Extroverts are like surface runoff. Introverts are like rivers fed by groundwater.

Extroverts instantly pour out their inner self in one go: like streams of rainwater after rain. Introverts communicate slowly and intently: like spring water welling up from deep underground.

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 120

Two key categories in personality tests are “introvert” and “extrovert”. Although it is true that we tend toward a certain pattern of behaviour which can be labelled as “introverted” or “extroverted”, no person is completely one or the other - it is a spectrum. Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung gave the following definition: “Each person seems to be energised more by either the external world (extraversion) or the internal world (introversion).” 

1. Extroverts are like surface runoff after heavy rainfall.

When there is an excess of stormwater or meltwater (external influence), it forms a stream. This flow is strong at first but quickly dries up after the external influence is no longer present. In the same way, extroverts get energised by social interaction but are prone to mood dips during periods of “drought” in their social life. Famously, when asked a question extroverts first speak and then think: everything comes out at once, just like surface runoff.

2. Introverts are like rivers fed by groundwater.

A river valley rich in groundwater provides a steady inflow to the river over extended periods of time. While the river is still affected by external factors (water levels rise and drop seasonally), the regular groundwater flow ensures that the river will not dry up. Similarly, introverts source their energy from their internal world. While introverts may occasionally get overwhelmed by prolonged social interactions, all the tools they need to recharge are within themselves. And when asked a question, introverts first think and only then speak, like the slow discharge of groundwater into a river system.

Surface runoff
(image source: Wikipedia)

Walking on lake ice is like navigating corporate culture: slippery and occasionally sinking

Clear ice is stronger than white non-transparent ice on a frozen lake; Transparent companies are safer to work for or work with than murky ones.

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 119

When walking on a frozen lake, you should step on the stronger clear ice and avoid the weaker white ice. Choosing the company to work for or work with has analogous parallels. 

1) CLEAR ICE: 

Companies with transparent employment practices are like clear ice.

Clear ice is formed when still water freezes directly. There are few air bubbles, which results in solid ice, so even though he surface is slippery, it is firm under your feet. Similarly, companies with transparent employment practices have fewer undefined “air pockets” in the corporate structure and provide a well-charted course for career development. The same metaphor also holds for dealing with or investing in companies. A “clear ice” company has transparent financing and is less likely to suddenly spring a hole and sink. 

2) WHITE ICE: 

Companies with “murky” nepotistic employment practices are like white ice.

White ice contains air bubbles and impurities which compromise the integrity of its structure and make it more fragile and unreliable to support your weight on your journey across the lake. In a similar way, a company with nepotistic employment practices ("air pockets") offers an uncertain future: you would not have a clear roadmap since career advancement is not entirely determined by performance. And when dealing with a "white ice" company as a supplier or a customer, you constantly have to be on the lookout for concealed financial information or quality-cutting practices.

Whether you are seeking employment or a corporate partnership, consider the risks of taking a step off the clear ice and onto the white ice on the frozen surface of the "corporate lake".

Frozen lake in Canada
(image source: Wikipedia)

Services in the economy and living organisms in nature come in three degrees of mobility

The economy is based on three groups of services with different degrees of mobility, just like in nature there is diversity in fixed plants and mobile animals.

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 118


1. FIXED-LOCATION SERVICES

Physical services delivered on location resemble a tree.

A tree has its roots firmly in the ground and depends entirely on the local environment for sustenance. The tree cannot move if the soil is not fertile or the amount of rainfall or sunlight is insufficient and gradually withers away. In a similar way, a corner shop, a local cafe or a hair salon are geographically fixed and depend on a constant flow of customers. A long period of “drought” would make the business go bust.

2. LOCATION-CONNECTING SERVICES 
Shipping and delivery services resemble a camel.

A caravan of camels delivers goods across the desert and the goods have to survive the journey undamaged. Similarly, an Amazon Prime van makes a journey to deliver goods that remain unchanged in the process of transportation. Often there may be obstacles along the way: unclear caravan trails in the desert for the camel or heavy traffic for the delivery van, but as long as both are on the move, they keep serving their mission of connecting.

3. VIRTUAL SERVICES
Online services resemble a condor in the sky.

The condor soars in the clouds at extraordinary heights of more than 5,000 metres and covers vast distances in a single flight. In a similar way, virtual services like online banking are offered "in the cloud" and reach customers thousands of miles away. While both depend on a physical location for their nesting site or operations hub, both are also extremely mobile. Migrating birds can cross continents when the conditions require it, just like data can be moved between data centres across countries if national regulations change. 

