0:00
So, yeah, welcome to Embracing Differences.
This is Nippin and I have with me David and David, let’s let’s, what shall we talk about in this podcast?
Tell me.
Well, I think for me, I’d like to continue a conversation.
0:17
We started a couple of months ago when I was in a taxi with you and another person who from a maritime background and you were talking about, you know, very visceral risk anchor handlers and very high tension cables and what happens when those things can snap.
0:34
Which to be honest, made me feel a bit queasy.
And then it got me kind of thinking about the difference between those industries where the sense of risk really is sort of personal and, and visceral and, you know, real danger to the human and the world I work in, which is finance and banking, which perhaps can seem a little bit more abstract.
0:57
And then how we use language, think about risks in a different way.
And I think understanding how it’s thought about in finance and how it’s thought about in maritime would be quite an interesting conversation.
I think so.
But you know, it’s interesting that you, you, you see the risks in the maritime world as more, you use the word visceral and more real in some ways, whereas what you describe in the banking sector is more abstract.
1:26
As someone who works as an entrepreneur, I see, I see the, the, the risk with finance as much more real than anything else.
Because if, if you don’t have finance, you, you, you will, you know, any business will die.
1:41
It’s natural death within, within hours, forget about days.
So here we are, you know, metaphors we live by.
And, and I think it will be, it’s a classic start, isn’t it?
Yeah, absolutely.
And you just said that, you know, businesses will die a natural death.
1:56
Fee used a metaphor there yourself.
Yeah, but but yeah, I mean, it is fundamentally important to the lifeblood of there’s another metaphor of of, of industry and businesses.
But actually, when you’re on the inside of it, a lot of the way you’re talking about the reality of what you’re doing obviously is not to talk about the, the rather dull functional processes you’re going through.
2:19
It’s to put in very interesting and a plethora of metaphors.
So, you know, I think an interesting place maybe to start would be sort of weather type metaphors, because they’re often used in finance to talk about the wider economy and the impacts upon a firm and the impacts upon, you know, it’s specific industries.
2:40
Whereas obviously if you’re in maritime, it’s a real thing you’re facing day-to-day, which is, is absolutely the risk.
Whereas whereas in in banks, it’s it’s sort of shaping it a different way and either inferring it something that’s maybe out of their control or inferring the danger that comes from it.
2:59
But it’s not, it’s not real in the banking sense.
We’re not actually suffering that, but we’re we’re using it as a metaphor.
Of course, and, and even before we, we, we get into this, this very wonderful conversation, the meaning of a metaphor is that you’re applying 1 concept in another, in another domain and transporting it across domains.
3:20
And, and yes, that’s, that’s the essence of all metaphorical thinking that you use one word from one particular domain and use it in, in another domain.
And, and, and just drawing on that weathertight metaphor.
Absolutely, David in, in the maritime world, weathertight means you’re, you’re now ready.
3:39
You, you, you are ready to, to, to, to take the winds and the weather because you are in essence as a ship, you are weather tight.
You have tightened the, the hatches you have, you have secured for the seas.
And come what may, you are now secure and safe to, to take the weather.
3:56
And hence the word weathertight.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah.
And I and I think in in, in finance and banking, it’s it’s kind of used almost the other way around.
It’s it’s where there’s a situation where there’s a sense that it’s not within the control of the institutions themselves.
4:15
They will err towards weathertight metaphors to sort of say, well, hey, what can we do?
It was outside of our control.
And I think it’s very interesting if you look at, you know, the, the financial crisis of 2000 and seven, 2008 that there was critique of, of some senior bankers and some research that was done because they were probably, it’s not deliberate.
4:37
I think it’s so deep within how you frame situations, sort of saying, well, it was a once in a generation storm.
It was, you know, an act of God, which is obviously quite handy because then you can say, well, you can shrug your you can shrug your metaphorical shoulders and say, well, there wasn’t much we could do about it.
