I was recently at an event for a large, well-known corporation. The leader spoke enthusiastically of building the world’s most “impactful commercial engine” and “advancing the frontier” of the field. Slides popped up one after another with little icons emphasising the criticality of knowing ‘where to play’ and ‘how to win’ – each a familiar business term that has become shorthand for complex strategy. Though the content was strategic, I couldn’t shift my attention away from these metaphors woven through the presentation. I doubted that they made their way there consciously. After all, they are classic examples of the three metaphors that have underpinned modern culture for centuries: the machine, the war and the game.

According to the poet Robert Frost, “unless you are at home in the metaphor, unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.” You are not safe because you do not understand that you are wearing lenses. And without knowing you are wearing lenses, how can you come to know how they are structuring the shape and colour of everything you see? And crucially, how can you begin to imagine the world differently?

The foundation of thought

At first glance, metaphors might seem like just decorative language, but they are, in fact, ubiquitous. We use about one metaphor every ten to twenty-five words, or about six metaphors a minute. According to cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, metaphors are the foundation of thought. Even routinely used metaphors radically and unconsciously shape the way we think and act. In a Stanford study, Paul Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky found that metaphors used to describe crime influenced people’s attitudes toward it. When crime was framed as a ‘beast’, people favour punitive measures, while describing it as a ‘virus’ led to support for rehabilitative, preventative policies. This simple metaphorical shift created a bigger divergence in opinion than pre-existing differences between Republicans and Democrats.

At first glance, metaphors might seem like just decorative language, but they are, in fact, ubiquitous.

More than just words, metaphors are lenses through which we view the world. One of the clearest examples is the metaphor ‘time is money’. Without thinking anything of it, we talk about ‘spending’, ‘saving’ and ‘investing’ time, implying that it is a resource to be accumulated, hoarded or wasted. Our personal relationship to time reinforces the cultural mindset of efficiency and optimisation. In other cultures, time is conceptualised differently: in Mandarin, for example, time is sometimes a river, highlighting its fluidity and constant change, while for the Inari Sámi people in Finland, it is tied to nature’s rhythms, echoing the cycles of seasons. Often invisible to the naked eye, language both reflects and reinforces a culture’s values.

The origins of our cultural metaphors

To understand how the metaphors of the machine, the war and the game became central to modern thought, we must examine their historical roots. Ancient Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle advocated for an ordered, rational universe. This evolved during the Enlightenment, where figures like Descartes and Newton emphasised the world as a system of mechanical laws, where everything could be reduced to its parts and understood through observation and calculation. The Industrial Revolution reinforced this perspective, emphasising efficiency and control, with factories and assembly lines shaping organisation, labour and economics.

It is unquestionable that this worldview has driven an abundance of scientific and technological advancements – from vaccines and antibiotics to trains, planes, the internet and now artificial intelligence (AI). However, it has also given rise to a competitive, win-at-all-costs culture that undermines cooperation, sustainability and the long-term health of our planet. At the heart of many of the crises we face today lies our profound separation from each other and the natural world.

Setting the limits of our imagination

The mechanistic metaphors we see across business today are deeply rooted in this tradition. Consider some of the metaphors that dominate business language:

• Human resources is a business term so common across modern organisations that you might not even realise it is a metaphor implying that people are commodities to be managed and optimised for productivity.
• Similarly, hitting targets is so widespread that we forget its metaphorical nature too. However, it suggests that business goals are fixed objectives to be shot at, emphasising efficiency and precision.
• Climbing the corporate ladder is a term that has become ingrained as part of the popular narrative of professional success. Countless companies, including Google, IBM, Coca Cola, Goldman Sachs, General Electric and P&G, offer employees a clear, linear path to hierarchical success.

These metaphors don’t just highlight the competitive and mechanised elements of business, they obscure other crucial elements such as collaboration, creativity and sustainable growth. People are stripped of their humanity; non-linear thinking and emotion are disregarded in favour of ‘rational thought’; and the long view is overlooked in favour of immediate gain.

The doorway to possibility for business terms

For Aristotle, “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.” To master metaphor is to unlock creative freedom, transcend conventional thinking and create new possibilities. Knowing how to use language as a force for social change, creativity and transformation is to reclaim the power to shape the future.

What if we stopped thinking about businesses as machines and started seeing them as living systems? Zhang Ruimin, CEO of consumer electronics firm Haier, compares the open networked platform of his company to a rainforest, arguing that “every empire will eventually collapse. A rainforest, on the other hand, can be sustained.” This is the approach taken by nRhythm, a group that provides tools and education to help organisations reimagine themselves through the lens of a living systems metaphor. nRhythm helps organisations reflect the qualities of a living system, encompassing principles such as holism, interdependence and dynamic balance between change and stability. When organisations mimic these patterns of living systems, they become resilient and adaptable. Instead of asking, “where to play” and “how to win,” we should ask, “where to root” and “how to thrive.”

Though machine, game and war metaphors still prevail, some businesses are beginning to employ alternative metaphors to refine certain aspects of their operations. For example, many companies now use the term ‘North Star’ to describe their overarching purpose beyond pure profit. For example, Unilever’s North Star is its goal to become the global leader in sustainable business for people and planet. Moving beyond the linearity inherent in machine and games metaphors, IKEA uses the idea of ‘circularity’ to take a long-term view of its business, value chain and employees. Salesforce has built a ‘business partner ecosystem’ to emphasise the criticality of collaboration and partnerships in best serving its customers. Microsoft describes its transformation into a ‘cloud-first, AI-first’ company as a journey, reflecting its continuous commitment to adaptation and reinvention.

By more accurately reflecting the complexity of life – organic, unpredictable, ambiguous and evolving – these metaphors open up new possibilities for what businesses can be, and what they are capable of accomplishing. When we start to see organisations as a living system, a journey or even an art form, we move away from a mindset of control and domination and embrace one of cooperation, adaptation and mutual benefit. Though this might seem idealistic, we must remember that we are already seeing life through the lens of inherited ideologies.