Leadership names a real internal problem, such as bureaucracy or rework, as the thing a change must beat, so the organization rallies against a shared obstacle and critics stay colleagues.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Thirty properties had to give up purchasing and scheduling habits that had grown over twenty years, and the hotel group's chief operating officer needed the change to feel shared. She named the target in her first town hall: rework, the hours staff spent redoing bookings, invoices, and rosters that had been entered wrong the first time. Her team measured it at 11 percent of back-office time and published the six processes that produced most of it. Posters in back offices showed each property's rework hours. When a regional general manager argued that the new central scheduling would hurt group bookings, the COO thanked him in the same meeting, asked him to join the scheduling working group, and said the target was rework, never the people raising problems. The program kept its momentum, and the scheduling design changed twice on the group sales team's advice.
Why it works
A shared enemy makes supporting the change look better, because it feels like joining a fight against something everyone dislikes, and easier, because it requires no attack on a named colleague. Standing apart looks worse, since nobody wants to defend bureaucracy or rework, and costlier, because the program carries the moral momentum. It relies on a problem real enough to feel urgent, nobody willing to defend it by name, and leaders who keep the enemy specific enough to measure and the critics separate from it.
The thinking behind it
Muzafer Sherif Sherif's Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (1961) reported that hostility between two groups of boys eased through superordinate goals, problems that mattered to both and that neither could solve alone, though later archival work argues that heavy staff intervention shaped the results. A measured, shared problem such as rework works in that spirit: properties that compete for budget can join against something none of them can fix alone.
Murray Edelman Edelman's Constructing the Political Spectacle (1988) treats problems and enemies as constructed and interpreted for an audience, so naming them is a political act. Naming rework as the enemy decides what the change is about before any argument starts. The clean form keeps the construction honest by measuring the problem and listing where it lives, and keeps critics outside the category of enemy.
When it fits
Naming a common enemy suits a leader who must move a large, loosely connected organization and can point to a real, measurable internal problem that most people already resent. You need data that shows the problem, the discipline to list the specific processes where it lives, and the temperament to welcome critics into the work.
How to use it well
Name the problem in a word people already use, then make it concrete: measure it, publish where it lives, and show each unit its own share. A concrete list costs some of the unifying effect, since the groups on it recognize themselves, but it keeps the argument honest and usually wins allies among the people who want the problem fixed.
- List the specific processes the change will fix, so people can see what is in scope.
- Keep critics and the enemy apart in every reply: answer objections on their merits and invite the objector in.
- Report progress against the measure, so the fight has a scoreboard.
- Retire the slogan once the measure moves, before it turns into a label.
What it costs and where it backfires
Making the enemy concrete invites the groups who own the listed processes to argue their case, which slows things down. A slogan repeated long enough turns into a label, and people start using it on each other. The move crosses the line when the label is pinned on people: casting critics as examples of the disease turns a shared goal into a way to silence dissent, and the people silenced are often the ones who see the problems first.
When it is used on you
Faced with a vague enemy, ask leadership to name the specific processes the program targets. When a substantive point gets a label in reply, restate the point with its numbers and ask for an answer. Share the concrete list with the groups it touches, so each can argue its own case.