"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)

Entrepreneurship is about relentless execution: like grinding a hot poker into a pin

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 98

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself" - George Bernard Shaw said. This highlights the imporant distinction between thinking and doing. 

Many people believe the key to success in entrepreneurship is coming up with a great idea: a sesame seed that you find after sifting through tonnes of hay. The sesame seed (or a poppy seed) is also at the centre of PhD dissertations, as doctoral students are discouraged by their supervisors from taking on too big a topic. 

A tiny novel idea may be deemed enough in academia. Yet, the metaphor about the sesame seed is far from sufficient in entrepreneurship. The success of a startup is not that dependent on the sesame seed. A more useful metaphor for running a startup is grinding down a hot poker into a pin. In simple terms, execution trumps ideation.

Startup guru Guy Kawasaki demonstrates the importance of execution for a startup with the following scale:

• An idea is worth 1 point;
• A business plan is worth 10 points;
• A developed product is worth 100 points;
• And the first customer is worth 1,000 points

Relentless execution is the key for hammering the hot poker into a pin. The heat makes the poker tricky to handle but also makes it malleable: strike while the iron is hot. The only thing worse than a hot poker is a cold poker, as grinding a cold poker into a pin would be way more difficult. 

How would you know if your startup is a hot or a cold poker in its base? Hot pokers change their shape after each strike of the hammer - a process known as iteration. Cold pokers don't iterate and as a result they end up as cold pokers, just as they started... whereas many of the hot pokers will eventually turn into pins.

Pin (Source: Wikipedia)

Rivers erode mountains and fertilise plains; Humans build and apply knowledge

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 97

Rivers erode mountains upstream and deposit the eroded grains of sand and silt downstream, fertilising the plains. Similarly, people accumulate grains of knowledge when younger and integrate and apply this knowledge when they get older, creating "rivers of knowledge".

What is the ideal amount of knowledge one needs - to go through life and leave a mark? 

Let's start with the minimum amount: this would be a short and slow-running river that starts in the plains and simply doesn't erode anything or deposit anything. 

What would be too much then? Possibly a long river like the Yellow River in China (Huang He) which erodes huge amounts of loess upstream and then floods the plains with alluvial silt - so much so that historically it often formed a viaduct of silt above the level of the plains and when, sooner or later, it would break these natural levees, it would flood the plains and drown hundreds of thousands. This type of river in the human world are some philosophers: people with extraordinary depth, yet unable to communicate with and be understood by the ordinary people around them.

The ideal "river of knowledge" is probably the Nile: a long river that accumulates silt and fertilises the desert. Unlike the dreaded floods of the Yellow River, the flooding of the Nile was welcomed and treasured by the ancient Egyptians - so much so that they built their calendar around this annual event.

The Yellow River at Hukou Falls (Source: Wikipedia)

Animals can be more or less employed - just like humans

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 96

Muhammad Yunus, the founder of microfinance and Nobel Peace Prize winner, once asked a question during a talk: "Have you seen an unemployed animal?" His point was everybody deserves a livelihood and it is simply human nature to find employment by being entrepreneurial. 

Yet, employment in animals comes in different shades and sizes. Herbivores that depend on grazing low-calorie cellulose-heavy plants such as grass (antelopes) or bamboo (pandas) spend most of their day eating or ruminating. While predators spend only a small percentage of their time eating, as they eat high-calorie meat; yet they dedicate the majority of their time recovering from unsuccessful hunting sallies.

The animal spectrum resembles the hunter-gatherer societies of early humans: the gatherers were the herbivores, looking for lower-calorie plants; while the hunters were the predators attempting the occasional high-calorie kill.

Similarly, the risk profile of entrepreneurs determines to a degree the characteristics of their startups: more risk-averse entrepreneurs focus on businesses that can generate stable (even if small) cash flows, while the less risk-averse ones may work on an idea for years without pay (sometimes even a decade) in order to build up a business and sell it.

So, unemployed animals don't exist, but variably-employed animals do!

