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Learning from our own experience

We learn through observation, from teachers or others, and from the experiences we make ourselves. In this case, everything happens in our minds – in each individual. The lessons are conveyed through oral transmission and appropriate carrier media – e.g., tools, instruments, sculptures, visualizations, and multimedia. When you lack contemporary witnesses, past experiences only become visible through objects. From historical findings, we derive the insights of earlier people. Oral traditions, such as those of the Aborigines, who have passed on past events and experiences from generation to generation since time immemorial, are not regarded by traditional media as confirmed evidence. Therefore, for instance, Wikipedia rules do not accept posts handed down by mouth to mouth. Thus, much of our knowledge lies in the darkness of the undocumented. The presentable know-how is limited to the artifacts that have been found – hand axes from 1.75 million years ago; over 40,000 years old flutes; cave paintings and sculptures that are over 30,000 years old. For all the objects’ physicality, the meaning and associated thoughts and skills remain out of reach.

Through appropriate interpretation, insights, such as knowledge about forgotten medical agents, can be brought back to life. A decisive role in reuse is played by the language, the transmission medium, and the context. These aspects are also valid of the flood of peer-reviewed, scientific publications (more than 2.5 million articles in 2018). What should we consider when we want to learn from past experiences?

  • Language reveals – though not everything
    We live with the illusion that convictions can be comprehensibly put into a linguistic form. This way, we oversee the fact that the expression formats cannot fully convey the actual meaning (see meta-model of language).
    This is especially true for the signs and words used and the varying vocabulary of languages (jargons and translations) – for example, when the understanding of short, medium, and long term is shortened from one to ten years to one month to three years, it results in different effects. In the first case, the future can be jointly designed. In the second case, the workforce is always running after new directions without having any chance to participate.
    Historical statements can only be used by making assumptions. Although we can read the word’s string, we do not know what was initially meant. Ancient Greeks distinguished project-like business activity for earning a living and financing leisure from physical slave labor. This no longer corresponds to our current view, which focuses on work-life balance. Today, the incentive to work (the work) arises intrinsically from the urge for recognition and self-affirmation and extrinsically from pecuniary and other monetary benefits. The longing for work-life balance is the attempt to replace the labor stresses with leisure activities (the life), not ease of mind. The inconveniences of work, the dependencies, external regulations, and incapacitations are supposed to compensate for these disadvantages of work with an exuberant calendar of spare time activities.
    The concepts of work and non-work have shifted repeatedly over the centuries – even in recent years with the agilization. Despite this, companies continue to adhere to the vertical and horizontal division of labor. With their outdated approaches, companies fail to introduce new leadership styles for the agile VUCA world.
  • The medium conveys – though not forever
    The longevity and availability of a medium determine whether conceptions stay visible. Inaccessible and protected from light, dry cave walls have preserved signs and images over forty thousand years – ceramic tablets last 5,000 years; books and manuscripts experience several centuries; films dissolve after 40 to 150 years. Just as most artifacts from the past have disappeared, our current media will disintegrate – optical storage media last five, 100, and in professional cases, 1000 years; hard drives and flash memory survive up to ten years. The lack of oral history means that most of the experiences disappeared due to the media’s short shelf life. Even if they survive a long time, they must first be found and readable. Remember the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered after almost two thousand years.
    Additionally, the undocumented pieces of the puzzle are missing for a better understanding – the experiences that were not recorded and the lack of understanding of their creation context.
    Handbooks provide general principles, but it would go beyond their scope to describe the related environment. Thus, the application with changing tasks is a mental transfer performance that is only possible with a lot of overhead. One example is the elaborate BPM of the eighties, which no longer fits today’s rapidly changing activities.
  • The context supports – although not everywhere
    Experiences always arise in a specific environment. The authors always presuppose the understanding of the accompanying circumstances. Subsequently, they forget essential explanations of the context. As a result, the elaborated impressions remain misleading. Let us consider the rule of the people, the democracy, i.e., the population’s participation in political resolutions. In ancient Greece, only so-called full citizens were involved in decisions – 10-20% of the inhabitants (i.e., Athenians who could fight, but no women, slaves, or foreigners). Today we understand democracy as the participation of the whole population, equal rights, majority decisions, etc. – at least in principle.
    The context is composed of different scopes (local, regional, continental, and global). The resulting mix is challenging to grasp – the New Yorker Manhattanite differs from the Californian San Franciscan, and at the same time, they share the American dream.
    The corresponding contexts are not provided and get lost over time. Today we try to establish this context with cultural studies, which is difficult because these contents are rarely described, and contemporaries can no longer be asked. Let us think about the design of processes according to the principles of Taylorism: there is one, best way; place and time are fixed; detailed structured tasks are pursued; one-way communication; small-scale targets without reference to corporate goals; third-party quality assurance. In the fast-moving world of VUCA, these demands can no longer be realized due to the zero-latency reaction time.

Bottom line: Due to the language limitations, the rarely available and problematic to understand evidence, and the lack of context, the prior experience can only be reused with great effort. Previous experiences are often used to get the target group to agree through the authority bias (i.e., the tendency to accept an authority’s statement, regardless of its content, although one has a different opinion). Even Goethe proclaimed in Faust, “For what one has in black and white. One can carry home in comfort.” With the flood of sources, experiences, and fake news, there are too many approaches that an objective choice of the “right” approach becomes impossible. For this reason, we have to make our own experiences – err, bearing mistakes, and try again until it works.

