Projects have their own microclimates—the vibe of a project, which shapes our experience and sometimes the results, too. Metaphors are a powerful lever to shift that microclimate. They can accelerate alignment on a world view, creating hooks for project-specific visual and linguistic vocabularies to emerge.

Here are three experiences where I found it helpful (and fun!):

Setting up a campsite!

My team adopted a campsite metaphor to set the tone for a fast-moving project with intricate dependencies. To have the tents pitched and a hot meal ready before the sun went down required each member to be proactive, work with what’s available onsite, and explicitly ask and offer help.

We started some of the check-ins with a Google search for “camp site”, using an image search result to share how we each felt about our progress and what needed to be done.

Running a marathon!

In the initial planning phase of a particularly long and complex project, we started to cram in a lot of activities. As anxiety levels rose, the project lead point out, “We can’t be sprinting, this is going to be a marathon.” That statement changed our mentality for planning. And anytime we started to gasp for air in the following years, we reminded ourselves to slow down and take a look around. Slow and steady wins the race.

You’re one ship among a fleet, setting out to sea!

The Ship 30 for 30 writing program that I’m currently doing has done a great job of worldbuilding based on 🚢 ships and shipping. It’s in the branding and the language—the hosts are captains, the online hub is the dock, and we are shippers learning to steer our ships.

Have fun with the metaphor and it’ll take on a life of its own.

It doesn’t always stick but when it does, it’s pretty special.