Remember those dreaded analogies sections on the SATs that we all hated? They looked like something like this:
I remember these because I thought they were absurd, except for maybe an interesting way of using the colon.
It turns out I was wrong. I was having a conversation with a co-worker, Jon Coleman (child prodigy, Corporate Strategist in Sustainability at Ford, you know the type, you can read his bio here: http://www.altcarexpo.com/bios/jon-coleman.php) and from his research and numerous others, the ability to recognize patterns and relationships between disparate parts are the building blocks of intelligence.
Our definition of intelligence has evolved from basic IQ tests to Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient, to Musical, Interpersonal, Linguistic, and all bubble-wrapped within the theories of nature versus nurture. But the ability to discern patterns and transpose learning between very different experiences, so that knowledge remains buoyant and elastic rather than compartmentalized, is what we often subtly recognize when we say “That person is brilliant.”
Analogies and metaphors are often the tools through which we apply one set of pattern recognition to another. For example, at work I heard a company that deals with cleaning up junk data describe its value proposition as “using a dump truck rather than a Ferrari to chuck away useless data. We’re bigger, less expensive, and more efficient.” Voila, what was originally a complicated algorithm became a visual metaphor that even software illiterate people like me can understand.
Applying metaphors doesn't stop with word relationships — but also with ideas. As many of us implicitly know, if you can take what you learned from a white water rafting trip and apply it to how a user navigates a GUI, it gives you a new lens through which to think about problem solving. Good speakers often employ concise and visual metaphors to explain complicated relationships, and it’s in the creation of those analogies and metaphors that we learn to think about things differently.
So how long does it take to create a useful metaphor? Like most things it takes practice. In our professional lives a lot of our thought is built into verbal chimneys. We literally learn to speak a different language and we usually find ourselves in the company of people who are also fluent in that same language. But next time you listen to someone explain something, listen for analogies and metaphors — the best take less than 30 seconds to come up with a stunningly simple example, a parallel relationship in a parallel universe. It’s a beautiful thing, really.
I mentioned to a colleague the other day that I was going to Vegas for a week-long conference. Immediately he says with a chuckle, “Going to Vegas is like having leftovers, after three days you just have to throw it out.” And I responded with “Going to Vegas is like watching porn, at first it’s kind of exciting but then it just gets gross.” Jon Coleman, my friend above, chimed in with “It’s like your in-laws visiting, it’s only interesting for so long before you just want them to finish eating and leave.”
Analogies and metaphors are also the paints we fling at the white wall of imagination to make a normal day at work that much more fun.
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