Metaphor Online Survey – Summary Report Graham Clark/Belina Raffy December, 2008 GC Welcome to the summary of the Metaphor On Line Survey that we conducted earlier this year. My name is Graham Clark, I teach at Cranfield School of Management and amongst other things, what I do is to run the module on Implementing Change for the MBA Programme. I would like to introduce now my colleague, Belina Raffy, who has collaborated with me on this project – Belina. BR Hello, so my name is Belina Raffy and I was actually a Full Time MBA here 1999 to 2000 and I have my own corporate training company called Maffick Ltd – maffick means to boisterously celebrate and I use improvisation and metaphor with my corporate clients. So Graham, why have you embarked on this journey with me to explore metaphor in organisations? GC I think a lot of what we do in teaching change in organisations is what I would call ruthlessly rational. So there is a great desire to make things very, very neat and tidy and I think Metaphor explores the messy world of organisational life that we all know exists, but somehow want to deny. BR Right, most language is actually metaphorical and metaphor simply is understanding one idea in terms of another one. The way we use this in organisations is there is a lot of language in business around businesses, war, killing the competition, capturing clients and when you think like that you tend to change behaviour because people see certain possibilities, but not others. And if that’s the rules in their head of what they think is possible that will change behaviour. GC So how did this survey come about? BR Well you may remember in June 2007 we both ran the 10K for Cranfield Trust and I jogged up to you afterwards and said are you interested in metaphor because I have just read a great book by Gareth Morgan called Images of Organisation. And we started our conversation from there. So in April and May of 2008, we did a pilot of the questionnaire and we had eighteen respondents – so thank you to all those respondents who helped us craft the survey – and then we actually sent out the questionnaire as it is now in August to September 2008. So that is how it came about. GC Who responded to the survey? BR Well, we had 55 people start the survey, and 35 people finish. Most of them were Cranfield alumni. We have had a mix of industries all the way from large corporate private companies to small charities. And we have had a great geographic spread – we had 39 respondents from the UK, but we also had people from Peru and Singapore and the US and Australia. So very widespread. GC That’s really exciting – that people are involved in this kind of survey. In the survey, we asked a question about vision and mission and how it linked to metaphor. What were the findings from that? BR Very interesting – about half of the respondents actually didn’t answer either of those and given how many Cranfield MBA alumni that we targeted I thought that was interesting. We found no link based on the responses that we got between vision and mission and corporate real life. And based on the responses that we got, we basically have flagged it up as an area for more research, but we don’t know enough. GC So what are the main metaphors we were looking for? BR The main ones we chose were machine, war, love, gardening, living organism and sports. GC OK – and most of those came from Gareth Morgan and other people. I just wondered what the split was in terms of the metaphors being reported. BR The split was surprising. We had zero people choose war as their primary metaphor in their organisation – so that was actually a relief. We had six people choose love; we had twelve choose sports – that was the most popular one. And then we had a split across living organism, gardening and machine. GC Outside of the standard metaphors, if I can put it that way, were there any other answers in the survey? BR Yes, we had six people say that they couldn’t actually identify a primary operating metaphor and we also had two people create their own. So one of them came up with ‘be the best’ sort of an Olympic type standard; and the other one came up with ‘gentleman warrior’. So Graham, we also looked at secondary metaphors. Can you tell us a little bit about what it would mean if an organisation has a secondary metaphor operating? GC That is a really interesting aspect of the metaphors, that there isn’t just one metaphor that covers absolutely everything. For example, it may be that in different parts of an organisation there may be a whole set of metaphors. One respondent said idealistically, it would be quite nice if the HR department was operating in a sort of we love everybody kind of mode, whereas perhaps sales might be in a more of a competitive winning metaphor. That is one aspect. On the other side I think there is another aspect which is often there is a conflict between what is the strategic goal of an organisation and what really happens on the ground. I think the primary secondary sometimes uncovers a bit of a split between what is being said by the senior management and what is being experienced by the people on the ground. In the survey did we find any examples of primary and secondary metaphors in conflict? BR Yes. We actually had 11 respondents say yes, they were in conflict and here are three examples of those. One was a primary of machine and a secondary of sports. And what the respondent said was ‘the organisation has great tension between what the system demands to feed the machine and the flexibility and responsiveness needed to ensure client buy in’. Another one was between machine and gardening. And they talked about the ‘old school efficiency cost cutting, versus a new school which is to innovate, create value for customer and employee’. And they actually made the caveat that ‘this is not a bad thing if you can combine both in the process and have a clear shared criteria’. And the last one was between sports and machine. This respondent said ‘sometimes the machine takes over and counteracts the work done by the sports metaphor. I do not think it is a fundamental problem in having more than one metaphor, but in the highly competitive ie, sports environment, the machine can be destructive and it would be more beneficial to have a living organism or gardening metaphor, which would be more beneficial to innovation, which in turn in a market competing on innovation would increase efficiency’. GC OK, I can see that and I can see the way that understanding those metaphors would really help uncover some of the tensions in organisational life, which we all experience to some extent don’t we? I just wondered if you have any experience, or any examples, of metaphors that were not in conflict? BR Yes. We had 13 respondents say that that actually there was no conflict between the two. And some examples of those types of metaphors were gardening and living organism, sports and machine, living organism and sports. GC We asked people what they saw as their ideal operating metaphor and I just wonder how that corresponds to what happens in practice? BR What we found is most people by and large chose living organism as the way that they would prefer their organisation to operate. GC