Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Be wary when someone asks for “actionable fill-in-the-blank.”

I few years ago, I was working in a prestigious organization (just ask anyone who worked there, they would happily tell you that it was a prestigious place). A division there had an expiring charter and needed to update it. Several senior managers asked that the new charter contain “actionable words.”

My reply was, “You mean verbs?”

I thought it was a funny reply. Others disagreed. It highlighted how in government we always tried  to dilute everything.  Notice “dilute” is a verb. In government we would write “we try to water down everything.” “Water down” is not a verb; it is a weak combination of verb-preposition.

Perhaps the problem in this prestigious organization was that they had forgotten how to do anything.

Move on in time, and I work at another organization. The senior managers sit in a meeting room all day while underlings enter and give briefings. The senior managers want “actionable briefings.” They request information they can use to do something. My thought was, if I give you information, you can think. Thinking is something, right?

Perhaps the problem was that they had forgotten how to think.

I sense a pattern here. Whenever someone asks me for “actionable” anything, the results are bad. Is “actionable” a real word? Dictionary.com has a few definitions for it with most of them being legal terms. The situations mentioned above where not related to legal cases. Take great care when confronted with actionable. I recommend not trying to be humorous as I was.