The Power of Metaphor
“If your business were an animal, what animal would you be?”
A few weeks ago I did an alignment session with an executive team to help them finalize their One Page Business Plans. While the plans were coming together in terms of guiding the business over the next year, I observed some questions and uncertainty about the company’s longer term strategy. The executive team was looking to the CEO to articulate a bigger story that they could share with customers and employees.
Today I met with that CEO to debrief the alignment session and to chart out the next few sessions with his team. I had been thinking about his challenge around telling a bigger strategic story. I was prepared with a couple of classic strategy models (Treacy/Wiersema’s Value Discipline Model and Michael Porter’s distinction between strategy and operational excellence.) But before I got to those, I started with a question.
Who is the 800-lb. gorilla in your market?
Well, it is clearly Competitor XYZ.
Why?
Well, they have all of these resources, market share, and behave accordingly.
So, if your company were an animal, what animal would you be?
Hmmm…
He thought about it for several minutes while I waited patiently.
Probably a big cat. Not a lion, but some kind of night hunter or fast cat – like a cheetah. Very fast, nimble, quick. Rarely can bring down the big prey because it is too risky and consumes too much energy. Survives by being very clever in what prey it goes after.
Very interesting. So tell me how that applies to your company …
We talked about that for the next half hour and then mapped his competitive position to this concept.
The cool part about this metaphor is that it ignited a big spark of energy and excitement. Why?
Because we can get fired up about images of being like a cheetah. Every person in the company can relate to it – it gives them a sense of how to behave. All the intellectual stuff about strategy can come later.
