Crafting Strategy: The Role of Embodied Metaphors

This article presents an approach to strategizing through a process of crafting embodied metaphors - physical constructions that can be touched, moved, examined from various angles and serve as engaging occasions for sense making. In this context strategy is viewed as a crafting practice, where actors construct their perceptions of strategic issues, metaphorically as well as literally, both through and into embodied metaphors within facilitated workshops. We analyse an episode of a strategy team constructing an embodied metaphor of their ideal strategizing process, and suggest that embodied metaphors are an effective means of intervention that can help managers to debate specific strategic challenges in a generative fashion. We show how the process of constructing and interpreting of embodied metaphors can provide access to a deeper understanding of organizational, divisional or task identities, and address other important benefits of the process, such as the potential for shifts in the mindsets of strategists and the ability to engage actors not ordinarily involved in strategizing. Finally we offer some suggestions on how to foster a productive strategizing process of crafting embodied metaphors.