Metaphors for Change: Finding Balance in a Polarized World, Part 1
Martha Miser
Aduro Consulting
The Wisdom of Perspective
"Where you stand depends on where you sit." -Miles's law
It's been more than 40 years since I first heard these words. It was a warm summer day in Syracuse, New York, and I was sitting in a large auditorium on the first day of my master's program at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Administration. Honestly, I don't remember much more than feeling excited about the challenge that lay ahead. But I do remember being struck by this brief aphorism and the wisdom of its underlying message: Beware of your own certainty; know that others will have equally valid perspectives; and any path forward will demand curiosity, conversation, and compromise.
Metaphors: Windows into Alternative Worldviews
What can we do about this?
I agree with educator Richard Rohr (2017), who says we need to teach people how to move from win-lose to win-win ways of thinking. Over the past several years, my colleagues and I have experimented with a number of approaches and have found metaphors to be among the most powerful educational tools. Why? Because metaphors, whether they're pictures, symbols, or words, have the power to convey a whole constellation of values and beliefs.
The Machine Metaphor: An Age-old Archive of Beliefs
It's widely accepted that the oldest and most durable metaphor for the organization is the machine. This worldview assumes that organizations are rational and can be optimized, and that change can be predicted, planned, quantified, and controlled.
The Equilibrium Metaphor: Eureka! Organizations Are Human Systems!
At the dawn of the 20th century, business organizations mirrored both the upsides and the downsides of the machine. Fortunately a team of researchers conducting a series of experiments in Western Electric's Hawthorne factory during the 1920s and 1930s made an accidental discovery that transformed our understanding of organizations.
It's hard to overstate the importance of this idea. Kurt Lewin argued that motivation, collaboration, and performance arise, not from "rationalistic design," but from "social process" or the "live operation of conscious human beings."
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