Publishing its own working definitions of terms like productivity and accountability, with the old usage shown beside them, lets a change program argue on its own vocabulary and set the terms of debate.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Before launching a new operating model, the vice president of store transformation at a national home-goods retailer wrote a one-page glossary, expecting the model to be fought word by word. Productivity would mean sales per labor hour plus large-ticket conversion. Customer focus would mean conversion and the assisted-sale rate. Accountability would mean meeting the labor budget and the service standard together. Under each term she printed the old usage and the reason for the change. The glossary went into the strategy deck, the scorecard, and the review template, with a line inviting challenges at a monthly definitions review. At the first quarterly review a store-operations director argued that assisted sales were undercounted; the review agreed and changed the measure in April. Every later argument about the model took place in her terms, including the ones she lost.
Why it works
Using the official vocabulary marks a speaker as aligned, and it is the easy path because the terms fill every template, so arguments made in the program's words get a hearing. Arguments made in older words must translate first, which makes them look worse and cost more effort. Publishing the definitions with the old usage beside them keeps this a fair advantage: critics know the terms, can contest them, and can win. It depends on control of the documents people use every day and on definitions sound enough to survive challenge.
The thinking behind it
Herbert A. Simon Simon's Administrative Behavior (1947) analyzes organizations as systems of decisions shaped by premises the organization supplies, such as goals, information, and procedures, and notes that whoever controls those premises influences the decisions made from them. Definitions of terms like productivity are premises of exactly this kind. Publishing them sets the starting point of every later argument, and inviting challenges keeps the premises open to correction.
Pierre Bourdieu Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972) treats prestige and recognition as symbolic capital, a resource whose power depends on its basis going unrecognized. An official vocabulary carries that kind of capital, since speakers who use it are heard as aligned. Printing the old usage beside each new definition makes the basis visible, which keeps the advantage from turning into a way of making disagreement unsayable.
When it fits
New operating models, scorecards, or strategies whose success depends on everyone measuring the same thing are its natural home. It requires authority over the program's core documents, definitions you can defend in front of skeptics, and a forum where definitions can be challenged and changed. It suits a sponsor confident enough in the case to argue it openly.
How to use it well
Draft the definitions before launch, one line each, and test them on the people most likely to object. Print the old usage beside each new definition and say why it changed. Put the glossary everywhere the program lives: the strategy deck, the scorecard, the review templates. Hold a regular forum where anyone can challenge a definition, and change one publicly when a challenge is right. Then argue in your own terms, consistently, and expect others to use them.
- Keep definitions broad enough to include what customers care about.
- Date every change and keep the earlier versions on file.
What it costs and where it backfires
Definitions that leave out what customers or frontline staff care about will be turned against you the first time results disappoint, since owning the vocabulary means owning its blind spots. The move crosses a line when the old meaning disappears without notice and critics are told they are using words wrong, or when definitions are written so that an objection cannot be stated at all. At that point the program is winning by making disagreement unsayable, and people stop trusting its words.
When it is used on you
If a program's terms have changed meaning, ask for the published definition and the old one beside it. Argue the definition itself when it leaves something out, in the forum provided, with evidence in plain terms: lost sales, complaints, turnover. If no published definition exists, ask for one in writing before you argue anything else.