“Business Coaching” with Andrew T. Austin

Whilst I was developing this work and presenting it at various lunch groups and business groups, the most common comment was along the lines of, “Where were you 20 years ago when we needed you?”

With clients, the most common comment is, “I’ve never thought about it like that before!”

Here’s a video about Metaphors of Time. Time metaphors feature frequently in business. After all, time is money. People value their time, and no one wants to waste their customer’s time.

Many business problems can be uncovered quickly using metaphors models. For example, imagine being a loan manager. The potential client sat in front of you, a company director of a small company with 5 employees, requests £50,000 for his business. On enquiring what he wants the money to do for his business, he tells you the following:

“I need a cash injection for my company.”

So, let’s extrapolate a little.

• • A cash injection suggests that the money is to act as medicine.
  • If medicine is needed, then his business must be ill, it is ailing.
  • If it is ailing, then it must be something that is alive, i.e., it has a life of its own. This is suggestive of anthropomorphisation. Most commonly in business, this leads to a person referring to their business as their “baby”.
  • Thus we can infer that the customer sitting in front of you takes the role of a parent rather than that of a company director. Oh, and they see you in the role of a doctor, not loan manager.
  • As a parent of the “baby”, no amount of money lost will be too much. Keeping it alive is more important than money.
  • Possibly, or probably, they let it get ill in the first place.

Will you give this person the money? Now, of course, you could ask them for a precise business plan and some exact information about what they will do with it all, and so on. You can do all the usual risk assessments, but that little metaphor of “cash injection” has revealed far more than the potential customer ever realised.

It reveals their relationships. The rest is so easy to fake, but metaphors usually occur outside of normal conscious awareness.

After all, my next year’s projected turnover is going to be 6 million. Or, should I make it a little less so it sounds realistic to you? I can just tell you what I think you want to hear to get that loan.

Metaphors of Business will explore the deeper aspects that underlie all the written business plans. They reveal the person who writes them. It’s a forensic process that can lead to some extraordinary discoveries.

 

For a business coaching session, business presentation, or forensic examination using this approach, please email Andrew T. Austin at freshnewbrain@gmail.com