When we give a thing a name, do we kill the idea itself?
When we put a label on a radical idea, do we kill the very thing that made it work?
Some stream of conscious musings for a Monday morning.
I do really struggle with this one. As someone who loves language, I am a firm believer that naming a thing is what gives it power. But there’s always something that co-exists alongside it. And that’s the (seemingly) inevitable watering down of the idea itself.
There's a pattern I notice all the time, and the longer I work in and around the NHS, the more I see it.
It usually goes like this:
STEP 1 - A brilliant idea emerges
It’s usually organically from the ground up, and quite often from someone who got frustrated enough to try something different. It works because it feels alive. It is real, and it is born of something innately human.
STEP 2 -The ‘idea’ spreads. People get excited. They start talking about it at scale. It moves from something localised to a system conversation.
STEP 3 -Then it gets a name.
STEP 4 -Then it gets a framework.
STEP 5 -And then…it gets a set of KPIs, and a reporting requirement, and the programme management of the ‘thing’ becomes a line in someone's job description.
And somewhere in that transition – in some usually indistinguishable moment between the idea’s inception, and the development of everything built around it - something, some of its magic, leaves the room. And can never return.
Placemaking. Social prescribing. Integrated care. Community engagement. Health-led regeneration. Social value.
Each one started as a radical act. Now? They run the risk of becoming a tick box on a spreadsheet, or some buzz word that’s spouted at every conference.
Here’s my dilemma…
I am not arguing against scale. In fact, I am rallying for the complete opposite – we have to find ways to scale the things that work.
I am not arguing against the mainstreaming of radical ideas.
I am not even arguing against the language we use - I was challenged during the Festival of Wrong Conversations and my own cynicism melted away around the labelling of ‘social prescribing’ in a fantastic conversation with Tom Burditt.
I am, and always have been, a passionate believer that getting ideas to more people matters enormously (far more than simply having good ideas does). And I know that naming things helps us fund things, measure things, and turn them into reality.
But there's questions that I come back to time and time again.
What is it about institutionalising an idea that hollows it out? At what point does it lose its soul?
At what point does social prescribing stop being about genuine human connection and start being about referral targets?
At what point does community engagement stop being about the act of truly listening and start being about demonstrating that you've listened?
How do we keep the soul intact when the system takes over?
