Farming as a Metaphor for Workplace Culture
Michael Wade has an interesting post considering how non-agricultural workplaces can resemble farms.
Workplace cultures are in large part a reflection of the underlying metaphor driving the organization, whether by design or chance. When much younger, I used and advocated the "business is war" metaphor. I have been much more successful (and much less stressed) organizing around a farming metaphor. For truth, there can be times of battle on the farm that, as in the war metaphor, require the immediate and drastic mobilization of resources: the barn is on fire, the locus are coming, a tornado approaches. Life on the farm is more than endless summer days spent blissfully feeding magic ponies and dancing under rainbows. One must be prepared to "take up arms" and employ non-farm related tools and tactics in order to deal with any short term crisis that may occur.
Photo by Lucy Chian on Unsplash