Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas - Softcover

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John Pollack, who won the 1995 O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships, was a presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton. Earlier, he worked as a foreign correspondent in Spain, as a field assistant in Antarctica, and as a strolling violinist on Mackinac Island. His books include The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics, Cork Boat: A True Story of the Unlikeliest Boat Ever Built, and The World on a String: How to Become a Freelance Foreign Correspondent. He lives in New York City.

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INTRODUCTION

BOARDING THE SHIP OF STATE

I tried to look confident but, sitting awkwardly on a yellow couch in the West Wing of the White House, I couldn’t get comfortable. Across the room, behind a big wooden desk, sat the chief speechwriter for the president of the United States, scrutinizing my résumé.

Decades earlier, perhaps during the Johnson years, the couch on which I sat had begun its life as a handsome piece of furniture. But after bearing the brunt of many administrations and more than a few crises, its springs were spent. If I leaned back, I’d be swallowed by cushions. If I scooched forward, I might end up on the floor. On edge, I waited.

Only a day earlier, I had been sitting in my fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Dupont Circle—unshaven, unemployed, and uncertain about my future. The call from the White House had caught me by surprise. While I had worked for several years as a speechwriter on Capitol Hill and had twice applied to become a presidential speechwriter, I hadn’t been selected. Now one of the president’s speechwriters was moving on, and there was an opening. Would I come in for an interview?

When the chief speechwriter, Terry Edmonds, finally looked up, he pushed his glasses to the top of his head. “Your writing is good,” he said. “I have no doubt you can do the job. But you have a lot of other . . .” He paused, searching for the right word. “You have a lot of other . . . projects. What is this cork boat?” The way he said those words, I knew it wasn’t just a question but something of a challenge.

He was asking about the last line on my résumé: Currently building the world’s first cork boat. I explained that I was saving a hundred thousand wine-bottle corks to build a boat modeled after a Viking ship, which I planned to take on a voyage through French wine country. Building the boat had been a boyhood dream, and I was determined to see it through.

As Edmonds’ eyes narrowed, I could feel my last chance to work at the White House ebbing away. But at that moment, as both my career and I teetered on the edge of that couch, an analogy sprang to mind.

“Sir, building a cork boat is a lot like writing a good speech. . . .”

Edmonds’ head tilted; his eyebrows rose. It was too late to retreat. “In both cases,” I explained, “you take a jumble of small things—corks or words—that don’t do much on their own. But if you assemble them carefully, and put them into just the right order, they’ll carry you on the most amazing journey.”

And then I shut up.

For a long moment, Edmonds stared at me. Then a grin spread across his face, and he shook his head in grudging admiration—not for my nautical ambitions, but for my escape. He got the analogy, and I got the job.

A dozen years later, when I set out to write this book, I intended to explore the subtle yet powerful role of analogy in persuasion. Because while they often operate unnoticed, analogies aren’t accidents, they’re arguments—arguments that, like icebergs, conceal most of their mass and power beneath the surface. In many arguments, whoever has the best analogy wins.

But as my research progressed, it became clear that analogies do more than just persuade; they also play a catalytic role in innovation and decision making—often with dramatic consequences. From the bloody Chicago slaughterhouse that inspired Henry Ford’s first moving assembly line, to the “domino theory” that led America into the Vietnam War, to the “bicycle for the mind” that Steve Jobs envisioned as a Macintosh computer, analogies have played a dynamic role in shaping the world around us.

Despite analogy’s importance, many people have only a vague sense of its definition. In broad terms, an analogy is simply a comparison that asserts a parallel—explicit or implicit—between two distinct things, based on the perception of a shared property or relation. In everyday use, analogies actually appear in many forms. Some of these include metaphors, similes, political slogans, legal arguments, marketing taglines, mathematical formulas, biblical parables, logos, TV ads, euphemisms, proverbs, fables, and sports clichés.

Wearing such disguises, analogies can play a much bigger role than most people recognize. Not just because analogies make arguments, but because they often trigger emotions that override the circuits of reason, and sometimes at a subconscious level. All day every day, in fact, we make or evaluate one analogy after the other, because such comparisons are the only practical way to sort a flood of incoming data, place it within the context of our experience, and make decisions accordingly.

The investor Warren Buffett, known for his rich use of analogy, has noted that “You never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out.” In other words, when times are good, it’s easy to look good; when times are hard, weaknesses that were hidden beneath the surface are suddenly exposed. The same could be said for analogies themselves: We never know what assumptions, deceptions, or brilliant insights they might be hiding until we look beneath their surface.

Despite the ubiquity and impact of analogical thinking, most people are unaware of just how much this core process influences their decision making. Such lack of awareness comes at a cost. Evidence suggests that people who tend to overlook or underestimate analogy’s influence often find themselves struggling to make their arguments or achieve their goals. The converse is also true. Those who construct the clearest, most resonant and apt analogies are usually the most successful in reaching the outcomes they seek.

The ideas in this book draw from the observations, insights, and work of many people, including psychologists, inventors, business leaders, linguists, advertisers, political strategists, legal scholars, neuroscientists, and the world’s best pickpocket. A caveat is in order, however. Readers hoping for an exploration of analogy in literature and poetry will not find it in these pages. As rich as those mines are, one could spend a lifetime excavating the metaphors and similes of Shakespeare alone—and many scholars have. This book has a different purpose: helping readers use analogies more effectively to innovate and persuade, and helping them get better at spotting analogies that may sound persuasive but are actually deceptive, faulty, or even dangerous.

Throughout history and across cultures, analogies have animated many of the greatest debates and sparked brilliant discoveries. Similarly, poor analogies have misled many people, companies, and nations into dead ends and disasters. But now, in this age of compounding global challenges, the analogies we embrace—good and bad—will likely produce more serious and lasting consequences. It’s in this context that I hope Shortcut helps readers become more adept with analogy, enabling them to sidestep its pitfalls and put its power to good and noble use.

CHAPTER 1

APPLES TO ORANGES

How Our Analogical Instinct Fuels Thought

A confident, square-jawed man is skippering a sailboat when a critical piece of hardware fails, causing the sail to start flapping. As the boat loses headway, the man calmly strips the belt from a spare life vest and uses it to reattach the flapping sail to the boat’s long, rigid boom. Filling with wind, the big sail—once again stiff—carries the boat onward through waters that part like a V.

The entire incident, depicted in a TV ad, takes less than thirty seconds....