Welcome back to school! Only now it’s business school. Have you forgotten what hyperbole, lithe and metaphor are? Now we’ll remind you and tell you how they can work in business. These and other non-trivial usefulness – in a book by Ivan Dyachenko “BRRR-R!!!
Hyperbole and litany
In the mid 50’s, when the first computers performed in a second some two or three thousand operations and cybernetics was numbered among the “venal virgins of imperialism”, Isaac Asimov published a story “All the sins of the world”. In it, all the (hyperbole) information of the world flowed into a supercomputer (hyperbole), about everything (hyperbole) that happens on the planet. Asimov used hyperbole and got the basis for a dramatic plot.
This is called “hyperbole.” We take an ordinary action, system, or resource, and dramatically (preferably in steps, moving in multiples of 10-100-1000-1,000,000 times) increase it. And observe the effects that such exaggerations bring.
“Hyperbolization” is a classic thought technique, a type of “mind games.” An event, a system, a job, a tool, a task, a resource–everything–appears magnified or diminished many times over: in size, in frequency of use, in power.
But let us look deeper.
With a multiple increase or decrease, the system has new, so-called emergent properties, both positive and negative. The ability to see and calculate the effect of such multiple changes in a system is stronger than Goethe’s Faust.
What can you hyperbolize? You can multiply or downplay:
– the resource (no matter that you don’t have it now);
– the system itself (the team, the company, the project);
– the market (number of customers, cost, purchasing power);
– the task (complexity, size, quality);
– any action (the volume of its result, power and range of impact)
.
Choose what you like.
With liberating questions, multiply or minimize the chosen object. Say, how will the situation or the system change, what new opportunities, ideas, limitations, or circumstances will arise if we multiply/decrease ten, a hundred, a thousand times:
– the resources to be invested;
– the volume of production;
– the frequency of sales;
– the priority of the project or task;
– the team
. Fix exactly the new, emerging properties and circumstances.
What is changing? What ideas does it push you toward? How would you deal with the challenges and constraints that arise? Does it make sense to use these findings now, when no real hyperbolization is occurring?
Your goal is to find new solutions that were previously hidden behind the horizon of common sense.
Let’s strengthen this tool by applying the RBC technique: size – time – cost. According to the rules, the parameters of some object are radically increased (and then decreased) sequentially: first the size of the object, then the time in which it performs the task, and then the price that can be paid for it.
What is new for us in this? RBC proposes to increase and decrease not all at once, but in steps. Double the original size, then 10 times, then 100, finally 1,000. Then the same with an understatement. And so all three parameters, at each step answering the question: what will our object be, what – attention! – the new principle of its functioning; what possibilities does this open up?
A litany is a sharp (multiple, step-by-step) understatement.
Metaphor
Metaphor is “and may be – on my sunset sad”; and “fire your soul is full of fire”, and “a nameless worm was sharpening his heart”
.
Metaphor as one of the most common artistic techniques is the transfer of a name from one object or phenomenon of reality to another on the basis of their similarity in some respect or by contrast. It arises from comparison, comparing a new object with an already known one and highlighting their common features.
How can this help us solve problems? It’s simple. We are not going to make art, but to study the principle of the metaphorical twin.
Create a metaphorical twin of your system and see how it works.
Look at your task, the system, the result you are looking for, the actor or his actions. What does it look like? Find a metaphor, a comparison that resembles your object in some way. If it doesn’t work right away, try to rewrite your focus. And rewrite it until you draw an analogy between the focus and a distant object or system.
Metaphors are good for selling a product. Say a Ford Mustang compares the power of a car to a wild horse, and a Coca-Cola truck is associated with the Christmas holiday more than other brand attributes. Good metaphors help convey business concepts and life phenomena: “blue ocean strategy,” “black swan,” “flow state.”
Both abstraction – consistently eliminating details from the focus – and increasing the focus on details, that is, saturating the text with details, are equally good at this job.
Catching the metaphor? Consistently ask yourself questions
:
- Where did this metaphor come from? What exactly is similar about your focus and the metaphorical object: principle of action? external similarity? common threats? common benefits?
Opening a new office is like jumping off a cliff into uncharted waters.
How is the metaphorical object arranged, its structure? Try to give an extremely detailed description. You come to the edge of the cliff, you are afraid, a special fear is caused by not knowing the bottom and the depth. The jump is irreversible in time – you can’t go back. Now you are dry, but if you get wet, your condition will change. There are people who are against the jump – you have to calm them down or ignore their anxiety (both are troublesome and distracting). By jumping, you’ll respect yourself more, and you’ll have something to tell your friends about.
- How would you act in the metaphorical situation to:
– make the most of it: would you videotape the jump? would you play music? would you jump as a group? would you hang an action camera on your forehead?
– reduce the risks: would you have studied the bottom beforehand? (sneakily) offer someone to jump in front of you? take a few deep breaths to oxygenate your blood?
- Back to our rams (it’s not a metaphor, it’s a phraseology). What correlations do you see between the structure of the metaphorical situation and the real one? What can be “transferred” to the real world from the world of metaphor?
Examples. Launch a pilot project? Open an office rather than a full-fledged office? Do it with a partner? Listen to critics, map risks? Recruit backup resources? Launch an information project on how to do it?
George Lakoff, an American linguist and professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, believes: much of the human conceptual system is constructed in metaphors.
Metaphors are not an adornment of language, but a means of cognizing reality and a tool for conceptualizing human experience and speech.
Our associations are much deeper than they seem. When the mind suggests a metaphor – there is more behind it than just the outward resemblance of two objects. Decipher the metaphor and you get a set of clues to improve your system.
From the book “BRRR-R-R!!!-effect.
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