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WHAT DO MANAGEMENT consulting and milking cows have in common?

Not much, unless you work at Prizim Inc. Employees at the Gaithersburg, Md., management-consulting firm will sometimes talk about corralling cattle, making ice cream or other chore on a dairy farm when discussing complex business operations.

Prizim has nothing to do with agriculture, but the dairy-farm analogies help its 30 employee owners understand each other when talking about the company's business plans and their roles in them.

Business literacy is often an important issue for employee-owned companies, where it's a priority to make sure staffers understand the bottom line and the difference they can make to it.

As Prizim moved toward employee ownership in 2006, its employees gathered to write its annual business plan and rethink their roles in it. The company, which specializes in environmental and sustainability issues, is made up of scientists, engineers and analysts, as well as employees with business degrees. They needed a common language to talk about such concepts as gross and net revenue, business development and marketing.

They began using analogies to make key points, such as "going fishing" for marketing or "bagging a trophy" for winning a new contract, and soon were brainstorming models for talking about their business in a way everyone could understand.

"When the dairy-farm model came up, it just seemed to resonate," says Frank Priznar, 54 years old, the company's founder and president, who had been the sole owner until the company adopted its employee stock-ownership plan.

The Wall Street Journal Online spoke with Mr. Priznar about how the company's employee owners came up with their own way to describe and discuss the business and their jobs. Here is an edited excerpt of the interview.

WSJ.com: How did the dairy-farm model come about?

Mr. Priznar: We were going to launch our [employee stock-ownership plan]. So for the first time, all employees were invited to the business-planning discussion. In previous years, it was only three or four of us, and I would do most of the talking. We didn't invest any time in training. We just thought, we'll get together and talk.

But it wasn't working. People were talking about so many things, that it became confusing, frustrating. We found that we weren't talking about the same things, and so when you say something like, "return on revenue," you'd have to stop and define it for the purpose of the discussion. We were getting burned out.

So we started to use analogies. Marketing was like going fishing, and we would talk about what kind of bait we would use to get the fish to bite, what kind of fish to catch. People understood that.

Suddenly, a frustrating discussion became more fun. We talked about all kinds of models. We had astronauts going out into space. We had a cave-person model with hunters and skinners. You name it, we had it.

WSJ.com: Why a dairy farm?

Mr. Priznar: When we started sorting things out, none of other models worked. In the fishing model not everybody had a job. Some people didn't want to be the trawler. So we had to keep noodling.

There was one thing we felt strongly about: Everybody had a job where they would be able to do something they were really good at, as opposed to do a job they didn't want to do but was for the greater good.

In the cave-person model, hunters and skinners would feed everyone else. But no one wants to be seen as needing to be fed.

The dairy farm does it better. You didn't have to kill anything. It's about the right number of people. There are different product lines: ice cream, yogurt, cheese.

WSJ.com: Why not use another approach?

Mr. Priznar: I'd gone to conferences, and I was aware of tools for developing business literacy like the "The Great Game of Business" book and seminars.

Sometimes the best solutions are those that come from within. It's about the group dynamics -- no one dictating, but together talking about: "How is this working? What works for us?"

If we were so big that we couldn't all sit around and talk to each other, we probably would have hired consultants. At a small business, every dollar you spend is one you have to be able to prove to employees that it was worth it.

If we had a traditional presentation with numbers and charts, people would appreciate hearing it, but might not get it. They might feel like: "OK, we'll just trust Frank on this one." That's not right. They need to feel like they're in control.

WSJ.com: Why did you reorganize the company?

Mr. Priznar: It was like a law firm: there was a principal, practice leaders, associates and consultantsthe same job titles and job responsibilities as in other companies. It seemed to work. But it turned out to be just baggage.

When you have 30 people, everyone's performance matters on everything. There's no place to hide. People's strengths become obvious. Some people really liked chasing business and lived for it. In the old model, not only were they required to close the sale, they were expected to manage it down to details. So we said: "Let's just let this guy go and do what he does best."

Instead of defining the organization with boxes, functions, attributes, skills, we just took the people, threw it all up in the air, and said: "How can the organization work with these people?" So we were designing the company's functionality and business practices around the people we had.

WSJ.com: What would you caution other companies about this type of approach?

Mr. Priznar: The model only gets you going. You're still stuck with defining those roles and responsibilities with the people on the farm.

Once you tell people that we're redefining jobs based on strengths, some may think they can do whatever they want. There are still things that need to be done. You still need to secure commitments.

Part of one employee's job was to maintain relationship with other farms, for partnering and related activities, but she didn't think that it was. At her first three-month performance review, it was clear that this part of the job wasn't getting attention. At six months, we knew it was a problem.

WSJ.com: How is the model used now?

Mr. Priznar: For new-employee orientation. They need to be educated on the fundamentals of the consulting as a business.

We don't go around talking about cheese and yogurt, but we can refer back to the model if we have to. We had some goals last year to diversify our clients and services. So we ended up talking about getting more cows in the corral. When a client isn't happy, someone said, "Well, the cow thinks there are greener pastures."

Write to Laura Lorber at laura.lorber@wsj.com