My friend and mentor Roy Williams has posted a thought-provoking article about the often overlooked truth that there’s really no such thing as thinking “outside the box,” the best we can do is find a different box in which to think. He then makes a very powerful point about one of the boxes we in the business world tend to occupy without giving thought to the implications. Here’s the key thought…
In the male-dominated world of business we tend to use battlefield metaphors and sports analogies, not because these metaphors are particularly accurate, but because we are hairy males. The Wall Street Journal is filled with reports of “hostile takeovers†and best-selling business books include Marketing Warfare, Corporate Combat, and Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. But by choosing to do business from within the box marked “battle,†we adopt not only the outcomes but the value judgments of those who have occupied the box before us. In doing so, we unconsciously create a business environment that is hostile and defensive and find ourselves using words like “strategy,†“tactics,†“targeting,†and “dominating the competition,†never once considering that injury, sacrifice, destruction and loss are also part of that package.
I wonder what sort of difference it might make if we were to adopt a cooperation metaphor rather than a battle metaphor for our work?