Metaphors, a figure of speech, are a powerful way of communicating our thoughts and ideas. We denounce an unfair comment as “a low blow” and a flimsy plan or weak organization as “a house of cards”. We are in the doldrums if depressed and in Siberia if sitting at the worst table in a restaurant. In response to my blog post on complaining, a client quoted to me a message that was both vivid and inspiring, “it is far better to light a candle than to curse the darkness”.

Metaphors are so ubiquitous at work that we hardly notice their presence – bottlenecks worsen our commute, posts go viral, projects have milestones, strategies have roadmaps, Chinese walls prevent information sharing, firewalls prevent unauthorized access, start-ups get seed funding, companies have DNA, take moon-shots and enjoy tailwinds, untested software have bugs, our IT infrastructures have landscapes and some businesses become unicorns. We take flak for our mistakes, store our data in the cloud and use swim-lane diagrams & heat-maps in our presentations. I could go on.

Metaphors are simple in construction – they attribute the qualities of one thing to another unrelated thing. With stories already attached to them, they capture attention, convey complex ideas and create connections with other people. They can come from anywhere – sports (‘a low blow’ is from boxing), nature and war have perhaps contributed the most. They derive their power from the images they conjure up in our mind and work best when they are simple, vivid and unexpected. Doctors find metaphors useful when explaining a disease and its progress. Politicians deploy metaphors regularly – Brexit is either “a smooth glidepath” or “a cliff edge”, depending on who is talking. Leaders use metaphors to communicate strategies (“the end game”), prepare employees for a challenge (“keep your powder dry”), motivate them (“shoulders to the wheel”), allay their fears (“it’s darkest before dawn”), lead change (“we’re turning a ship”) and issue warnings (“you’re on thin ice”).

Clearly, metaphors are indispensable but through overuse, they can become trite or even annoying: “peeling the onion”, “low-hanging fruit” and “moving the needle” are probably best retired. Some Pakistani journalists protested Mr. Imran Khan’s over-reliance on cricket metaphors in his political speeches. Metaphors can also be inappropriate when your audience doesn’t share your linguistic or cultural norms – “winter is coming” won’t mean much to those who don’t watch HBO. Mixing metaphors can be confusing and comic – don’t tell anyone there are carrots at the end of the tunnel.

As we put 2019 in our rear-view mirror and head into twenty-twenty, itself a metaphor in the US for perfect vision, I wish you a lovely holiday season and a wonderful year ahead.