Despite their limits, I have always loved metaphors as a tool for thinking. Metaphors can be very useful organizational tools and should never be taken too literally. A powerful metaphor can trigger the right organizational question, and there is nothing more valuable than a good guiding question.
I recently came across a metaphor that had the unique quality of being both amusing and extremely helpful. What if I can say in my organization, we need a father figure, and everyone understood the essence of what we needed? That’s the power of a metaphor.
Few would disagree that having a great idea is completely different from making an idea a reality. Similarly, most organizations know that they need to be innovating. Some know they have an idea or concept that could be their next big thing, but they find themselves stuck. For some of these organizations, they do not realize that they have an absentee father figure problem.
Many ideas have champion’s, people who love and support a particular project. These people may even be willing to work their hearts out to ensure a project is successful. They are project champions, the mother figure.
What is often missing is the authority figure or the father figure. The father figure is the person who has the resources to put into the project. The father figure because she brings resources, also has the potential to make another valuable contribution. Their most important contribution is not necessarily resources, but their authority to grant a small group of people permission to play with new rules. This often-overlooked role is extremely important within the innovation space. Being granted the permission to operate outside the traditional rules of the organization is a valuable contribution to any emerging project.
Although it is helpful that father figure can also provide resources, his or hers main contribution is to provide actors within the organization space and permission to play. In many ways, innovation and implementing a new idea is very similar to raising a healthy child. We need both a mother figure and a father figure for this healthy child to emerge. So in the future when we say, this project is missing a father figure, we know we either need resources or we need permission to play. Often, it is the permission to play outside the established rules that is harder to acquire.
Caveat: I am very aware of the heteronormative nature of this analogy, and hope readers can understand the point I am trying to make.
Photo Titled: “epic battle” retrieved from Flickr user Amanda Tipton under a creative commons license
Quinn, J. B. (1985). Managing innovation: controlled chaos. Harvard Business Review..