An often overlooked but fundamental aspect of change management is how we use words and metaphors and how slippery meaning really is. Think of how differently you relate to these terms when they are reframed:
- The ‘block of flats’ is now called a much more interesting sounding ‘vertical village’
- The resale value of a ‘used car’ is so much higher when it is called a ‘previously enjoyed car’
- ‘gambling’ is so much softer when it is called ‘gaming’
- ‘Incentivised Permanent Leave of Absence’ sounds much better than being fired
- Fancy living next to a nuclear power plant? Well, you should have no problem setting up next to an ‘Energy Centre’ – (which just might be another word for a nuclear power plant)
- a ‘Sentinel event’ has come to replace the ugiler, more common term of ‘medical malpractice’ or the more scientific sounding ‘Iatrogenic Disease’
Renaming and reframing has an important place in change management because just simply listening to the frames which people use reveals a lot of their emotional engagement around an issue. While breaking frames holds the possibility for breaking through into new reality and creating new, more empowering and useful frames, leaving the metaphors as they are keeps you in the existence you’ve become used to.
Recall how the process of reality formulation is said to work..
- Experience builds frames
- Language choices and limits are built into these frames
- Frames are passed on to children, students and co-workers
- Social reality is built on patterns or habits through interaction & communication. Reality exists simply through agreement that it exists
Naming and framing is a metaphorical process.
- Frames are mostly comprised of dead metaphors
- “Frame break” = catalyst for change
- Change in thinking is limited by imagination
- Imagination is limited by root metaphors
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