Common Ash tree
(source: Wikipedia)

Bactrian Camel
(source: Wikipedia)

Andean Condor
(source: Wikipedia)

You can't fold paper more than 7 times, nor cut costs at a company beyond confines

Paper-folding and cost-cutting are impossible after a few iterations

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 117

1. THE LIMITS TO FOLDING PAPER

“You can’t fold a piece of paper more than 7 times” is an internet meme you've probably heard before. The explanation is straightforward: with every fold, the piece of paper halves in length and doubles in thickness. So with a standard A4 sheet of paper, after the 7th fold you end up with a paper blob 1.3 cm thick. The exponential growth in thickness is the real constraint and soon the blob of paper offers too much resistance, which requires superhuman strength to fold any further. The Guinness World Record for the most folds done on a single piece of paper is 12, but this was achieved using a strip of thin tissue paper that was 1.2 km long. 

2. FOLDING PAPER MAY EXPLODE

What if you applied enormous force to eke out more rounds of folding? Well, it has been tried. This viral YouTube video shows what happens when an A3 piece of paper is folded 7 times. On the final fold, the immense pressure makes the piece of paper “explode”  as the cellulose fibres in paper get untangled and released from the structure that holds them together.

3. THE LIMITS TO COST-CUTTING

Folding a sheet of paper multiple times is analogous to cost-cutting in business. When a recession hits and company revenues collapse, management is forced to streamline operations and cut costs. Some companies have a lot of flab so costs can be cut by a lot (like folding a long sheet of paper that has a lot of excess material to fold). But lean and efficient companies have little flab and cost-cutting soon reaches the bone (which is like folding a small sheet of paper that cannot be folded any further).

4. DEATH SPIRAL IN COST-CUTTING
How many employees can a company lay off before product or service quality deteriorates to unacceptable levels and before employee morale reaches rock bottom? And how many unprofitable customers or product lines can a company discontinue? 

In accounting, the latter type of cutting is known as the "death spiral": the more customers or product lines a company gets rid of, the more fixed costs will weigh on the profitability of the remaining customers or products, tempting further cuts until there is nothing left to cut and the company has to literally fold, if you'll pardon the pun. Economic history contains multiple cases of companies imploding by entering a death spiral.

5. TAKEAWAYS

Paper folding can teach us a metaphorical lesson about cost-cutting. How much is too much?

A) Folding a sheet of paper more than 7 times makes the paper explode. 

B) Cost-cutting that goes too deep could make the company implode.

A4 sheet of paper
(image source: Wikipedia)

Standard job titles are Lego bricks. Non-standard titles are lumps of clay

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 116

Standard job titles are like Lego bricks. When a corporate executive launches a new project, this is like embarking on building a Lego castle or Lego spaceship. With the help of HR professionals and recruiters, the executive goes to the labour market to find the Lego pieces needed to complete the project.

Non-standard job titles, on the other hand, are like lumps of clay. They can be moulded into new shapes but the people who hold them cannot immediately fit in "like a square peg into a square hole".

So here is a question for those of you working in a corporate environment: When was the last time you modelled clay?

Lego bricks (Source: Wikipedia)

Corporate careers are nouns. Entrepreneurial ones are verbs

By George ILIEV

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 115

Corporate careers are static: they resemble the nouns in language. 
Entrepreneurial careers are dynamic: they resemble the verbs. 

Yet, there are no limits to who can be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is like the English and the Chinese language: most nouns can also be verbs, with no changes required: to turn, to spin, to fly; a turn, a spin, a fly. 

And even in languages where the verbs and the nouns differ in form (e.g. German, Russian, Spanish), the root of the word is what the two have in common. So almost any root can be shaped into either a corporate noun, or an entrepreneurial verb. 

In five words: Entrepreneurship is an open door. 

Open doorway (Source: Wikipedia)

Humans can learn from animals and professional photographers how to apply Strategy

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 114

We are all decent photographers nowadays, given how easy it is to use a smartphone and take pictures that are well lit and in focus. But then there are the professional photographers. On a professional photograph, only the key object is in focus, while the background is unfocused, even blurred.

The same principle applies to strategy. The real strategist focuses on one thing, to the exclusion of everything else. "Strategy is what you don't do" - says Michael Porter, the creator of the Five Forces model in strategy. The blurred background is where all the elements of "what you don't do" blend in.

