Seeing the Invisible
Sometimes the thing you are trying to solve is not actually about the thing at all.
It is about something that looks nothing like it.
I once watched a product team struggle for weeks to improve their onboarding flow. They had the data, the usability studies, the heatmaps, but the solution would not show itself. During one meeting, someone compared the experience to “inviting people to a dinner party and making them wait in the driveway.”
That was it. Everyone could feel the problem instantly. They scrapped the cold, multi-screen intro and built a warm, immediate welcome. Engagement jumped overnight.
That is the power of a metaphor. It lets you see what is hidden because it speaks in the language your brain learned first: images, sensations, and relationships. Metaphors take the abstract and make it tangible, or take the familiar and stretch it somewhere new.
Why Metaphors Work So Well
Our brains do not store knowledge in tidy labeled folders. They store patterns. A metaphor acts like a bridge between patterns that look unrelated. Suddenly, your struggle with a stubborn client becomes “navigating a boat against the current.” Your frustration with a new software tool becomes “learning to dance with a partner who is out of rhythm.” When we swap frames like this, we stop wrestling with the problem in its stuck form and start engaging with it in a completely different way. That shift is often enough to crack it open.
When a Metaphor Changes Everything
- Medicine: The phrase “the body’s immune system is like a fortress” has shaped decades of public health strategy. It made people think about disease as “invasion” and treatments as “defense,” influencing everything from vaccine campaigns to dietary advice. That frame has limitations, but it also made complex science accessible.
- Psychology: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) often uses metaphors to help patients separate themselves from intrusive thoughts. Instead of “fighting” them, a therapist might suggest picturing thoughts as “leaves floating down a stream.” That image can make the difference between spiraling and letting go.
- Business Innovation: In the 1970s, the Xerox PARC team was stuck on how to make computers intuitive. Then someone compared using a computer to working at a physical desk. That simple metaphor birthed the “desktop” interface, with folders, trash cans, and documents, that shaped personal computing for decades.
Finding Your Own Breakthrough Metaphors
- Name the problem plainly. Write it down without any jargon.
- Ask: what else feels like this? Go for physical experiences, not just mental ones.
- Explore the metaphor. If the problem is “herding cats,” what would actually make that easier? Containment? Distraction? A bigger reward?
- Translate back to your real context. Suddenly you might have a fresh strategy.
A Quick Word on Misleading Metaphors
Metaphors are powerful, but they can quietly shape your thinking in ways that lead you astray. If you frame your business as a “battle,” you might unconsciously treat customers, competitors, or even teammates as opponents to be beaten instead of partners to be understood. If you think of your health as “a machine,” you might focus only on fixing parts instead of seeing the interconnected system.
A good metaphor should illuminate rather than limit. When you catch yourself stuck in one frame, try swapping it out for something radically different, you might discover you have been solving the wrong problem entirely.
Metaphors are not just creative tricks. They are shortcuts to empathy, clarity, and momentum. They let you see the invisible forces, emotions, dynamics, unspoken rules, that raw logic often misses.
And sometimes, the right metaphor does not just solve the problem in front of you. It reshapes how you see everything after.