5:00
So, so yeah, it’s how how is that used in that particular frame versus maritime where it is what what you literally need to know your weather ties as you say and.
And, and you have some some studies done to prove that once in a 30 years storm.
5:18
So there’s some some rational explanation, some scientific explanations based on that.
And now you take that metaphor and, and transport it into, into the, the, the banking world and you apply it to your advantage to, to be seen as, as everything you have done in your capacity to manage the risk.
5:38
Whereas, you know, it’s in some ways what you’re saying, if I understand it right, is that how often we use metaphors to mislead the world in some ways?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I think and, and unthinkingly and I think strangely to mislead ourselves as well actually.
6:01
And I think a good category of that is, is that that which we’ve just discussed, which is maybe something that was more in the control of banks than they inferred because of, you know, the structure of the products and how things were sold to to in institutions, how the regulators were behaving, how rating agencies were behaving.
6:25
You know, there’s lots of human agency in there.
And yet it’s, it’s put as a, as a completely outside our Control Act of God.
And I think the complete reverse happens as well, is that oftentimes there are things that people sense our complex, but they like to frame them as more structured and rigid to make them feel like they are in control.
6:51
So, you know, there’s quite a lot of metaphors used in banking which are quite mechanical lines of defence and frameworks and walls, etcetera, which can ease the fevered brow of those who work in banks.
7:08
But actually counter intuitively, they’re sort of maybe oversimplifying things and maybe that metaphor isn’t particularly helpful.
So I think I think they can go both ways.
You know, it’s interesting and I don’t know if you’ve heard this one in the banking world, but there is, you’re right.
7:24
I mean, just building upon that, David, we have a metaphor called don’t stand in the line of fire.
So this comes from the maritime industry.
It has been widely overused and misused in the maritime world.
Many, many years ago, we used to have lots of accidents on the ship with mooring lines, you know, at the, at the poop deck, which is the AF deck, which is a metaphor in itself, the poop deck and so, and also in the, in the forecastle, which is another metaphor.
7:56
So we have all these mooring lines spread all over the place on the ship and, and the poor seafarer, you know, when the line is under tension, what happens is that it can snap and it can go in any direction.
So some calculations were done to work out that there are some parts of the deck that are safer than the others.
8:18
And if you were to paint them yellow and, and you could more or less keep the seafarers safe when they are standing in between those dense lines.
And, and we started to paint those areas and we and, and, and the slogan that, that, you know, became the slogan of the day was don’t stand in the, in the line of fire.
8:40
And what it does, it did was it confused the hell out of people even more because when the ropes are under tension and, and, and not every port and not every ship has the same structure.
So when the rope is under tension and it parts, it can actually go in any direction.
8:57
You’re not safe anywhere.
So where do you go now?
You, where do you stay?
And, and, and some accidents actually showed that those places that were painted yellow actually became more unsafe during the course of mooring operations.
So this, this idea of the line of fire became a joke actually, because where do you go?
9:17
Every, everywhere on the ship or everywhere on the poop deck is, is line of fire.
And hence, you know how metaphors actually this that give comfort to some people.
They give the the sense of control actually are much, much more misleading than anything else.
9:36
It’s, it’s, it’s exactly what you, what you said is that we create language to give us a sense of of control, but it’s actually very delusional.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And that’s very interesting metaphor you’ve used there because I think my interpretation of that and probably the general public’s interpretation is they probably thought it came from a battlefield context.
9:56
And then certainly in general parlance, it’s become just keep your head down and don’t put your hand up and don’t volunteer for anything because you’ll get yourself in trouble.
So it has shifted, I think in it and it’s and it’s kind of general, general usage.
10:12
Yeah.
I mean another, I mean, another interesting set of metaphors, which should be interesting to see what they’ll read across from banking into, into maritime is, is, is the kind of animalistic ones.
I think if you go from weather, which appears, you know, very out of control into animals, which maybe appear slightly dangerous in some respects, or, you know, you can try to tame it, but maybe that’s difficult.
