Article

I love jargon: is that a "bad thing"?

By Merit Smith
Vice President & Director, Health Care

I do love jargon. I just love funky words that closely knit groups create. And I love to see what happens when a bit of jargon moves from the group in which it started to other groups.

Several years ago, the term “Bad Thing” seemed to magically appear in American popular culture. (I know this because my teenagers gave me that blank look used to imply my total paternal cluelessness when I asked them about it.) Last week I saw a fellow in an airport with a T-shirt that read, “You say ‘psycho’ like it’s a Bad Thing.”

It turns out that “Bad Thing” is jargon borrowed from British programmers in the mid-‘90s. A “Bad Thing” is something that cannot possibly improve the situation. For instance, "Bert’s desk seems to be on fire; that’s a Bad Thing."

Two points about its correct use. First, it must communicate an obviously obvious fact. Second, capital letters are appropriate: Bad Thing. There is, of course, the symmetrical “Good Thing.” A Good Thing is something that is self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice. Like, "Bert managed to deal with the fire before the sprinklers came on. Good Thing, that." The same two points about correct usage apply to Good Things.

English programmers didn’t stop with Bad Thing and Good Thing; they went on to evolve the wonderful phrase “Bad and Wrong.” Bad and Wrong is used to describe a program that is badly designed and wrongly coded. And they use all the other combinations of the four words to describe projects or programs: Good and Wrong; Bad and Right; Good and Right.

This jargon is quite useful for Nolan management consultants. When a company wants us to look at their operation, we never quite know what jargon we see. Our initial assessment is based on what we find in terms of “design” and “management practices.” By “design,” we mean the way the client is knowingly—or perhaps unknowingly—using products, technology, processes, human resources, and information resources to deliver service. We use “manage” to mean the way that the organization plans, resources, directs, messages, measures, monitors, rewards, and improves their service design and operation.

Often, an on-site survey tells us we are seeing a “Good and Wrong” situation. The client has a sound design for their operation, but they are having trouble operating it. In this case, a Nolan engagement will emphasize improving management practices. This type of engagement is often of a very short duration, with high impact for clients who benefit from being better able to manage their existing operation.

We work with many clients who have a “Bad and Right” problem. In this case, management practices and techniques aren’t the issue. Our client has a basic problem: their design will not provide acceptable service. These clients will have detailed management reports and tools that can tell them the operation is not performing correctly, but it is hard for them to understand how to change their service design to improve performance. Often, these clients have made incremental, piecemeal changes to their design. Each change in product, process, or technology made sense at the time but, taken together, the design has drifted far from acceptable performance.

For these clients, our work will focus on helping them rethink their operational design. This involves understanding the external customers’ needs and wants, going deep into actual processes that deliver service, matching technology and staff talent to these processes, clarifying current operational issues, and helping the client see how to actually implement a new design. Once the basic design is improved, we work to make changes in management practices to support and sustain the redesign.

What about the other two situations? Executives who have a “Good and Right” situation don’t involve us in their operations, but they do ask us to help expand their market and strengthen their revenue streams. And those potential clients who have “Bad and Wrong” situations can’t seem to find our website or phone number.