strategy·Published 2025-03
Usage of 'Journey' as an Organizational Metaphor in All-Hands Meetings and Subsequent Strategic Pivots: A Positive Correlation
Principal investigator: Dr. Percival Ashcombe, Chief Research Officer.
The more frequently 'journey' is used as a metaphor in all-hands presentations, the more strategic pivots the organization executes in the following eighteen months.
Methodology
Two hundred and fifty-four organizations consented to provide transcripts or recordings of their all-hands meetings over a twenty-four-month window. The Institute's linguistic analysis team coded each occurrence of 'journey' and classified it as literal or metaphorical using a codebook developed for this study. Only metaphorical uses were counted. Strategic pivots were identified from press releases, board minutes shared voluntarily, and in forty-one cases by asking a senior employee to characterize the organization's trajectory as either 'consistent' or 'not consistent,' with the latter coded as a pivot.
Funding disclosure: Funded by the Institute's Linguistic Strategy Research Fund and an unrestricted grant from a communications consultancy that has since pivoted.
Instruments cited in this study
Full citation
Ashcombe, P. (2025). Usage of 'Journey' as an Organizational Metaphor in All-Hands Meetings and Subsequent Strategic Pivots: A Positive Correlation. Institute for the Study of Pointless Metrics. r = 0.81, p < 0.001, n = 254.