Metaplying: Applying Your Metaphor
You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog.
—Elvis
After you have chosen your new metaphor, the first thing you need to look at is the vision statement or vision of the organization. If the vision statement must be rewritten, the new statement should capture the strength, power, or direction of the metaphor. This same process then carries down through the mission statement. After this, the next part of the application process is to see how your new metaphor filters down through your goals and objectives. This is metaplying.
You must ask yourself a number of questions:
•Do your current goals and objectives reflect the attributes that the new metaphor projects?
•Will you have to rethink your goals and objectives, modify them, or completely eliminate them?
•Will you discover new goals and objectives that are consistent with the new metaphor? If so, how do these new goals and objectives impact the overall strategy of your organization? Also, are those who are responsible to carrying out your new or modified goals and objectives equipped to do so?
•Will you have to reassign management or staff to accomplish these objectives so that the metaphor is properly supported?
•Will it require you to restructure your organization so that it is more consistent with the new metaphor? How will this impact budgets, revenues, and costs? Are your facilities sufficient to support production under the new metaphor?
•Will you have to downsize your hard assets or your rolling stock?
•Will it require you to modify your current marketing strategy?
•Will it impact whom you do business with? Will your current suppliers be able to provide materials and services that they were able to under the old system? What about your distributors? Are they sufficiently staffed and connected to get your products to the markets you desire?
•Will your target markets change? Will some be added or will some be eliminated all together?
•Will you suddenly find yourself able or unable to provide new or altered products or services to new market segments?
Application of your new metaphor requires you to understand the principles derived from the attributes of your new metaphor well in order to compare organizational issues to these principles. Principles are the guiding forces that help your organization maintain alignment with its strategy. These principles should, whenever possible, be stated as action verbs. However, that may not always be possible, particularly when the principle involves a state of being such as, “We should be generous at all times.” This could be stated as action, “We should give at all times”; however, the meaning is somewhat altered. You should not get too flustered if you run into this since the goal is to develop principles that truly capture what you are hoping will provide the right guidelines to reflect your desired outcomes.
As you review your current goals and objectives or write new ones, you should compare them against your values, vision, and mission, and new guiding principles to determine if they are consistent with these. Do they abide or stay within the guidelines that your principles dictate? Are they in violation of your values? Do they further your vision and mission? These are very important issues to discuss. Without these conversations, your metaphor will never be given the “permission” to transform your organization. In other words, in drifting away from the process of comparing, you will not be giving full access to the metaphor to influence your goals and objectives. In time, you will find yourself reverting back to your old ways and conclude, incorrectly, that metaforming is not a valuable tool for transformation.
Metaforming must be applied systematically as you review your goals and objectives. The temptation will be to skip over or let things remain as they are. You will have wasted valuable time and money if this is the case. Applying the new metaphor requires that everyone in the organization be fully vested in the process. From the board of directors to the entry level positions, everyone should know what you are trying to achieve. They should fully understand the metaphor and the process. The CEO needs to be the driver for the change. He or she will have to devote considerable time to the change since transformation is an all-encompassing exercise. As various people in the organization catch on, delegation can take place, however, the CEO must remain actively involved and supportive of the transformation.
Know the Condition of Your Employees
Many people in the organization may feel unsettled or complacent about the proposed changes. This could be from any number of issues such as fear of the unknown, fear of loss, fear of failure, disruption of relationships, personality conflicts, politics, or cultural assumptions and values. It is important in your communication to empathize with these feelings regardless if you agree with them or not.
At some point early on, you will need to create a sense of urgency. You will need to shake up the equilibrium so that some form of change will be expected. The organization would not be facing the need for transformation unless they had not already recognized signals that were disconcerting either in the marketplace, with their customers or clients, or with the direction of the industry in general.
Next, it is important to pull together a coalition of supportive leaders who can guide the organization through the transformation process. These leaders may not all hold positional authority. Some may have influence due to their expertise, their personality, or their length of time at the company. Regardless, you will need to gather the key influencers and work together with them to move the organization forward.
As you begin the change process you will need to eliminate any rewards for current behavior that will be undesirable in the transformed organization. This could involve discouraging water cooler talk or long lunch breaks. In times past, you may even have participated in behaviors that would not be tolerated in the new organization. You will need to assess situations as they come up to determine if by participating, you would be encouraging these behaviors.
All along the change continuum, you will need to move the organization to initiate new options and explain their rationale. This can be accomplished in a rewards system where you celebrate desired behaviors by implementing new rituals. Some organizations celebrate new sales, promotions, cost-cutting measures, and serving one another. At some point, as you near completion of the change process you can formalize the reward system through policies and procedures that ensure standardized processes and equal opportunity is afforded to participate and be rewarded.
Using Change Agents
Many organizations use internal staff to serve as change agents through the process. They act as monitors and trackers of the change. When they see things that are not getting completed or behind schedule, they report to those in authority to get the organization back on track. Sometimes they have been delegated the authority by the CEO to take action when necessary. Some of the advantages to using internal staff are that they know the history, the political system, and the culture of the organization. In addition, they will have to live with the results so they are vested in the transformation. Some disadvantages are that they may be associated with certain groups or factions and be accused of favoritism. They may also be too close to the issues to provide an objective perspective.
Some organizations use external consultants to serve as change agents. The advantage of this is that they can bring an objective and impartial perspective. The disadvantage is that they have limited knowledge of the organization, its politics, and the culture; however, this can be overcome with a thorough fact-finding process. They may also be viewed with suspicion. Whichever approach your organization takes, the change agents must be trusted and seen as experts with proven track records to their counterparts in the organization.
Training Is Essential
Transformation of an organization often requires training in new skills such as leadership, executive coaching, job redesign, conflict management, emotional intelligence, or high-performance team building. The worst thing an organization can do is to require their employees to engage in new behaviors or skills and not prepare them properly. Unfortunately, many organizations leave out the preparation due to costs or the time involved to facilitate this part of the transformation process. This is a fatal mistake and can literally derail the entire process. Incredible metaphors cannot help an organization that wants to short cut things in order to try to save a few dollars. Transformation is an all-or-nothing proposition. The organization’s health and existence may depend on it. As you can see metaplying is an involved process; but if done correctly and with commitment, your organization can find fresh wind to propel it into a new ocean.
Learning Reinforcement Exercise
1.Your guiding coalition is your leadership team who are supportive of the transformation initiative.
Circle: True False
2.Internal change agents know the history, politics, and culture of the organization but may be held in suspicion because of alignment with certain factions or groups.
Circle: True False
3.External consultants serving as change agents can provide an objective perspective and must be seen as experts in their fields but not equivalent to their counterparts in the organization.
Circle: True False
Answers are Italicized:
1.Your guiding coalition is your leadership team who are supportive of the transformation initiative.
Circle: True False
2.Internal change agents know the history, politics, and culture of the organization but may be held in suspicion because of alignment with certain factions or groups.
Circle: True False
3.External consultants serving as change agents can provide an objective perspective and must be seen as experts in their fields but not equivalent to their counterparts in the organization.
Circle: True False