Leadership adopts the language and values its opponents organize around, and shows with evidence how the change serves those same values, so the opposition's own terms argue for the change.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Line crews at an electric distribution company had used 'safety first' for years to resist outsourcing storm restoration. The operations vice president wanted contractor crews for surge capacity and agreed that safety was the right test. Her memo kept the crews' phrase and their meaning, familiarity with the circuits. It proposed that contractor crews work only under a company foreman who knew the circuit, and it showed the injury record for the three storms in which contractors had been used that way, lower than for exhausted company crews on a third double shift. She asked the foremen's committee to write the familiarity standard. The committee wrote it, and the program cleared labor review with the crews' standard as its first page.
Why it works
Using the opposition's own terms makes going along easier: employees no longer have to reconcile the change with their values, because leadership has shown how it serves them. The opposition's argument loses force once leadership accepts its test and meets it with evidence, and continued objection costs more, since it now has to dispute the evidence. It works when leadership keeps the original meaning and uses it consistently, the change really serves the value, and the evidence can be checked. It fails as soon as people notice the meaning has shifted.
The thinking behind it
Robert B. Cialdini Robert Cialdini's Influence (1984) describes commitment and consistency: once people have taken a public position, they feel pressure to act in line with it. Line crews committed publicly to safety first. A change shown, with evidence, to serve that commitment puts their own consistency on its side. If leadership changes what the words mean, the same principle turns against it, because the crews' commitment was to the original meaning.
Erving Goffman Erving Goffman's Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (1974) treats frames as the way people answer what is going on here, and a fabrication as managing activity so others form a false belief about it. Adopting the opposition's frame and meeting its test is persuasion. Keeping the opposition's words while changing their meaning without saying so fits his definition of a fabrication.
When it fits
Good when the opposition's values are ones you share, the change can genuinely be shown to serve them, and you have evidence the opponents will accept. It suits leaders willing to let the opposition set part of the standard the change must meet.
How to use it well
Learn what the opposition's key terms mean to them, in their words, before you use them.
- Keep that meaning. Quote their definition and measure the change against it.
- Bring evidence that the change serves the value, and say where it does not yet.
- Invite the opposition to write or check the standard: a safety rule, a service measure, a quality bar.
- Use the terms consistently in every document and meeting.
If the change does not serve the value, leave the value alone and find the argument that is true.
What it costs and where it backfires
Opponents may feel their language has been taken over, and if any part of the change contradicts the value, they will hold it against you. You also commit to the standard: borrow 'safety first' and every incident becomes a test. The line is redefinition. Once you keep the word and change what it means without saying so, the move depends on people not noticing, which is deception, and when they notice, the redefinition becomes the grievance.
When it is used on you
If your own value terms start appearing in leadership copy attached to something different, pin the meaning to a written, dated source and quote it. Restate your concern in operational terms that cannot be stretched, ask leadership for a written definition as the program uses the term, and point out the shift once, plainly.