There’s something strange that happens as soon as people gather in a meeting room. The language changes. The words get longer, the sentences more complex, and the content… well, the content gets lost somewhere along the way. Suddenly we’re talking about strategic initiatives, synergies, transformations, and frameworks. Everyone nods. No one understands. And no one dares to really admit it.
The most fascinating thing is that everyone thinks this is how it’s supposed to be. As if vagueness is a sign of intelligence. As if complexity in language reflects complexity in thought. When it’s often the other way around.
But let’s be honest. If you can’t explain what you’re doing so that someone outside the room understands it, then there’s a pretty big chance that you don’t really know yourself.
And this is where we need two roles that almost never exist, but that would change everything.
The benefit interpreter is the person who asks the uncomfortable question
Imagine that every meeting had a person whose sole job was to translate everything that was said into benefit. Not internal benefit. Not process benefit. But actual benefit for someone outside the room.
Someone says that we need to develop a new internal platform to streamline our flows. The benefit interpreter leans forward and asks who benefits from this and how.
Suddenly there is silence.
Because it turns out that many arguments don’t really hold up when tested against reality. They hold up internally. They sound good. They feel important. But they lack a clear connection to why they exist.
And here comes the uncomfortable part. Many organizations have become very good at creating work that justifies itself. Like a kind of self-sufficient machine where activities give birth to more activities.
The benefit interpreter breaks that pattern. Not by being negative, but by being concrete.
We turn inward and call it strategy
It’s easy to understand why this happens. Turning inward is safe. There are no customers there to question. No external demands to interfere. Just colleagues who are also trying to make everyday life work together.
So we build processes, systems and initiatives that work perfectly in the internal logic. The only problem is that no organization exists in a vacuum.
It doesn’t matter how efficient your internal structure is if it doesn’t create value outside of itself.
It’s a bit like becoming extremely good at organizing your kitchen but forgetting to cook food that someone wants to eat.
When everything sounds important, nothing becomes important
Another side effect of lacking a utility perspective is that everything starts to sound equally important. All initiatives have their arguments. All projects have their presentations. All ideas have their advocates.
But if everything is important, then nothing is important.
The utility interpreter works here as a kind of filter. Not by saying no, but by asking the question why enough times to separate what is truly valuable from what just feels like it.
And that’s not always convenient. But it’s often necessary.
The metaphor interpreter is the person who makes the incomprehensible understandable
If the utility interpreter is about why, the metaphor interpreter is about how we understand.
Because let’s be honest again. Many of the things we do in organizations are unnecessarily difficult to understand. Not because they have to be, but because we make them so.
We build complex reasoning that requires you to be already familiar with it in order to understand. And then we wonder why it’s hard to get people on board.
The metaphor interpreter does something radical. She tries to explain everything as if it were for a child.
Not to simplify the important, but to strip away the unnecessary.
If you can’t explain it, maybe you don’t understand it
Take an advanced AI solution. It can be described in technical terms that make most people lose focus after two sentences. Or it can be described as a radio-controlled car that learns to drive better every time it crashes.
Suddenly something happens. It becomes understandable. Not exactly, but enough.
Or an organizational change. It can be described in terms of structure, responsibility and governance. Or it can be described as a family where roles change as the children grow up and where everyone needs to understand who does what in order for everyday life to work.
Metaphors are not just pedagogical tools. They are bridges between what we know and what we don’t really understand yet.
Nature often understands what we struggle with
Most of what we try to do in organizations already has counterparts in nature. Cooperation, adaptation, competition, balance.
An ecosystem doesn’t work because someone has designed a perfect plan. It works because there are relationships, feedback and an ability to adapt.
Yet we often try to create systems that are so controlled that they can barely handle change.
The metaphor interpreter would remind us of the obvious. That what we are trying to build may not need to be as complicated as we make it.
When good intentions go wrong
It’s important to say that this isn’t about people wanting to complicate things. Quite the opposite. Most people are trying to do the right thing.
You want to be thorough. You want to take complexity into account. You don’t want to simplify important aspects.
But somewhere along the way, it becomes so complex that it stops being useful.
It’s like building a map that is so detailed that it becomes as big as reality. It becomes accurate, but completely useless.
Creativity needs both direction and comprehensibility
Creativity in organizations is not just about generating ideas. It’s about ideas being understood, developed, and implemented.
Without benefit, ideas become irrelevant. Without comprehensibility, they become useless.
That’s why the benefit interpreter and the metaphor interpreter are really two sides of the same coin. One ensures that we do the right things. The other that we do them in a way that is accessible.
Together, they create a direction that is both meaningful and possible to follow.
Inconvenient for everyone’s good
Perhaps the most provocative thing in all of this is that the roles do not require new titles, new departments, or new processes.
They just require that someone dares to ask the question what this actually leads to and that someone else dares to say can you explain it so that a ten-year-old understands.
And if no one can answer those questions, then the problem may not be communication.
Then the problem is the content itself.
So the next time you are in a meeting where everything sounds important and advanced, you can try something simple.
Ask what the benefit is.
And if the answer cannot be explained with a simple analogy, maybe it is time to start over.
