Illustrations - all good sermons need them (apparently). All good preachers acquire them, store them, retrieve and deploy them. Stories, analogies, examples. Things to illustrate - illuminate - a point. But what makes for the best illustrations?
The answer, it seems to me, are not ones that are sought-out to buttress a point but those that have led to the point being realised in the first place - observations from life that highlight something that is bigger than just the specific instance.
Seth Godin is brilliant at this - his article on smooth water and the lesson he draws/applies from cavitation is a prime example (illustration, if you like) of just that. He has seen something, learnt something, about a topic (cavitation) that enables him to then see something else more clearly, on an enitrely different topic.
Those kinds of illustrations don't only help to illuminate something that is already known, they've likely been part of that learning in the first place. Knowing what (and why) engineers do regarding cavitation leads to keener perception of comparable issues in the realm of organisations and their dynamics.
When our eyes are open and our minds alert to the world around us and within us, those insights occur. And when that happens, everyone is a learner.