Could you give us a flavour of how people were describing and defining their metaphors? BR Sure. One of the things that we found actually is when people were talking about metaphors operating in their organisation, sometimes they were confusing the metaphor versus how the metaphor played out. For example, if you look at sports, a sports metaphor can be played out in many different ways in an organisation. Some of them will be positive and some of them will be negative and attributing certain weaknesses like ‘its overly competitive’ or ‘it only rewards the star Beckhams of the team’ is actually more of a manifestation of how it is playing out in the organisation, versus the metaphor itself. GC Belina, I wonder if you could give us an idea of some of the strengths of one of the metaphors we investigated. BR Sure. An example would be machine. So as you would expect a strength that people found was efficiency, market execution, competitive winning was the focus of that. One of the weaknesses was lack of people focus: that it is actually risk averse and its rather cold. GC And at the other end of the spectrum, how about the love metaphor? BR As you would expect one of the strengths is that it focuses on relationships and one of the weaknesses of love was that one respondent said ‘it's difficult for staff to actually remain impartial during business decisions’. GC There is a question about are there any differences between what you are told and how you actually operate. Any particular insights from that question? BR Yes, we had 21 out of 34 respondents say actually there is not a difference, yet we had 13 say yes there definitely was and here are two examples. So one is ‘the spoken emphasis is on an innovative and nurturing approach, but all too often the machinery approach sneaks into reality’. Another example was ‘customer comes first, but really sales come first’. GC It’s interesting – I guess we can all identify with that kind of difference. I also wonder where there are any particular trends coming out of the question around insights from language and systems? BR Not as much as we hoped actually in the survey. What came out was most of the respondents call the people that they serve either customers or clients and although in certain areas that is a big difference, like for example, the NHS, we simply couldn’t tell what the nuances were for that type of language. In terms of control systems, what we were finding was the higher up a respondent was, the rosier things seemed to be and the further down, if you were a consultant but possibly at director level, things could either me happy or slightly more toxic depending on what was going on. So in terms of response of control systems, some of the trends that we were seeing were that either people were generally happy and productive, or there was another group that was secretive, demotivated, slightly toxic. GC It would be good to explore that split a little bit more, wouldn’t it? BR Very much. GC The point of this survey was really to understand how metaphor and understanding metaphor might really assist an organisation in leading through change. Were there any particular useful examples from the survey to give us insight there? BR Loads of great examples, and here are four. So one of them was ‘discussing with fellow managers that our communications pattern with stakeholders is like a nest with baby birds in. The stakeholder comes with their big juicy worm, we all chirp as loudly as we possibly can to see which one the stakeholder will give the worm to. This means that the weakest baby bird will die, even if their message is the most important’. So that was one of them. Another one was ‘the machine metaphor has been used to introduce better processes into the international business’, so just clean and simple. And another one is ‘reminding our commercial arm, which is our sister company, of their obligation to safeguard an income stream to the organisation and the need to continue to operate within the values of the brand. That helps shape their business plan and funding options for growth’. And the last one that I would like to share is a quote from a CEO, and this was ‘if you are not keeping score, you are only practising’. And this quote was from a former CEO who was also a former world class tennis champion and that sort of addressed the frustration at the lack of focus on results. So those are some examples of how people have used metaphor in the past in their organisations. GC I think particularly that last one is a really good example of how a statement and picture could really grab the attention of people in that organisation and get a sense of what the future might look like. BR Yes, that’s right. GC We have got some really nice examples of how metaphors and understanding metaphors can really help us in managing change. I wonder if we had any examples about how metaphors have maybe got in the way of performance improvement BR We had lots of nice ones – and here is one of them: ‘pit ponies, work them hard. Get as much as possible out of as few people as possible.’ GC We had some really nice examples of how people would really like to use metaphor in the process of change. I think one of them was a Nintendo Wii wasn’t it? BR Yes. There was one respondent that said in terms of how they would use it: ‘Nintendo Wii – we are in the real world looking into the virtual world. Sometimes we hit the ceiling or lampshade and that brings us back into the real world. We need to be in the real world all of the time, thinking about real customers and employees’. So that was their example. Another example was ‘I would compare the unit with a professional football team – it’s always eleven people and doesn’t usually grow, except gradually; or learn completely new things. It’s not adaptable at all, for example, would go under in a chess competition. And then a greenhouse’, this is the same respondent, ‘plants grow immediately when nurtured, you can breed new varieties, you can increase numbers. I would discuss and argue we are too close to the football team and should move closer to the greenhouse’. Graham, what are our next steps? GC Well, first of all what we are going to do is to send out some of the detail to people who have taken part in the survey, so that we can get to see some of the background that we have been attempting to summarise today. And then in the early part of 2009, we are aiming to put on a webinar, so that those who have been involved might join the discussion about metaphors and their use and we can get richer information about how metaphors might be used. BR Great. Any final thoughts about the survey? GC I think the thing which has come home to me is that this world of metaphor is far more detailed, more complex, than ever I thought. I knew there was a lot of power in metaphor, but I have been excited as we have looked at some of the early results, and I am sure there is much more to come. BR Great. Thank you. GC Thank you to all of you who responded. We couldn’t obviously have done anything without your input. I would like to thank Belina for her hard work in analysing all of these results and putting the detail together. Thank you Belina. BR My pleasure, thank you.