VIEWPOINTS : It’s Time to Punt Those <i> Macho</i> Old Metaphors
“What this outfit needs is fewer tight ends and more wide receivers.”
With that terse football metaphor, the chief executive of a large corporation tried to summarize his company’s problems and suggest a solution. It was clear he assumed that his insight would be understood and accepted by other company executives.
What he failed to realize was that his metaphor was deeply flawed, as are those used by so many managers. It communicated a narrow, shallow view of the firm’s woes, betrayed his own inability to articulate a careful analysis, alienated employees who found the metaphor inappropriate and confused those unfamiliar with football.
In consulting with dozens of corporations each year, I witness the extensive use and powerful impact of spoken and written metaphors. To explain or clarify complex situations, executives commonly draw on simpler and less ambiguous images in life.
Although this can be an effective way to make a point, the misuse of metaphors often leads to serious problems. The way we talk and write frames the way we look at the world and shapes the way we think.
The sports metaphor, along with two other common and outmoded images--military and cowboy metaphors--can become obsessive and may distort and limit thoughtful analysis. Thus, organizations frequently lose the capacity to think and act appropriately because they are trapped unconsciously in an irrelevant, or even destructive, paradigm.
Years ago, when I started working with the telecommunications industry, I became aware of the use of metaphors as a management device. Some of the metaphors were helpful, but many were rooted in the irrelevant past--the traditional Ma Bell monopoly. In meetings and memos, telephone company employees frequently referred to their firms as a “protective family.”
This means, of course, that since you do not fire your kids, neither do you terminate workers. This value created severe conflicts when a streamlined telephone company no longer needed so many employees.
Employees also spoke of “universal service”--the idea that they had to provide all telephone-related services. They also talked as though they were the only ones who could possibly provide telephone services properly. And they spoke with contempt for anyone who would dare challenge them, question their authority and, ultimately, compete with them.
In rejecting new ideas, especially from younger managers, people in the telecommunications industry and other businesses sometimes would say that an individual had not yet earned his or her spurs and thus didn’t have the right to suggest policy.
These employees and their managers were operating under what I call the cowboy management metaphor. They had the notion that they were riding a sort of infinite prairie or range over which they had exclusive control. Like the cowboy, they had to do everything within that sphere. The cowboy cooks meals, makes his bed at night, herds and brands cattle, shoots the bears. When confronted by an enemy, he relies on his cunning, his fists or his six-shooter.
The notion that “a Smith & Wesson beats four aces”--a phrase I’ve heard many times--is a cowboy prescription for a company’s problem. It justifies extreme, often slightly illegal, behavior when more rational means aren’t working. But it is just when the stakes are high and the road rough that metaphors gather strength and become dangerous. At that point, they not only reflect the organization’s or leader’s philosophy and style, but they tend to reinforce narrow thinking that can exacerbate a problem.
That is not to say that metaphors are never useful. They can be a powerful, even elegant, means of sharing a larger vision and its subtleties. The combination of richness and brevity is compelling. Examples include terms that reflect love, support and acceptance, used by companies such as Hewlett-Packard that want to foster a spirit of cooperation.
The issue, then, is not whether metaphors ought to be used at all, but which are appropriate under which circumstances. Is the metaphor a refinement of good analysis or a substitution for it? Do the “football games” played in the board room really improve the company, or do they place a “scoreboard” in a setting where there shouldn’t be one?
Keeping score may work in sports, but what of the destructive behavior it inspires or justifies where people need support and understanding instead of a win-at-all-costs value system? And what of these metaphors’ overwhelming male perspective in an increasingly mixed-gender workplace?
In the most effective organizations today, I see declining use of male-oriented, simplistic metaphors and increasing use of music metaphors. The symphony conductor, who oversees men and women expert at playing only one or two instruments, works splendidly as a metaphor for leadership in the contemporary workplace where high specialization is the norm.
The conductor must know his or her musicians well and carefully coordinate their efforts. The musicians all play off the same score, but each contributes his or her own skill and personal artistic sense.
More broadly, the ideas of harmony, consonance, balance, beauty, beat, key and complexity are widely applicable. These concepts work so well in so many situations, in fact, that I frequently prescribe music metaphors for managers who want to tap into the power of figurative language without the harmful side effects they risk with the older metaphors.
It appears, then, that the macho metaphors of the past are receding from view but still are all too frequent. For those who fight it, old habits die hard. But effectiveness in today’s work world must begin with a broader, more realistic picture of the people who make up organizations--and most are no longer just living out boyhood games and dreams.