Animals are micro-strategists: they prioritise and focus on doing one thing at a time: eating, drinking, hunting or escaping a predator. Perhaps this is because they don't have the mental capacity to do more than one thing. Or perhaps they only live in the present and for the present as they don't understand abstract concepts like the future.

Humans, on the other hand, with our larger mental capacity, can live in the past, present and future at the same time and end up preoccupied with multiple objectives. Picking one thing to do and focusing on doing it well is very difficult. Yet "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" - says Leonardo da Vinci.

Focus in Photography (Source: Wikipedia)

How long should you work for a company or brew a cup of tea? "Not too long" is the right answer

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 113

This piece of science is shocking: if you keep the tea bag in a cup of hot water longer than 5 minutes, your tea will start getting weaker. "Steep Tea for a Short Time to Get More Caffeine" seems to be the scientific advice to tea drinkers who like their tea strong. If you keep infusing the tea bag, compounds called thearubigins start to seep out and bind to the caffeine, which weakens the tea.

Have you noticed that the same principle applies to employees who stay too long with the same company? When you start a new job, everything is novel, challenging and interesting. After a few years, you start working on "auto pilot": the enthusiasm fizzles out and boredom wades in.

What is the ideal duration then? Five minutes for a cup of tea, five years for a human employee, perhaps?

Tea bag (Source: Wikipedia)

How to win against rip currents and Asian competitors? - Differentiate and specialise!

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 112

How do you escape a rip current at sea? Never swim straight back towards the beach and directly against the rip. Instead, swim sideways along the beach for 100 metres and then head towards land. Rip currents are narrow flows and should be avoided, not fought.

The same is true of global trends. If you are a western company or university, there is no point in fighting against the rise of Asian competitors. Instead, simply do things differently. If you have just fallen out of the Global Top 100 because five more Chinese entities have entered the ranking and displaced you, don't just fight back head on, on all fronts. Instead, decide in which direction you can differentiate and specialise, and focus on cornering the market in that particular field. It is unlikely that you will have to make a choice between more than two possible ways forward. 

Isn't this just like at a beach with a rip current: all you need to do is swim along the beach either to one side, or to the other.

Rip current diagram (Source: Wikipedia)

Humans may have been forced to walk on two feet; Entrepreneurs are often pushed to launch a startup

By George ILIEV

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 111

In evolution, we are often told that our human ancestors in Africa chose to go down from the trees and venture into the savannah walking on two feet. Recent research shows they may not have had a choice when the forest cover on the continent started disappearing 2-3 million years ago.

Similarly, many entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs not by choice but out of necessity: after conflict in the workplace, losing their job, or out of frustration with their current job.

When push comes to shove, the entrepreneurs simply pick up the shovel.

Man with shovel (Source: Wikipedia)

Note: The research quoted is from The Economist, May 30, 2019: Human beings may owe their existence to nearby supernovas. Cosmic rays from them would have changed the world’s vegetation.

Is your career a bird cage or a shark cage?

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 110

A career builds two cages around you: a bird cage and a shark cage. You may think that a bird cage sounds better than a shark cage but think about it:

The bird cage limits you: from soaring in the sky.

The shark cage protects you: from being eaten by the sharks outside.

The two cages usually come in a package. But do you have any influence on how much of your cage will be a bird cage or a shark cage?

Shark cage (Source: Wikipedia)

Scratching around a mosquito bite is the English way of avoiding confrontation

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 109

What is the best way to scratch a mosquito bite? Scratching the bite right in the middle will make it even bigger and more sore and itchy. What you can do instead is scratch in a circle around the bite with the tip of a pen or pencil. Miraculously, you would get the same relief from the scratching without exacerbating the soreness of the bite itself, as the signals fed to your brain by the touch receptors on the skin do not tell apart two points of pressure if they are less than 1 cm away from each other (apart from on the face, hands and feet). Basically that's what I call "to beat around the bush."

Metaphorically, the rule "always scratch a mosquito bite indirectly" directly applies to the English. The English typically avoid direct confrontation, probably as a vestige of a class society (could the butler contradict his master?) that only started to change after World War 2. With great elegance, the English manage to communicate what they want and pursue their interest in a polite and non-confrontation way. English corporate culture is also notorious for people "sitting on the fence": why get into a fight or take sides if your vital interests are not at stake (as is the case most of the time).

This can also explain why Brexit has spiralled into such a nightmare: it is a major divergence from the English way of doing things. The English are simply in terra incognita in the bust-up with Brussels.