San tribesman from Namibia (Source: Wikipedia)

Public universities are elephants; Private universities are lions

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 95

Big public universities are large herbivores: elephants, rhinos and hippos. They are slow(ish) but powerful and as a result are safe and well-established in their local environment.

For-profit universities are predators: lions, tigers and leopards. They punch above their weight (pound for pound) as their aggressive nature makes them more visible, with their much bigger marketing spend. They cannot kill the largest herbivores but they feast on medium-sized and smaller ones: zebras, antelopes and gazelles (i.e. outcompeting local universities and community colleges).

If elephants were more aggressive, they would be a formidable force in the savannah. But they rarely are, which leaves significant space for predators to mark as their territory. This goes along with the saying: "Public universities don't sell well what they do. Private universities often sell well what they don't do."

African elephant (Source: Wikipedia)

Rankings are a bamboo forest; Consulting is a vineyard

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 94

When you create a ranking for an industry, you are growing a bamboo forest: visible from afar but with shallow roots. Botanically the bamboo is a grass and its roots reach down only a metre under ground. Similarly, rankings do not change the ground underneath: they just increase the visibility of the status quo, like bamboos that create a leafy cover on top of a mountain slope.

On the other hand, when you offer a consultancy service to an industry, you are planting a vineyard, as vine roots reach up to 10 metres deep. What is key in consulting is that it produces recommendations for improvement - the essence of a long and structured process - just as the vines produce grapes based on the richness of the soil.

Bamboo (Source: Wikipedia)

Efficiency leads to displacement: in plant crops and in industries

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 93

Efficiency leads to displacement. In agriculture, sugar cane is more efficient than sugar beet in capturing the sun's energy and storing it as sugar, so the bulk of sugar produced in the world is now cane sugar. Similarly, the potato is more efficient than turnips in capturing and storing energy as starch, so it has displaced turnips in European agriculture since its introduction from the Americas in the 16th century.

In the industrial world, the Flying Geese Model in East Asian economic development shows industries (production of commoditised goods) being transferred from more advanced to less advanced countries. At some point, the Bangladeshi textile industry or the Chinese chemical industry simply became more efficient than Japan's and Japan found itself unable to compete against them, just like turnips and sugar beet had to give up competing against potatoes and sugar cane.

Flying Geese (Source: Wikipedia)

The Sun and professors send out energy into the universe

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 92

The Sun loses 135 trillion tonnes of mass every year as it is converted into energy and radiated out into the universe. This is the product of the nuclear fusion equation: four hydrogen atoms are fused together into a helium atom and energy is released in the process.

In a similar way, professors or teachers send their energy into space when lecturing. At the basic physics level, this happens by generating sound waves with their voice. At the metaphorical level, this happens by making light bulbs go on inside student heads.

The Sun doesn't only lose energy and mass: large amounts of dust, comets and asteroids fall on it every year. Similarly, professors also benefit from student feedback during discussions and may get the occasional light bulb go on in their own head.

The Sun (Source: Wikipedia)

Water drinking is like resource consumption: different organisms practice it differently

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 91

Animals drink water in different ways. Amphibians absorb water through their skin, so they don't ever need to drink. Most terrestrial animals don't need to drink either, as they take in sufficient water through eating succulent food (e.g. leafy plants). Cats and dogs lap up water by using their tongue as a spoon, though there is a difference: dogs seem to be using their tongue more directly as a spoon, while cats whip up the water and then catch it with their mouth.

Humans, in contrast, suck water up or pour it down their  throat, which makes their way of drinking much more efficient and the volume of liquid ingested much larger. In this drinking resembles resource consumption: while most organisms use resources in a diffuse way, humans like to conentrate their resource consumption, resulting in big gulps of water flowing down the throat.

Drinking (Source: Wikipedia)

Environment makes chimps and listed companies aggressive, and bonobos and cooperatives peaceful

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 90

Chimpanzees and bonobos are very similar genetically but very different behaviourally: chimps are aggressive while bonobos are peaceful apes.

