Consulting Journal: Words - 'Hone' and 'cut'

Words: 'Hone' and 'cut'

by David Blakey

'Honing' may just be the wrong word; 'cutting' can be just nasty.

[Monday 9 February 2004]

Honing

Think of the images that the following statement can conjure up.

We have honed our skills as consultants through numerous assignments in the sector.

It may just have been for an instant, but did an image of someone sharpening a knife on a stone appear in your mind? If it did, then the analogy is wrong. You do not hone skills: you hone tools. There are two reasons why this analogy does not work.

Tools do not change

A tool remains roughly the same as it was. It may be sharpened by honing or blunted by use. But it remains the same tool as it always was. If it is a knife, then it cuts certain materials of certain toughnesses and certain thicknesses. A knife if not going to develop into a saw, capable of cutting tougher and thicker materials. Your skills should change and develop.

Professionals are judged on their skills.

Consider whether you would judge a surgeon on how sharp his scalpel was. You want the surgeon to have a sharp scalpel, of course, but that is not how you judge whether a surgeon is good. Furthermore, you would be surprised if a surgeon operated with a scalpel that was not sharp. So telling a client or a prospect that your tools are effective is hardly going to impress them. Why shouldn't your tools work properly?

So you do not hone your skills. You do not even hone your experience. You increase your experience and you use that to increase your skills. In terms of your experience, your knife can become a saw.

Cutting

Avoid also references to your tools or experience being used to cut through or into something.

If you cut something, you do one of two things. You can trim it into a shape that is useful. You can cut an A4 sheet of paper into two A5 sheets. You can tailor a piece of material so that it will form part of a garment. Or you can shred the sheet of paper and slash the piece of material. By cutting something you can improve it or destroy it. Be sure that you and your client share the same image.

When someone refers to some new system or application as ‘cutting edge’, I imagine a huge circular saw tearing through the existing infrastructure. You may imagine something else that you dislike: rainforests being felled or the guillotine during the French Revolution. It does not matter that a negative image for one person is not a negative image for another. What matters is that one person can have images that are negative for them.

Really, most clients would probably prefer a technology that is healing rather than one that is cutting. Wouldn't they rather see your message as

Our new application will heal and restore your business processes and procedures, which were damaged by previous, careless technical advances.

I can think of several companies who would welcome this message rather than more of the claims about ‘cutting-edge’ technology.

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