I Think I Have a Metaphor Problem

This is not the first time I've used this blog as a venue for my confessions and it probably won't be my last.  Looking back over my blog as well as the presentations and training I deliver, I see a habit emerge: my use of metaphor.

In the beginning, I tried to justify it.  In describing an abstract concept or complicated process, it's beneficial to provide a simpler image for comparison.  I taught for five years in the classroom, so I know that relating new learning to one's existing knowledge is good practice.  Conversely, from my experiences in IT and academia, I know that if we overload an unsuspecting audience with too much jargon, learning might not occur.

Yes, I justified myself as a medicinal metaphor user, someone using metaphor to help me present my topics.  I compared extracting a ZIP file with several nested ZIPs to performing a Caesarian section. I compared client-side XSLT and different browsers to how my two children assemble puzzle pieces.  I compared lack of needs assessment to contraception and delivery of training to Paper, Scissors, Rock.

Dressed as "Dr. Nikki", I compared reviewing your scheduled backup to having a checkup and compared email etiquette to personal safety.  With three partners in crime (and in the unfortunate position of sharing the same session time as Jared Spool), I compared Web best practices to a fashion show.  (My part was "Less is More: How to Strip Down Your Content".)

I keep telling myself, I can quit anytime, but I know that's not true.  I'm in the planning stages of many projects like "Instant Trainer--Just Add Water!" with Katharine Strenko, "Oracle Calendar Etiquette: A Tea Party" with Shannon Malkowski, and "Self-Help: The Stuart Smalley Approach to Troubleshooting" (another "Dr. Nikki" presentation).

And that's not bad enough.  Using metaphor means that with each one you use, you need to make a more striking comparison to get the same effect next time.  You need to keep reinventing yourself, coming up with new highs (or lows).  If "stripping down content" in front of the Penn State Web Conference gets us an audience, what do we do next time that is just as good, yet original?  Ask the audience to strip?  (I'm not kidding, metaphorically speaking.  More on this in upcoming posts.)

Metaphor is a gateway literary device.  It leads to apostrophe, allusion, alliteration, and who-knows-what next? Iambic pentameter?  Personification?  Haiku?

But the real threat of metaphor is when we rely on it as a coping mechanism to negotiate organizational politics.  It's like the Star Trek episodes that tried to make a political statement to people who may not have been as receptive to an open conversation about controversial topics.  We dress our real feeling, motives, and intents in metaphor because we expect our audience will not be open to a direct discussion.

We may know the truths at work and want to reveal them, but use metaphor or subtlety to try be as honest as safely possible.  We may also have our own personal motives, so hidden in "for the good of the organization" rhetoric that we don't even realize the truth ourselves.

I've been reading Beyond Bullsh*t: Straight-Talk at Work by Samuel A. Culbert, which talks about the rhetoric we use to advance personal agendas or to dance around someone else's.  When is speaking directly actually possible?  When is it not?

It's made me think about my use of language.  When am I facilitating understanding?  When am I impeding?  When am I enabling all of us (including myself) to hide personal agendas?  When am I just going for the cheap-attention-grabbing blogger version of a clipshow, disguised as a new post?