If you don't believe me about English culture, read "Watching the English" by anthropologist Kate Fox. As for the mosquito bite, try it on your skin next time you spot one.

Insect bite (Source: Wikipedia)

Fainting helps humans regain consciousness; Administration helps companies avoid bankruptcy

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 108

If you faint, you fall to the ground. Fainting is usually caused by insufficient blood flow to the brain (e.g. from low blood pressure), so when you inadvertently assume a horizontal position, this naturally increases the blood pressure in the head and leads to regaining consciousness. Thus fainting becomes a self-stabilising or auto-correcting mechanism.

In a similar way, when a company goes into administration (or Chapter 11 in the USA), it is given some protection from creditors as a last-ditch attempt to recover from past losses and avoid bankruptcy. General Motors and Chrysler both went into Chapter 11 in 2009 but subsequently recovered. So did Delta Air Lines (2005) and United Airlines (2002). Let's see if the forthcoming metaphorical fainting (administration) of British Steel will save the company.

Fainting (Source: Wikipedia)

Cats and customer segments sometimes never meet or intersect

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 107

Google Streetview recently took a photo of a cat jumping over the wall into the back yard of our house. It was a tabby cat I had never seen before. I knew the other two black and white cats that stroll in our garden but I didn't know about this one. I asked cat experts and it turns out cats are territorial so in areas densely populated with cats, they share space by agreeing on "usage rights" of the same space at different times of day for the different cats. In this way, the cats that share our garden never meet - but they know and respect each other's visitation hours. 

Customer segments can be similar to cats: if your company has a product that sells to different audiences, these audiences may be so different that they don't intersect at all. For example, Apple iPhones are bought by trendy young people who want to have the latest technology as well as by chief executives who appreciate the convenience of the phone and its security features.

The tabby cat I had not seen before was always coming in the late morning when I am away. Google Streetview let the cat out of the bag.

Tabby cat (Source: Wikipedia)

Buildings on bedrock or sand need foundations of different depth. So does a tower of knowledge

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 106

Do you need to have read Karl Marx in the original to be knowledgeable about Marxism? Or can you rely on the analyses of Marx by other authors as a shortcut?

This is like the foundations of buildings: buildings in New York City rest on granite, as this is the bedrock underneath the city; while the foundations of buildings in Shanghai rest on alluvial mud and sand.

Both types of buildings can be stable. The only difference is that when you are building on granite, you need fairly shallow foundations; while building on mud requires deep foundations. Monopile foundations for wind turbines in offshore areas sometimes go down 25 meters deep under the seabed.

Similarly, you knowledge of Marx (or Aristotle, or anyone else for that matter) can be based directly on their works only (like a building on granite) or it can be derived from other people's works on Marx (like a building on mud and sand). However, if you are relying on others, you need to dig deeper and cover a variety of sources. Otherwise your foundations may turn out shallow and your "tower of knowledge" may collapse.

Building foundations (Source: Wikipedia)

"Superficial" is the word that unites oil slicks and Kim Kardashians

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 105

I recently attended a new book presentation on the management principles behind Kim Kardashian's success. I wasn't quite convinced in the validity of all those principles but I came up with an apt metaphor for Kim Kardashian instead: "superficial as an oil slick". 

An oil slick resonates with many modern social media stars and gurus in more than one way: 
a) it is thin in substance and floats on the surface;
b) it is mesmerisingly colourful;
c) it keeps changing colours, so it can keep you entertained.

Next time if I have a choice, instead of watching slides about Kim Kardashian, I'll just go outside and watch an oil slick in a puddle. I guess I'll learn a lot from the puddle.

Presentation of The Kim Kardashian Principle (Istanbul, May 2019)

A glass exists to hold water. A company exists to serve its customers

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 104

A glass full of water is a container that makes a valuable liquid useful and accessible. Sometimes people collect glasses for the sake of the glasses themselves, e.g. to put them in a display cabinet of Waterford Crystal. But most of the time glasses, cups and pots exist to serve a higher and more useful purpose.

Metaphorically, companies are glasses and cups while their business activities are the useful liquid they contain inside. 

Before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, most economists agreed with Milton Friedman's 1970s theory that companies exist for their shareholders. Back then, the key objective of a company was seen as generating shareholder returns, which was akin to believing that a glass exists for its own sake.

However, ever since the 1970s, Peter Drucker, the father of management, has maintained that companies do not exist for their shareholders but for their customers, so the primary objective of a company is to be useful to its customers. This is akin to maintaining that the glass exists to hold a liquid.

