A pattern defines a game.

This is what a burning platform looks like:

What’s the story here? Well, let’s see…it’s an environmental disaster…lives are no doubt endangered (many have already escaped in lifeboats, jumped or been killed (e.g. ‘fired’)…the focus is on containment instead of productivity…the PR spinning is beginning…a hundred lawyers are circling…Wall Street is manipulating markets based on shareholder emotions…the media is fanning the fear…the government is organizing committees that will haunt and impede productivity for years to come…cities, states and municipalities are seeking reparations. Whatever good can emerge from this mess will be years, maybe a generation, in coming.

Metaphors like ‘burning platform’ represent a level of meaning that accompanies all communication, the Meta level. (The other two are Cosmetic and Emotional). The Meta level contains metaphor, symbolism, allegory, parable, analogies, etc. Meta meaning is powerful stuff and should be chosen with great care. It’s why brands work so hard, at such great expense, on their identity. Those symbols mean a lot.

At GameChangers, we practice what I call the science of narrative. This science requires specific, deliberate and objective choices about what metaphors we put into play.

The Center for Public Policy and Administration defined the phrase ‘burning platform’ in 2005. ‘Burning platform’ according to the CPPA, came into meaning when a driller on a burning offshore oil-drilling platform calculated that his best chance of survival was a 150-foot jump that he’d never make under normal conditions. A burning platform came to mean an ‘urgent condition requiring bold choices.’ All good, and useful. Context is huge, however, and after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the context for this phrase changed and, along with it, its meaning. Now it means ‘unmitigated disaster.’

Look at the photo again. That’s the image of a burning platform most of your audience will conjure when this phrase is used. Whatever changes come about because of the pictured scenario promise to be painful, litigious, lengthy and costly. This is not what we want when we change the game. We want change that is productive, agreeable, fast and inexpensive to implement.

Clearly, we need a new metaphor to capture this meaning.

It’s like that old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon intro, where Bullwinkle pulls a monster out of a hat and says “No doubt about it, I’ve gotta get another hat.”

We’ve gotta get another hat.

And then this article by Errol Morris in the New York Times came across the network this morning, the hook being a quote from Walt Disney (”I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing — that It Was All Started By A Mouse.“) as its headline. I’d already seen the link a couple of times when Howard Green from Disney Studios called to invite me to a tribute for Walt’s recently-departed nephew, Roy Disney, on Sunday at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood.   Suddenly the universe was in my ear bigtime, whispering that I had to click on the link to the Morris article. Something was there to be discovered….

The article itself is a photo essay and dialogue with photojournalist Ben Curtis about the forensics of war photography, the context of image vs. imagemaker, the technological challenges and dangers that come with altering photos to create propaganda or enhance a certain point of view. The kind of stuff in which Morris specializes. After I got the context, I began skimming. But I kept coming back to a photo by Curtis that led off the article:

In seeing the photo, I found what had been missing over the holidays. I might have decided to be resolute, I was still waffling on a theme, what, exactly I’d be resolute about. This photo resolved that. I wrote the following Comment on the Morris piece:

Errol

As our old friend Onosko, who worked at the House of Mouse for many years, might have said, you’re making it more complicated than it is. Focusing on the cosmetic level of communication–the toy itself, the shards of glass, the smoke, the interaction between imagemaker and image–is a fascinating narrative, and yields neverending complexity, but this complexity obscures meaning instead of bringing it to light. How Mickey got there is not nearly as important as the meta and emotional levels of the communication: War’s awfulest tragedies are its children.

Until we begin thinking of children first–begin with the Mice!, that what Walt would’ve done–War will be an adult theme park where children get crippled, grow old and perish before their time.

And so, finally, thanks to Howard and Errol and Ben, I have it — my New Year’s theme — the thing I can be Resolute about:  Be Nice to the Mice.

Hit it, Kid!

It was taken on the beach in Tulum, Mexico, while he and his wife, Shannon, were on their honeymoon. (Talk about a COMPLIMENT!)

Thanks, Ethan (& Shannon), and Congrats!

When the differences in our roles are muddled, when there’s a lot of wiggle room and hazy definition in our responsibilities, when people can hide behind the “We’re all a team here” bromide, we invite the playing of unproductive games like ‘Buffing and Turfing’. The game of ‘Buffing and Turfing’ first came to my attention when I read the classic hospital-set novel, House of God by Samuel Shem. I have seen it played thousands of times since. I have played it. You have, too. The objective in this game (for one of the players; not the other) is usually to avoid taking responsibility for a bad situation, or to avoid having to deal with a problem. ‘It is played by ‘Buffing’ a situation with nominal or cosmetic support, then ‘Turfing’ it by making it someone else’s problem, shooting it into someone else’s area of organizational responsibility. This game also goes by the name of ‘Not My Problem’, and ‘We’re Sending This Ship to Tel Aviv’.

Here’s what happens when a guy in IT ‘Buffs and Turfs’ a more junior player. A second video illustrates the true meaning of the communication that gets obscured by the unproductive game.

Before I learned to improvise, I wore this game out. It was easy for me – everything reminds me of a story, and I’m good at telling them. I often justified the game by imagining I was ‘bringing the brand narrative to life’. True? Maybe. Maybe I just liked hearing myself talk. Listen, here’s the pertinent truth about telling stories in business meetings, a truth I realized only after I learned improvisation: When someone launches into a long monologue, the scene slows to a standstill. Momentum hits the ditch. Productivity takes a nap. The deliverer of the monologue smothers the back-and-forth communication between players that is essential to a productive, well-improvised scene.

Here’s a demonstration of how the game of ‘That Reminds Me of a Story’ can derail a scene and stop it from achieving its objective: