Platitudes Don't Work

"Work smarter, not harder" is a platitude that, of itself, is virtually useless. "Hire only the best" is another. The list of these is practically endless.

They are little more than slogans unless they are associated with a specific meaning and context. This is their real, and perhaps only, value: Providing a concise term that stands for a complex concept.

Wikipedia offers an especially apt definition: A platitude is a trite, meaningless, biased, or prosaic statement that is presented as if it were significant and original. The word derives from plat, the French word for "flat."

It further states that: A thought-terminating cliché is a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance. Though the phrase in and of itself may be valid in certain contexts, its application as a means of dismissing dissent or justifying fallacious logic is what makes it thought-terminating.

Why bring this up here? Because it appears time after time in planning activities. People tend to offer the platitude without digging into its meaning in whatever context they are discussing. Even worse, its elaboration may be in a further set of platitudes.

So Why Do We Use a Platitude?

The term "best practices" itself is dangerously close to a platitude. It is almost meaningless as a practical guideline. This is why we have included pages on "Defining Best" and "Defining Practices".

We want to be very clear about how we define best practices so that our approach has a solid foundation.

Our tagline platitude of "Working smarter, not harder" has a specific purpose: It says that we are concentrating on shifting resources from doing what we always do to more productive practices.

It emphasizes intelligence and knowledge over discipline and rules. Our approach is not simply to offer some new processes but to extract the most productive aspects of both processes and practices.

 

Pot of Gold

Communicating a complex concept like an important business practice often requires the use of crutches like "pot of gold". This cliché says that the point is not the practice itself but the large savings or profit gains that can result from its successful implementation.

"Working smarter" also has a specific communications purpose. While it too seeks a pot-of-gold kind of outcome in increased sales and profits, it emphasizes the approach itself:

Identify what works best and move it deeply into the organization.

This is nearly always the lowest cost, least effort opportunity available to businesses.

By building on what you are already doing, there is no need for significant investment. Culture is mostly unaffected. Obstacles to change are minimal since your people are already doing it.