The Power of Metaphorical Thinking to Catalyze Organizational Change
A few years ago I graphic recorded a fantastic conference where I encountered one of my favorite examples of a conceptual metaphor to galvanize a team – delivered through experiential learning. (My inner teacher and facilitator were swooning!) The company put on the conference for the executive directors of their 139 locations around the country. This organization had a big change effort afoot, and they had lots of work to do. But as anyone who has led change knows — one of the most critical first steps is to win the hearts and minds of everyone involved. Organizational change only works if your people are on board with — and ideally, champions of — the change.
A powerful way to bring people along is to use a conceptual metaphor. This compares two seemingly unrelated things for the purpose of bringing out the unexpected similarities between them. This kind of metaphorical thinking can be a powerful tool for making change make sense for people because it allows them to “borrow” the structure of a known concept to graft the new, unfamiliar concept on top of it. In addition, it approaches the change from a fresh, unexpected angle and gives the participants an easy, understandable way to talk about it to others.
Sneaking up on Change Management
The executive team incorporated metaphorical thinking brilliantly in many different ways throughout the two-day event, but one of my favorites was a deceptively simple post- lunch “energy juicer”. The HR leader took to the stage and asked everyone to do a dance move with him: the “box step”. This lighthearted activity served as a simple act to lighten the mood and get people on their feet – a well-known tactic in the presentation slot right after a big meal — but there were additional layers of meaning and impact that took this activity to a whole new level.
In the first phase of the exercise, the HR leader quickly did the box step himself and said, “Now you do it” without any further explanation. The room full of executive directors did their best, but honestly, most were kind of faking it or looking around the room for who they could emulate.
Then the leader put up written instructions for the box step, including a fun visual with where the feet go. He demonstrated each step separately and explicitly taught the procedure of the steps, giving them time to practice it with the visual aid and the verbal cues, before asking them to do it again. To no one’s surprise, the final results were much more consistent and the participants in the room seemed much more confident and upbeat.
Once participants had the hang of the simple box step, the leader encouraged everyone to add a little of their own flair to the standard dance steps. Each participant could improvise what to do with their arms or add a swing of their hips. They were still all doing the same box step, but now everyone was layering their own creativity on top of it.
Metaphorical Thinking Can Dissolve Objections to Change
Everyone had a lot of fun and learned a little dance move – but the real power of this short exercise came during the debrief.
What was now so obvious to everyone in the room was that they needed to be explicitly taught the steps of the dance to be able to reproduce it consistently and “dance to the same tune.” Just being told to do it and then winging it was not good enough. This embodied “ah-ha” mirrored the transformation the organization was making towards standard operating procedures across many different locations—a change that would require these same participants to champion standardization with their own teams in 139 facilities across the country.
The HR leader took the conceptual metaphor a step further by brilliantly anticipating one of the major objections harbored by many of the executive directors in the room. He showed them in a totally intuitive way that the new standards were not about taking away their creativity or their autonomy, but that it could actually do quite the opposite! Standardization in the right places could get the operational basics under control, leaving more time for what mattered most to these executive directors in their day-to-day operations— taking great care of their customers and teams (instead of just putting out fires all day long.) Embracing and championing standardization of the “box step” for their teams would mean everyone would have more space to “add their own flair” where it mattered most — in the customer and employee experience.
Conceptual Metaphor + Masterful Meeting Design = Resounding Success
On my breaks from graphic recording the event’s keynotes and panels I gushed to Jessica Clayson, the event planner, about the brilliant use of conceptual metaphor in that session and the incredibly effective event sessions I was seeing. She smiled and revealed that she and her team at Ember Brand Fire had been guiding and coaching this executive team every step of the way for months to be able to pull off such successful presentations.
Of course this powerful event hadn’t “just happened!” 🤣 Truly great events are always the result of a crystal clear vision, expert meeting design, and top-notch facilitation –whether the facilitators are at the front of the room leading the day they have designed— or supporting the leaders and speakers more invisibly from behind.