10:38
You know, finance is full of them.
You know, obviously we have our bull and bear markets, which are both seem to be quite dangerous animals.
You know, either they’re going up or they’re going down, but you can’t quite control them.
And you know, different types of risks as well.
You know, you have black Swans and you have grey rhinos and you have all sorts of different ways that people are trying to, I was going to say personify, but that’s not the right word with an animal.
11:03
But again, interested as to how that reads across into maritime and the use of animals and what what it’s trying to say.
And, and I think this, this could be a wonderful place to bring this conversation to some kind of a conclusion because you know what?
11:21
I, I, I actually went to one company, David, and they were full of words like Black Swan all the way from the, the senior management to the, to the shop floor.
And the interesting thing is that nobody had a clue what a Black Swan actually means.
11:41
Everyone had a different view on what a Black Swan is.
So my point is this, and I think this could be a really interesting thing to summarize our discussion that it is so, so important to understand the symbolic nature of language is that you might have one thing in your mind when you talk about something.
12:01
But if you do not dare to ask another person what it means to them, then I think we are in a, in a big danger of creating subcultures and creating misunderstandings within the organization.
And I think that’s, that’s, that’s so important.
That is the power of a metaphor that as much as it, it, it gives you a, a sense of understanding and, and, and creating some kind of control, which is what understanding is all about.
12:25
It can actually very, very quickly rob it away from you because you have no idea what the other person is thinking, what sort of images come to their minds when we talk about black Swans and and weather tight and so on.
Yeah, I fully agree.
And I think that echoes the point we’ve made earlier about standing in the line of fire.
12:44
What it originally meant now has a completely different interpretation.
And what was expected perhaps of people to watch out for these risks has now taken on the interpretation of don’t volunteer for things because you, you know, you might get, you know, become in the line of fire.
So yeah.
13:01
Absolutely, yes.
And you know, I, I actually post very, very regularly on, on, on LinkedIn that you might have seen.
And one of the things I find very interesting is that in my world, in the risk and safety world, when you write about a story, people take it literally.
13:18
They take it very literally.
So I recently wrote a story about a Hummingbird or a tree and the forest is on fire.
And the Hummingbird is, is, is, is reluctant to, to, to, to fly off because she feels that she has, ever since she was born, she has lived on this, in this forest and, and, and, and the forest has given it food, water supplies and so on.
13:42
So it’s, it’s metaphorically speaking, symbolically speaking, it’s a story of, of reciprocity, mutuality and relationship and ecosystems and so on.
And how, you know, trust is so important, particularly in terms of in times of crisis.
But it’s so interesting to watch people taking that story literally and thinking that this Hummingbird is going to die if it doesn’t fly off.
14:05
So what’s what an idiotic thing for that Hummingbird to actually stay there.
And our point is in this podcast is very simple that you you have no idea what a word means, what a metaphor means until you engage with the other person to understand that it’s true meaning.
14:21
So, so often companies, CEOs, senior managers send emails, slogans, messages, but they never care to ask people from the other side to say, what does it mean to you?
And I think that there is there is where the power of the metaphor lies.
14:38
What?
What are your thoughts, David?
Yeah, absolutely.
And and you’ve obviously extended from the metaphor to the full narrative.
And I think exactly the same is that, you know, human beings are storytelling animals and you know, it’s how we make sense out of things.
14:54
But equally with a metaphor, it can really help explain things in terms that people can more easily engage with.
But equally can be misleading if it takes them down a path which is simple to absorb an understanding but but maybe isn’t the right approach to framing a particular topic.
15:13
So incredibly powerful, but also can obscure as well as enlighten.
Obscure as well as enlighten.
I love that.
So maybe that could be the title of this podcast.
Metaphors, how they obscure and how they enlighten.
15:30
Great.
Is there anything else you want to share, David?
No, I think that’s great for for today.
But yeah, lots of rich content there I think to explore in more detail.
Great, great, great.
I’ll stop there then.
