from Everyday Practices of Extraordinary Consultants (2008) by Christine Lambden and Casey Conner

A powerful word picture will do the heavy lifting in a conversation the same way a jack lifts your car so you can change the tire.  Work hard to find the right word picture for the message you want to communicate.

“How’s your project going?”
“Down in flames.”

That’s pretty vivid, but is it accurate?  Is it productive?  Probably not.  The next one is both funny and positive, but obviously refers to a totally different project.  We hope.

“You’re going live next week, right?  So this project is nearly over?”
“The fat lady is getting her hair done and warming up her vocal cords.”

As consultants, we often find ourselves trying to persuade people to see things the way we see them or to enlist others to support our proposal.  This can be something small, like increasing the number of daily uploads from one to two, or something huge, like combining three separate instances into one global system.  In either case, the argument that “the consultant recommends it” might not be sufficient.

If you want people to get behind your proposal, you need to get them emotionally invested.  If you want them to then advocate your proposal to others, you need to give them a message that is easy to remember and repeat.

When we talk to leaders in consulting firms about the value of training their teams in consulting skills, we don’t use slide decks full of bullet point and statistics.  There is nothing we can tell them about their challenges that they don’t already know.

Instead, we start like this…

What if a pro football coach ran his team the way we run our teams in the consulting industry?  What if he said to himself, “These guys have a lot of experience.  They won a lot of games last year.  We’ll skip training and I’ll just tell them to come in for the first game, suit up, and we’ll figure it out as we go along.”

How would that first game go?  Would they win?

This short word picture, which creates a vivid and humorous image in the leader’s mind, replaces a multitude of bullet points.  It is memorable enough for them to repeat later to others, so the key message from our meeting is more likely to be circulated among their leadership team.

A good word picture won’t replace a good idea, but it will help you communicate your idea to someone else. 

The metaphor doesn’t have to be perfect, but you should also be prepared for the laughing objections.  Our prospects might say, “But football teams have to practice.  Their opponents play by specific rules with a specific level of training,” to which we say, “Okay, picture the same game on Sunday if both teams blow off training.  Is it better?  I mean, I would pay a lot of money to see that game, but is it football?”

Or they might say, “Yeah, but on our projects, there isn’t another team trying to stop us from scoring,” to which we say, “Okay, then make it the marching band.  What if they skipped training?”  You don’t have to convince them that it’s exactly the same.  Your goal is to make an analogy that they can take away from the meeting and discuss with others.

We were frustrated for a while with one IT Manager at Biggish* who treated everyone who had technical skills as if they were interchangeable.  He would assign tasks based entirely on availability with no regard for the individual’s skills or unique experience.  The argument that finally got his attention was, “Mr. Smith, you are missing a great strategic advantage.  It’s like you are playing checkers with a chess set.”

In politics, they call this the 10-Word Answer.  If you can create an image, state your position, include all your arguments, and draw an emotional response from your audience (laughter is an emotional response) in ten words, then you have found a powerful communication tool.  “It’s like you are playing checkers with a chess set” does all of this.

It’s an advantage, usually, for your word picture to be funny enough to be repeated, especially if you want everyone to get the message.  Be prepared for only part of your message to get out, though.

While training the users on a new Purchasing system, we heard one instructor say that the users would be “as happy as squirrels in a nut factory” when the project went live.  Later, it was all over Biggish that the instructor called their company a nut factory.

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