A Metaphoric Struggle

Recently I was pulling together some content around governance for social software and it reminded me of a quote from a book that struck me about 10 years ago. 

“Finding the right metaphor or model is even more critical than developing a better set of policies.  ...A metaphoric struggle is currently in progress over how we should imagine our organizational structures for communication and decision making. ... the network is in the process of replacing the pyramid. ...  All of these metaphoric frames of reference elevate different values and lead in different directions for an institution's culture and governance.” (emphasis added)

(Eric Mount, (1990). Professional Ethics in Context: Institutions, Images and Empathy. Louisville: Westminster / John Knox Press. pg. 85)

Published in 1990 !!  That is almost 20 years ago!  And we are still in the middle of this struggle.  I find it interesting the linkage between our use of metaphors and how we imagine our organizations and the values and governance.  Our core values would seem to fit some metaphors better than others … do we ever have cognitive dissonance?

How do we think about our organizations?  … our customers?  … the competition? … the world?  

New beginnings

I had used a public blog in the past and ended up ignoring it too much.  I am starting a new blog to change the emphasis on what I wanted to spend time on.  I have recognized over the years that one of the common themes that links my interests is the basic assumption that we are all connected and our concepts and thinking processes are also connected.  Someone once said,  “Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.” (John Muir, an American naturalist)

So this new blog will ‘follow that thread’ … one idea leads to another … one person leads to another.  We are fundamentally embedded within our cultures and world-views. 

I will be blogging about where this leads me and the tools that seem to help along the way.  A couple of recurring themes are trying to see the systems underlying our behaviors and motivations, understanding our personal connections through social network analysis, and visualizations (since I am a visual learner).

My work right now is driving the network view of the world and since there is so much happening in this area,  this will certainly be a major area of focus.  I am deeply involved with several customers who are implementing social software and working on the cultural issues related to that.  I am certainly learning a lot from them and will share those experiences.