The financial crisis has ultimately shown that Milton Friedman was wrong and Peter Drucker was right: the glass exists for the liquid inside, not for the melted and strangely-shaped quartz that makes up the glass itself.

Glass of water (Source: Wikipedia)

Toothpaste flows out of the tube only one way. So does Brexit!

By George ILIEV

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 102 (Originally published on May 15, 2019; republished on May 17, 2019.)

British astronomer Arthur Eddington developed in 1927 the concept of "the arrow of time": time only flows in one direction. In this it resembles toothpaste and Brexit.

The Brexit process is like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. Once the toothpaste has come out, it can never go back in again. Similarly, if Britain leaves the EU, it will never be able to re-join the EU again.

No other EU member state fits the toothpaste metaphor better than Britain. That's because no other EU member state has obtained so many opt-outs from EU policies over the decades. Britain also gets the proverbial "budget rebate" from the EU each year, thanks to Margaret Thatcher's tough negotiating and her "handbag". If Britain were to leave and reapply for EU membership later, it wouldn't get those exemptions, which would push the EU accession terms beyond the line that the independence-minded British political class would find acceptable.

However, there is one more twist to the toothpaste metaphor. What happens to toothpaste that has come out of the tube? In most cases it is spat out and washed down the sink. 

Toothpaste (Source: Wikipedia)

Sleep is essential for productivity as breathing in is crucial for opera singing

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 103

Opera singers do their singing when they are breathing out. But even the most accomplished ones still need to breathe in, even if briefly and inconspicuously. 

Similarly, top executives often claim to be able to work long hours and get by on very little sleep. But that’s usually not the full story. They may have big lungs but they will only breathe out as much air as they have breathed in. Rest is not merely “the rest”. Rest determines productivity. 

Napoleon supposedly once said about sleep: “Six hours for a man, seven for a woman, eight for a fool.” This was not only politically incorrect but also wrong. 

Singer (Source: Wikipedia)

How much can you remove from the school curriculum before the Jenga tower collapses

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 101

In the age of Google you don't need to know things any more, supposedly. Why memorise facts when you can google them? However, removing the memorising of knowledge from the school curriculum (and cancelling homework) is like playing Jenga Towers: how many bricks/blocks can you remove before it all collapses?

Clearly some Jenga towers with symmetrical holes are airy and beautiful. While solid siloed blocks without variation of the vertical layout pattern are unstable (rote learning). Yet, unless you start using an entirely different and novel material (e.g. composite or carbon fibre), you cannot reduce the number of bricks by more than 50%.

Woe betide those who learn too little, as their Jenga tower is bound to collapse. While the Tower of Babel collapsed because there was too much in it (diversity of languages), the Jenga of knowledge collapses when there is too little in it.

Jenga Tower (Source: Wikipedia)

Global cultures divide into two types: coconuts and peaches

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 100

The population of most countries falls into one of two cultural categories: coconuts or peaches, according to culture experts. Coconuts (e.g. Germans or Russians) are hard on the outside but soft on the inside: not warm and friendly on the surface, but they open up and turn soft once they get to know you. Peaches, on the other hand, are soft on the outside but with a hard stone on the inside: on the surface Brits are polite and smile a lot, but have a closed off inner circle of friends. If a Brit tells you "you should come over for dinner sometime", this is merely them being polite and does not imply an invitation at all. (It becomes an invitation only if the day and the time are specified.)

Yet, cultures evolve. Over the course of history, coconuts have been selected by humans not for larger size but for thinner shells. As a result, through selective breeding generation after generation, coconuts nowadays have much thinner husks than millennia ago. Similarly, "coconut" cultures are getting less intimidating upon first encounter: hanging out with the Dutch is good fun nowadays.

Might there be a similar process of evolution for peaches? - Not necessarily, because the peach stone is not useful for humans. However, if we used apricots rather than peaches as the metaphor, we might be able to observe some evolution of the stone inside over the centuries, as apricots have an edible kernel in the middle of the stone (peaches don't).

It may sound like a communist slogan but it seems to be the case that globalisation is driving this process forward:
Coconuts and peaches of the world, unite!

Coconut (Source: Wikipedia)

Revolutions are like ploughing

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 99

Revolutions are like ploughing: the bottom layer comes to the top and the top goes to the bottom.

“The last will be first, and the first last.” (Matthew 20:16)

Plough (Source: Wikipedia)