Michael Lissack
frameworks—recognizing that for many decisions, the cost of reversibility is lower than the cost of delay. This approach allows them to act on partial pattern recognition and adjust as new information emerges. Managers use metaphors as other building blocks for seeing. For most managers, the effective metaphors are those which help to organize action. These use well-learned behaviors, such as flying in formation, driving on a highway, or moving folders on a desktop, so that the new task could be performed smoothly using coordination skills that have already been de- veloped. Metaphor does more than adorn our thinking. It structures our thinking. It conditions our sympathies and emotional reactions. It helps us achieve awareness of the real situation. It governs the evidence that we consider salient and the outcomes that we elect to pursue. When there are anomalies or ambiguities, managers often check several interpretations to discover which best matches the features of the situation. It is at this stage that the differences between experts and novices become most obvious. Experts not only have a greater stock of interpretations (cognitive building blocks) from which to draw, but also greater experience at sorting which features are salient and which are not. Experts truly see differently as a result. Both novices and experts build stories as a means of increasing their stock of building blocks and their ability to discern salient features. Stories are complex because they are composed of interwoven building blocks. Hiding facets of a story (making it complicated) is a successful strategy for suspense, but a miserable strategy for explanation and understanding. Thus, business stories are not the same as a mystery novel or a case study. To be coherent, a business story must aim to explain and elucidate, not to mystify or confuse. You tell stories to provide yourself or others with the benefit of an experience—giving them the ability to see a building block of which they may have otherwise been unaware. Don’t spoil your ability to grant them new vision with a deliberately inserted curtain. (Curtains, of course, have many folds and are complicated—stories are told to simplify the complex, not to fold it up and hide it away.)
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