In the corporate world, companies and cooperatives are similar legal entities but behave very differently: stock-market listed companies are aggressive in their drive for reporting quarterly profits, while employee-owned cooperatives (e.g. the John Lewis Partnership) are relaxed about profitability and more focused on building a collaborative culture.

The difference seems to be derived from the relationship with the external environment. Bonobos and chimps live on two opposite sides of the Congo River and diverged as two different species about 900,000 years ago. The environment on the left bank of the Congo, where the bonobos live, is less competitive as food is plentifu. On the other hand, the environment on the right bank, where the chimps are, is more stressful - partly because the chimps have historically had to share their habitat with their bigger cousins: the gorillas.

In the corporate world, it appears that "chimp" organisations that are obsessed with external competition also mirror this into internal competitiveness and aggressiveness. While the bonobos of the corporate world build their organisation on the basis of cooperation: like proper left-wing "Rive-Gauche" intellectuals.

Bonobo (Source: Wikipedia)

Pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 89

Disrupters in business are the ploughmen of farming: they do the heavy lifting by ploughing up the fields. Ironically, it is often the consolidators after them who sow the seeds and reap a rich harvest.

In the Wild West of America these roles were known as "the pioneers" and "the settlers". One would think that the pioneers, being the first to reach an area, would have had the first pick of the most fertile land. However, the first-mover in many cases (and industries) does not necessarily benefit from the proverbial "first-mover advantage": it is a well-known tenet that "the pioneers get the arrows, while the settlers get the land."

Ploughman (Source: Wikipedia)

Windows of opportunity open and close just like rivers sometimes freeze in winter

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 88

You cannot walk on water (unless you are Jesus Christ), but you can walk on ice. And not only walk on ice but you can also have a fair on a frozen river or lake. This used to happen in London on the frozen River Thames, where winter fairs were held at least in 24 winters since 1400 AD. The year 1814 AD was the last time the river froze and a River Thames frost fair took place. 

A frozen river creates a temporary opportunity to walk on it or have a fair, but at the same time denies an opportunity to use the river for other purposes, such as shipping. In similar ways, temporary opportunities open and close in life, business and politics. For example, the window of opportunity for Scottish or Catalan independence seems to be closing. In business, the age of the internal combustion engine opened in the early 1900s to the detriment of the electric motor (which had been the leading contender to power vehicles in the late 1800s), but it seems likely that the electric motor will make a comeback and displace internal combustion in the next decade or two.

You never know when the perfect storm, e.g. a volcanic winter, may freeze over the rivers again, even if it hasn't happened for 200 years. And this will invariably be good for some and bad for others: one man's meat is another man's poison.

Frost fair on the Thames in the 1600s (Source: Wikipedia)

Post-industrial and post-colonial Britain is a hollow poplar, not a sturdy oak

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 87

Britain's global dominance grew like a poplar tree: the rise of Britain was quick and reached high. In the century between the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and World War 1, Britain was the undisputed global power. The memory lives on. 

Many Brits, however, confuse the metaphor of the poplar with the more popular British symbol: the English oak. An oak can live for over a thousand years; a poplar barely lasts a hundred. What makes things worse for the poplar is that the core of the poplar trunk usually goes hollow as years go by and this eventually brings about its demise (though cuttings may emerge and re-grow into young trees from the stump.) 

Britain owes to industrialisation and colonisation its transformation into a global power in the 19th century. By the 21st century, however, these two phenomena are merely a distant memory for Britain. Brexiteers still think that, because Britain is standing tall in the forest of the world's nations, it must be a formidable player. Yet, once you realise that the core of the poplar is hollow, you have to accept that the UK has a more limited role to play in global politics and trade. 

