Collaborative conversations are characterised by people building on each other’s ideas, one idea sparking another. I saw a good example last week while helping a group design some small interventions they could experiment with in their organisation to improve communications. The conversation went something like this:

“We could do a 10 minute spot at the Friday afternoon drinks.”

“Yeh, good idea. Could we do that in Melbourne and Hobart?”

“They don’t really do drinks like the Sydney guys.”

“Perhaps we could video the presentation.”

“And then we could put that on our intranet. Everyone could see it then.”

“In fact there are lots of things we could video. What about the CEO’s blurb at the induction.”

So what started out as a presentation at Friday night drinks ended up being an initiative to collect useful things for people to watch on video on the intranet. And this idea is destined to evolve as they try it out and adapt. This is the essence of making progress in complexity.

But collaborative conversations can run into a brick wall. When ideas dry up we need a new way of thinking about the topic at hand. This is where analogies (and metaphors) come in handy.

First a quick reminder of what we mean by an analogy. An analogy is when we say something is like something else. For example, this organisation is like a summer holiday, everyone is relaxed and has fun (I have to admit to never having the opportunity to use this analogy). A metaphor is when you infer a comparison by describing something else. This organisation is a summer holiday is a basic example. Saying a conversation hit a brick wall is another example of a metaphor.

In collaborative conversations an analogy provides a new frame for thinking about a problem. Take our mini conversation about videoing things to put on the intranet. Someone might say the idea is a bit like a short film festival (an analogy) which in turn might get the group thinking about showings in multiple venues, judging panels, film genres, producers and directors. All these features of a short film festival can provide new ideas for the intervention.

So to be a good collaborator we need to have a repertoire of analogies at our disposal. So how do we do it?

The first thing is to increase the variety of experiences you have. A short film festival analogy will lack richness or might not even occur to you if you’ve never been to one. But simply doing heaps of new things is not enough because you can’t do everything. So the second best way to is to hear, read, experience stories. History is full of great analogous source material. Business models and ways of doing things in other industries is another tremendous source. I guess the simple advice is to be interesting. Russell Davies has some good ideas.

But you can’t stop there. Experience without some form of mindfulness is unlikely to stick with you in a way that you might remember when grasping for an apt analogy. If you want to remember something, tell yourself a story about it that you can picture in your mind, smell, taste and hear.

This idea of an analogy repertoire is a new thought for me and I’m still working out how one might expand this capability. Any suggestions out there?