Let's find innovative ways to make our stakeholders 'feel' our messages

When we share ideas with each other, we want to get the message across. Of course we have to nail the basics, like being clear, testing for understanding, using appropriate language, understanding each stakeholder's context and worldview, and adapting our message for them. (Those are all easy to say, but harder to do.) But is there anything else? One wonderful area for exploration is the world of metaphors and analogies. Comparing the thing we are trying to explain/ talk about to other things that may be more familiar, interesting, exciting, relatable. I recently saw a clip from Darragh Ennis, a biochemist who is an expert on a UK TV quiz show talking about the difference in scale between a million and a billion. Hard to feel as just numbers. But if we say that at the time I am writing this (21 Jan 2024), a million minutes ago was about 2 years ago, 25 Feb 2022. And a billion minutes ago happen around the year 100. That makes the difference quite visceral, doesn't it? In my pursuit of stand up comedy material, I came up with the idea that advertisers had stolen our ability to feel, because their experiences were so perfectly crafted to play our emotions that real world stuff paled into insignificance. I argued that a terrible earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale was hard to feel, but if we said it was a Ferrari (or Chanel or Rolex) earthquake, it might reach us more. (Apologies if you find that in bad taste. In my comedy routine, I went even darker.) The point is that there is huge opportunity to use unexpected analogies, metaphors and similar techniques to make our messages more 'feelable' by our stakeholders. My Gartner colleagues and I are currently using one to cook up the keynote for our upcoming global CIO Forums, to try describe the AI-powered digital disruption/ transformation of our world. All will be revealed there! I also wanted to mention briefly one danger of the use of metaphors and analogies. Listeners tend to extend them too far, unless carefully managed. If I say that analyzing too much data is like 'boiling the ocean', my listener might imagine I am talking about the environmental impact, when I am just trying to talk about the need to focus. Let's all work on more creative ways to explain and clarify with each other. You have just had a Rolls Royce blog-reading experience. #unthink #unask #unlearn #communication