a long and varied river with a group of interesting people. Some smooth, wide, gentle floating interspersed with difficult exhilarating stretches where we pull together to keep ourselves afloat, emerging tired but triumphant.
Tom didn't look impressed.
Tom: That's as much information as I need. I know I wouldn't want to work with you.
Caitlin: OK, so what would your metaphor for a great project be?
Tom: It would be a beautiful building created from exquisite blueprints. These blueprints would be a work of art in their own right and there would be a perfect correlation between them and the building. The building would last over time and be adaptable to an endless variety of uses.
His metaphor made Caitlin feel very uncomfortable - she felt constrained by it. However, equally she had a clear sense of why her metaphor hadn't impressed him.
Caitlin: Supposing we had to work together; what would you need to change about my metaphor for you to be committed to working within it?
Tom: There would need to be a map with check points along the way, some regular achievements to be made that were listed at the beginning and that everyone agreed to. Some sense of where we are and where we're going.
That didn't compromise Caitlin and if anything, her trip would be much improved with these added qualities but she still had questions.
Caitlin: I find your blueprints and building too rigid as they stand. Would it be possible for the blueprints to be in pencil and to be adjusted as the building progresses and new information becomes available?
Tom: Oh yes, that would be fine. The important thing is that they are eminently useful and produce things with integral beauty.
Now the conversation became more animated as they talked about the kinds of real-time things they would need to have in place to enjoy working together. They were no longer in conflict but were negotiating around our differences.
Tom: I'd never fully understood why I enjoy some projects more than others. If we hadn't done this, you'd have really got on my nerves.
Tom was now fully onboard and could see how what had just happened between them might be useful for some of his colleagues who 'didn't see eye to eye!' and he became a key figure during the whole program.
Harnessing creativity from an individual metaphor – A Primordial Soup!
The Technical Director was frustrated by a creative programmer who continually failed to meet deadlines and appeared to be wasting time playing computer games and surfing the Internet. Some of the programmer's work was exceptional and it was this that persuaded the director to use the TA practise to 'shed some light' on the issue.
The programmer was asked "When you are productively creative, its like what?"
He snapped his fingers behind him, "like a spark, it comes from nowhere, then I just know the answer“ using clean language he found out that "nowhere" was identified as a primordial soup behind him. He fed this soup unrelated structures and ideas via internet information, biology books, video games etc. The spark could alight on up to seven landing sites in front of him. The landing sites were current projects that the primordial soup would produce solutions to. These would come as fully functioning models, which would absolutely fit the 'problem' and were original and quite brilliant.
The critical components of his creativity model was 'having seven useful landing sites' and 'feeding' the soup with new information. Without these elements in his system he wouldn't be able to keep to deadlines or say when a solution would be created.
The director realised quickly that giving him fewer projects and tighter deadlines was guaranteed to produce worse results in this system. Instead he took the decision to give the programmer more projects to ensure his 'landing sites' were always filled with work based problems, and freed him up to surf and read at his leisure.
The result was that his productivity increased dramatically and he took on the role of a 'roving' thinker popping out solutions to problems throughout the organisation.