Consulting Journal: Words - 'Critical mass'

Words: 'Critical mass'

by David Blakey

Have you reached critical mass? If so, you won't be reading this.

[Monday 11 March 2002]

The phrase ‘critical mass’ usually slips into a sentence when someone is talking. Unforgivably, it also gets into written reports.

It might be, in the excitement of communicating a great idea to a client, that someone can talk about ‘raising the branding of your website to critical mass’ or ‘reaching critical mass in business process improvement’, but there is no excuse for it in a written report or a letter. It should be a discipline of every consultant that they check anything that they do not understand. They do not assume that they have drawn the right conclusion from their research. So why should they assume that they know the meaning of an English phrase unless they have actually looked it up in a dictionary.

Chambers defines ‘critical mass’ as ‘the minimum amount of fissile material needed to sustain a chain reaction’. Of course, you don't need to consult a dictionary if you did Physics at school. If you didn't, you should be aware that, when a substance reaches its critical mass, it will explode.

If you've seen a nuclear power plant disaster movie, you may have heard people shouting that ‘the reactor's going critical’. That is, the material in it is about to reach critical mass, at which time, a nuclear chain reaction will begin.

So, do you really want to tell a client that you will help them to turn their rebranding exercise into another Chernobyl? Or that you will ensure that their business process improvement project will produce a very big hole in the ground, like the China syndrome?

As I now live in Auckland, that project would finish up near Marbella, which wouldn't be too bad.

My tip is therefore to check any phrases that you use, especially in writing.

Definition

The actual meaning of the phrase may be markedly different from its conversational use by uneducated people. Do not reveal your ignorance or lack of diligence by failing to check that the meaning of a phrase is the meaning that you want to communicate.

Euphemism

Avoid euphemisms. Euphemisms convey the same meaning by implication rather than by direct statement. You should use direct statements. People may actually have the job title of ‘rodent operative’ and a shoe-shine person in the US Senate may be called a ‘footwear maintenance engineer’ but they all receive wages or a salary rather than an ‘emolument’ or ‘remuneration’.

Vulgarity

Some phrases of this kind are based on vulgar slang. You should avoid them, even in conversation, as people who know their origins may be upset at hearing them. I am not going to quote any here, but there is a very vulgar Cockney rhyming slang expression for a foolish person that has been abbreviated to a monosyllabic word that is now used routinely on British television.

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