Increase Your Leadership Effectiveness - Use Metaphors to Imagine Organizations
Organizational experts Gareth Morgan and Karl Weick use metaphor to express how organizations engage in the act of organizing themselves.
Each uses metaphor toward different ends.
Morgan's purpose is to assist practitioners in the application of a theory about their organization while Weick's purpose is to help leaders think theoretically about their practice.
This article will help you use metaphors in both ways to improve your organizational understanding and leadership.
Morgan states "the challenge is to become skilled in the art of using metaphor: to find fresh ways of seeing, understanding, and shaping the situations that we want to organize and manage" (6).
Can you imagine your organization as a ...
brain? Like a brain your organization is a complex information processing system, it responds to stimuli, it imagines new ways of being, makes plans, and initiates actions.
What similarities between your organization and a brain to do you see? What practical benefit would you see, for example, in consciously observing the stimuli that cause reactions in your organization? In your team? In your boss? With a little practice, you can learn to anticipate behaviors in your organization that others are not expecting because you have trained yourself to observe its stimulation and response patterns.
You've just applied a theory about organizational behavior to help you practically discern and predict how your organization works! Weick asserts that "people see more things than they can describe in words.
A metaphor can often capture some of these distinctive, powerful and private realities that are tough to describe to someone else" (49).
With Weick's statement in mind, let's put metaphors in reverse.
Instead of beginning with a metaphor to think about how your organization works, start with observing how your organization works and create a metaphor.
For example, if your organization is highly organized, highly productive place where people subordinate their individuality for the good of the organization, you might ponder how your organization works like .
.
.
an ant colony.
How does the image that emerges help you understand and explain what is happening in your organization? You've just created a theory about how your organization works! In short, Morgan [http://www.
onepine.
info/pmgan.
htm] helps organizational leaders use metaphors to make theory practical.
On the other hand, Weick [http://www.
onepine.
info/pweick.
htm]helps organizational leaders to use their practical experiences as springboards for thinking in creative theoretical ways.
You can use metaphors in both ways to enhance your understanding and leadership of organizations.
Works Cited Morgan, Gareth.
Images of Organization.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997.
Weick, Karl E.
The Social Psychology of Organizing.
Topics in Social Psychology.
Ed.
Charles A.
Kiesler.
2nd ed.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
Copyright (c) 2009, Jeff R.
Hale
Each uses metaphor toward different ends.
Morgan's purpose is to assist practitioners in the application of a theory about their organization while Weick's purpose is to help leaders think theoretically about their practice.
This article will help you use metaphors in both ways to improve your organizational understanding and leadership.
Morgan states "the challenge is to become skilled in the art of using metaphor: to find fresh ways of seeing, understanding, and shaping the situations that we want to organize and manage" (6).
Can you imagine your organization as a ...
brain? Like a brain your organization is a complex information processing system, it responds to stimuli, it imagines new ways of being, makes plans, and initiates actions.
What similarities between your organization and a brain to do you see? What practical benefit would you see, for example, in consciously observing the stimuli that cause reactions in your organization? In your team? In your boss? With a little practice, you can learn to anticipate behaviors in your organization that others are not expecting because you have trained yourself to observe its stimulation and response patterns.
You've just applied a theory about organizational behavior to help you practically discern and predict how your organization works! Weick asserts that "people see more things than they can describe in words.
A metaphor can often capture some of these distinctive, powerful and private realities that are tough to describe to someone else" (49).
With Weick's statement in mind, let's put metaphors in reverse.
Instead of beginning with a metaphor to think about how your organization works, start with observing how your organization works and create a metaphor.
For example, if your organization is highly organized, highly productive place where people subordinate their individuality for the good of the organization, you might ponder how your organization works like .
.
.
an ant colony.
How does the image that emerges help you understand and explain what is happening in your organization? You've just created a theory about how your organization works! In short, Morgan [http://www.
onepine.
info/pmgan.
htm] helps organizational leaders use metaphors to make theory practical.
On the other hand, Weick [http://www.
onepine.
info/pweick.
htm]helps organizational leaders to use their practical experiences as springboards for thinking in creative theoretical ways.
You can use metaphors in both ways to enhance your understanding and leadership of organizations.
Works Cited Morgan, Gareth.
Images of Organization.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997.
Weick, Karl E.
The Social Psychology of Organizing.
Topics in Social Psychology.
Ed.
Charles A.
Kiesler.
2nd ed.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
Copyright (c) 2009, Jeff R.
Hale