To Know More—Notice More!

Nature Offers All the Metaphors We Need

Just as nature offers metaphors that can become new products or solutions, using metaphors as a method for team conversation and personal inspiration offers a safe, unique way to deepen conversation and personal insight. Notice more about the tangled burr in a dog’s hair, or the padding on a gecko’s feet, or that slime mold as a model for creating traffic patterns. 

These are all examples of innovations drawn from nature. Velcro is the result of a Swiss engineer observing how barbs tangle. (How I wish I had the patent on that!) The padding on a gecko’s feet inspired the creation of self-stick carpet. A single-celled slime mold without a brain is inspiring Cambridge, Massachusetts startup Mireta to rethink how subways, bike lanes, roadways, and other city networks are designed for speed, durability, and adaptability to climate-related challenges.  Biomimicry is at work!

I Noticed More During the Facilitation of a Team Meeting

Example: I was facilitating a team meeting to explore how the team currently operated and what might make it better.  To open up conversation and invite a free flow of ideas, I made this statement:

“This team is like pizza. Tell me why?”

After startled looks, members began to jump in—including those who normally were silent.

 “We have many different varieties of ‘toppings’ in this team”. “I don’t like thick crust, and our team pizza is too ‘thick’ “We can be easily divided, and the pizza shared." “We operate sometimes like the dough and have to rise to the occasion…” 

Each one of these statements invited a deeper look into the personalities and the working relationships within the team. My job as a facilitator was to ask the probing questions. But it was “pizza” that opened the door. 

It was the incongruous word “pizza” that stimulated deeper thinking.  But it could have been any common word not connected to the organization or its workings.

I Noticed More Taking Over a Controlling, Demanding Leadership Team

Another time, I was part of the team called in to take over for a controlling, demanding “leadership team”. Folks were unhappy, demoralized, and ready to leave.  We needed something that could become our emblem of change, that could lighten the feeling of gloom, and that could invite conversation.  

The answer: Strawberries. The employees had felt kept in the dark, covered with crap, and unheard.  Strawberries need light and care to flourish. We all wore a strawberry pin. We published the successes of each department through a series of “Strawberry Shorts”.  Laughter became our “fertilizer,” and “weeding out” what kept the team down was important.  The metaphor of “strawberries” provided a visual emblem of what we wanted to achieve.  And we did.

How Will You Notice More?

SO, how about you?  What question is swirling around in your brain?  There’s a metaphor waiting that, if you ask the right questions and look at it from different angles, you might gain insight.