Regular readers with a good memory have requested that we rerun this essay on The Masters, golf, and other bad metaphors for business. We are only too happy to oblige.
TJL
by Thomas J. Lee
This week the best golfers in the world converge on Augusta, Georgia, to compete in The Masters. It is a special event in sports. You need not be a golfer—I myself haven't swung a driver in 23 years—indeed, you need not even enjoy sports to find special beauty in the magnolias, dogwoods, and azaleas of the Augusta National Golf Course and in the glorious traditions of The Masters.
There's just one problem with major golf tournaments and with golf in general. They give license to so many executives to use this wonderful game as a metaphor, absurd though it is, for business performance.
Sooner or later almost every manager will find himself in a town-hall meeting or a skip-level luncheon or an after-dinner speech when a senior executive—his own boss, perhaps—begins to wax eloquent on golf as the perfect comparison for business. Maybe the speaker will even step away from the lectern and pretend to size up that 20-foot putt for a birdie on the 18th hole, and then go on to expound on the parallels between golf and business. That's what we mean by using golf as a metaphor for business.
By metaphor we are not referring to clichés, which are another problem altogether. A cliché is just an overused and typically tin-sounding word or phrase that has lost whatever zest it once had. Business is full of clichés, too: walking the talk, win-win solution, thinking outside the box, synergy, paradigm shift, pushing the envelope, today's highly competitive marketplace, proactive, a perfect storm, leverage—and we're just getting started. There are hundreds of them, Lord help us all.
In contrast, metaphors can be good or bad. A metaphor (and its like-as cousin, the simile) is a comparison for the sake of shedding light on something. A well-chosen metaphor can be terrific for a speech or presentation. Executives who use golf as a metaphor for business success are trying to be creative, and that is fine. We like creativity.
Some common metaphors in business work well. Low-hanging fruit refers to easy, early solutions. A well-oiled machine suggests an operation running smoothly. Tip of the iceberg conjures up a superficial observation. These metaphors lack something in freshness and creativity, but they make up for it in clarity and color.
Golf, however, is a perfectly awful metaphor in business. It is awful because there are no real parallels between performance in business and performance in golf. What matters in business has nothing to do with what matters in golf. Looking for parallels between business and golf is like looking for similarities between mollusks and molecules.
I do realize that millions of people enjoy golf, and that is certainly their privilege. They may think of it as a social sport because they golf in twosomes and foursomes, and afterward they enjoy lunch or drinks and dinner. Moreover, many parents (including my own) have taken delight in teaching their children to golf, and it becomes a wonderful family activity. All good.
But the sport of golf is a solitary enterprise. It requires intense concentration, hushed silence, and perfect form, and it is so very leisurely. It isn't noisy or messy, and it certainly isn't fast. It does not require collaboration or innovation or engagement or teamwork or agility or communication of any sort—all of which are essential components of business success. Conducting an orchestra comes closer to running a business than golf ever can. For that matter, a Saturday night jazz quartet is more like a business than a Saturday morning foursome is.
Another bad metaphor is "human capital." Companies commonly refer to the people who work for them as human capital. Please.
I understand the different kinds of capital: economic, physical, intellectual, social. But something repugnant, thoroughly repugnant, happens when we juxtapose the words "human" and "capital."
Substitute the word "chattel" for the word "capital" and you begin to see it. Then take another small step to "indentured servitude" and—well, you can see where I am going with this. As every youngster in the United States learns in school, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment were supposed to put an end to thinking of people as capital. It's about time business caught up.
Similarly, many companies think they are saying something good and decent and noble when they tout employees as "our most important asset."
I am all in favor of declaring that people are important, but they are not and never can be an asset. An asset is something you own and control. No business owns its people, and when a company thinks it can control people, it is in for a rude surprise.
The fact is that any employee can quit and go to work for the competition any day of the week. A machine or a forklift or a trademark cannot do that. They are assets. People are people. People have legs and pride and souls, and they can walk across the street to take a job with your competitor. Sometimes they do, too.
One other metaphor, so innocent and even noble in its intent, is actually problematic as well. It is likening the people of a business to a family. "We're just like a family around here," too many CEOs are in the habit of saying.
This metaphor has the same issue as golf has: It just isn't true. An office or a factory may feel like a family because you spend so much time with the same people, and perhaps everyone even has everyone else's back. That is fine as far as it goes, but sooner or later the similarities end.
Here's the bucket of ice water: Families are forever. Companies are not. Families thrive on love and devotion. Companies thrive on revenue and income.
It is true that divorce can ruin a family just as bankruptcy can ruin a business. But companies must make tough but honorable decisions that can have devastating repercussions for some employees. Families make tough but honorable decisions so they can stay together, laugh together, love together. The two are not and cannot be the same.
I probably sound like a curmudgeon today, and that is not my intent. I applaud anyone who struggles with articulating a vision or values or the essence of a workplace. It isn't easy, I know.
But all four of these metaphors are bad because they are emphatically untrue or because they inadvertently undermine the dignity of people or because they promise something they cannot always deliver. With just a little more thought, you can do better.
So enjoy The Masters this week. Enjoy as much golf as you can this summer. Just don't think of this wonderful sport as a metaphor for anything in business, especially performance and success. And the next time someone uses one of those other metaphors, give him a link to this blog.
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