ABSTRACT
Metaphors are compressed interpretations of the world characterised by simplification and the discarding of certain disconfirming information. The particular metaphorical language which is used regularly in order to describe organisations and what they do always tells us something important. The ubiquity of project management in particular as a means of managing change has increasingly been criticised as a “cookbook” or “recipe” approach which denies the messy real-world complexity, the dependence upon local circumstances and the overriding centrality of working relationships. OD practitioners often feel bound to offer diagnostic frameworks and models such as the six-box model or the 7-S model on which they are able to “hang” the data they have collected but which often embody a set of undeclared assumptions. Anxiety is the distress or uneasiness caused by fear of danger or misfortune. Such danger or misfortune may be real or imagined, clear and present or vague and anticipated and threatening physically, emotionally or psychologically.