The appropriate metaphor field provides many images

A metaphor effects through the mental links that the addressees add, especially if the images are coherently from one subject area, the so-called metaphor field. The most effective topic areas can be determined with the targeted audience through conversations, evaluations of publications, and the consideration of previous statements. The mental worlds found provide clues to real, emotional, and strategic interests. Many images are available through the thoughtful choice of subject areas to increase the impact on the targeted groups.

The following overview offers possible topic areas and some food for thought on the use of metaphor fields.

  • Societal
    Society is composed of various groups and actors that form communities spatially, economically, and culturally. You find the analogies in multiple roles (e.g., gender, socialization, relationship, professional, and cultural), social forms (e.g., family, horde, tribe, village, clan, and nation), the comparable phases (e.g., development, growth, consolidation, and decay), and other characteristics. In enterprises, social groups evolve in the biz functions or on hierarchical levels or across them based on subject areas and other commonalities (e.g., gender, age, and education). Social metaphors promote team building – e.g., the company as a family; the company’s entrepreneur; life’s not easy at the bottom.
  • Architectural
    The art of building provides commonalities along the life cycle of artifacts – designing, creating, constructing, and building buildings, cities, and landscapes. The results range from sketches, models, and shells to facades, interiors, facilities, plumbing, and networks. Different building shapes additionally stimulate the imagination: e.g., the tower; the bridge, the pillars; the palace, the castle, the country house. Architectural metaphors follow everyday experiences: e.g., all show and no substance; co-operations require bridgeheads; ideas stand on shaky pillars.
  • Physical
    Bodies are the material building blocks and functions of living things and artifacts: mammals with their limbs and organs, e.g., the heart, the brain, and the gut; things with their components, e.g., commodities or artistic objects, and the activities associated with them, such as chopping, storing. Popular images of people are, for example, he lacks backbone; putting their heart into their efforts; the gut decision. Things like the bucket, the sieve, the knife, etc., provide mental links through their functionality – e.g., the nervous system for IT networking, arm length for the scope, the dull knife for lack of effectiveness.
  • Technical
    The constructed, man-made world of tools, machines, and computers represents a mechanistic worldview. In recent decades, technology has been the guiding metaphor for organizations: division of labor, the interaction of the parts of the organization, and the targeted performance improvements. Typical analogies are input and output; the gear train; the tanker with its huge turning radius; the speedboats with their agility; the interfaces between different systems; networking; the catalyst as an impetus for change. The human being becomes the small cog of the organization; the helicopter provides the overview; the three-legged stool stands for TAR of a role (i.e., task, authority, and responsibility).
  • Economic
    With its value-creating processes and responsible parties, the economy consists of meaningful images: money, investment, economy types, markets, suppliers, buyers, and intermediaries. In the enterprise, as in the economy, supply and demand as well as the Invisible Hand apply with all the associated mechanisms, e.g., in pricing or self-regulation for a fair distribution of services. The development becomes insightful through general values: e.g., the winner gets it all stands for the win-lose; everyone is in the same boat for the dependence on each other; the tide lifts all boats equally for the uniform effects of economic fluctuations.
  • Scientific
    In all disciplines, science provides insights and regularities for our understanding of the world. Scientific theories include explanatory models, experiments, and values. To get as close to the truth as possible, science strives for objectivity, clarity, comprehensibility, and openness. Metaphors can be derived from this: e.g., the laboratory as a safe testing field; the research project for fruitless investigations; the bee colony for groups; the selfish gene as an image for the self-life of information (memes).
  • Ecological
    Our natural environment with its phenomena offers analogies for the increasingly organic themes. It starts with the different spheres of sea, land, air, or space. Natural catastrophes such as tsunamis, avalanches, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, meteorite impacts, black holes, etc., occur there. The vastness of the sea or the infinite expanse of space can be applied to biz situations. Besides, natural processes provide meaningful images – the caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly; the organic growth of cells; the cycle of becoming and passing.
  • Military
    The art of war is a particular form of occupation with corresponding analogies for biz: organizational forms, equipment, and machinery, and approaches to action. The structure of military formations derives from their preferred locations: naval, land, and air forces (and now in space), as well as from the chain of command, communication, and escalation ways: roles (e.g., general and soldier; adversary and allies), procedures (e.g., reconnaissance, situation briefing; strategy). The approaches to action provide strategic, tactical, and operational perspectives (e.g., situation plan; scenarios; troop movements). Typical metaphors include victories or defeats; the decisive battle; war as a continuation of politics by other means; the fight to the bitter end; the battle is lost, but not the war.

Bottom line: Metaphors transfer properties and characteristics from a subject area into a biz topic. Due to the analogies and scope of an association, the target group members enrich the issue. To develop this imagery coherently, the subject areas of the metaphors should be chosen carefully. Approaches arise on the one hand from the worlds of the target groups’ experience. On the other hand, the metaphor fields should be rich in images so that different aspects can be used. In this way, a comprehensive imagery language is created over time, which enriches the biz task. For example, a technical target group has a particular penchant for technical metaphors: e.g., the moon landings with almost half a million contributors, the difficulties to be solved (Houston – we have a problem), or the required vision or mission. The smart choice of the metaphor field and the stringent reuse encourage the common striving towards the goal. We do not forget a good metaphor.

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