In knowledge work one often finds themselves struggling in one of the following two situations:
- Trying to explain a difficult, perhaps complex, concept
- Trying to come up with new ideas on how to add some extra spice to something which is well established. These are two natural side-effects of knowledge work, as great ideas are sometimes hard to explain or to top up. That is when, more often than not, people resort to analogies.
Definition 1 Analogy (noun), a comparison of one thing with another thing that has similar features; a feature that is similar.
Definition 2 Analogy (noun), the process of comparing one thing with another thing that has similar features in order to explain it.
Note : I made sure to highlight the key words which I will be referring to later on in this introduction document.
Analogies, therefore, are very useful tools for knowledge workers to build and transfer knowledge. The challenge, however, is that finding the right analogy takes time and skill. Very often we start using an analogy to explain an important concept only to find ourselves in a dead-end.
Consider, for example, someone trying to explain Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to someone else by using an analogy. That's a great idea, until this someone chooses the wrong analogy which will have the receiver asking more about the analogy than on the concept itself. Possibly, they will try to find other analogies to try to converge to the same pattern, but now everything is being done in panic mode. What happened of Einstein's theory anyway?!
Many have found themselves in a similar situation. The result will be even more confused minds and that is something that knowledge workers are, rightly so, very much afraid of.
The Croker Method for Harnessing Analogies is aimed as a facilitatory tool for anyone who wants to make analogies work for them.