In this respect, Britain can learn from small countries like Bulgaria and Denmark. Bulgaria saw the zenith of its power in Europe in the 10th century, while the Danish/Norse Vikings conquered Europe in the Middle Ages but have not been heard from since. Both Bulgaria and Denmark were once poplars that have since toppled over and all that is left of them is a clump of cuttings around the stump. Britain's poplar still has a standing trunk but it now firmly belongs to the poplar club, even if being a poplar may not be particularly popular with many Brexiteers.

Poplar tree (Source: Wikipedia)

(Note: this article is based on Brexit Metaphor No 151, with some amendments:
http://brexitmetaphors.blogspot.com/2019/03/poplar-not-oak.html)

Brexit is a rewilding project. In other words: a mammoth task!

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 86

Brexit is a rewilding project: an attempt to return a habitat to its past natural state in the terms of conservation biology. Over several decades, the EU has evolved as a strong domesticating force on the EU member states. This helped maintain peaceful co-existence and economic cooperation on the continent: you can have domestic animals (dogs, cats and guinea pigs) as pets under a single roof but you cannot have wild animals living closely together (think tigers, lions and rhinos).

However, a key question is how far back in time Brexiteers aim to take Britain in the rewilding project. 

Would they wish to bring back beavers (extinct since the 1500s AD) and wild boar (extinct since 1400 AD), or elk (extinct since the Bronze Age), for example? Or do they plan to bring back the wolverine (extinct since 6000 BC) or even the woolly mammoth (which disappeared around 10,000 BC).

In economic terms, the rewilding project may range from re-introducing state aid (banned under EU competition law in order to create a level-playing field) to scrapping the EU Working Time Directive. It could go further in relaxing health and safety rules to emulate the regulatory regime of the US. Or some could even contemplate extreme scenarios like bringing back child labour (mind you, for the purpose of re-educating recalcitrant youth, some hardliners might argue). 

The latter does look extreme but didn't we all think that mammoths were done and dusted and all that remained of them were their mammoth tusks (just as we thought the "honourable members for the 18th century" belonged to the 18th century). Now, however, de-extinction is starting to become a fashionable and realistic prospect for bringing back animals that have previously gone extinct. Mammoth tasks are not so mammoth any more.

The mammoth is dead. Long live the mammoth!

Woolly mammoths (Source: Wikipedia)

(Note: this article is based on Brexit Metaphor No 112, with some amendments: 

https://brexitmetaphors.blogspot.com/search/label/rewilding)

Stalling planes and unemployed people have a solution: look downwards!

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 85

The software on modern commercial planes is designed to avoid "stall" at all costs: once a plane stalls, it becomes difficult to control and starts dropping like a brick or spinning towards the ground. The two recent Boeing 737 Max crashes are an unfortunate corollary of having systems so heavily focused on preventing stall. 

In human careers, you can also see this (almost deadly) effect of stall. Once someone becomes long-term unemployed, they can hardly ever recover and start work again. This also applies to people who lose their job at an advanced or pre-retirement age: they struggle to get another job.

The textbook solution to overcoming stall is to lower the nose of the plane down towards the ground to regain speed. The solution for coming out of unemployment is similar: stop looking up towards glamorous job opportunities and accept any "down-to-earth" job offer that comes your way.

Plane in deep stall (Source: Wikipedia)

Trees can be taxed but only as much as they can bear

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 84

How much can you tax people in a country?  The Laffer Curve shows that increasing taxes beyond a certain per cent is pointless. There is a tax rate at which tax revenue is maximised and raising taxes beyond that creates a disincentive for economic activity and, paradoxically, reduces the tax take.

The owners of rubber tree plantations and maple syrup farms know this and only take as much sap from the tree as it is able to yield without harming the tree or jeopardising its health. Similarly, bee keepers take honey from the bees but leave them with enough to last the winter. Otherwise they risk breaking the camel's back by burdening it with too much straw.

Yet, there are cases when the farmer takes all: chopping down a tree for firewood or slaughtering a pig for meat. This in the world of Government is not taxation at all; it is "nationalisation". 

Latex sap collected from a rubbert tree, Thailand, March 2019