Moving forward in nursing

Have you noticed how in this time of austerity thephrase ‘moving forward’ (sometimes ‘going forward’)has become much used and abused? No longer solelythe province of management, it now peppers thespeech and language of everyday folk. According tothose websites dedicated to such things, movingforward is management speak euphemisticallyemployed by those with the authority to hire and fireto mean something on the lines of: ‘things are going tochange around here and you’d better get used to it’ or‘things are going to change and some of you canexpect to be made redundant’. More generally, thewords imply that a failure to move forward is tanta-mount to remaining static, and in this ever-changingand ever-more fast-paced world, standing still is theequivalent of moving backwards with all the associ-ated ideas of becoming a dinosaur (i.e. extinct or irrel-evant). And who among us wants to be left behind?Of course, the term moving forward is still used in thissense of spin by those in managerial positions whentrying to convince others not just of the necessity forchange but for the necessity for change in the direc-tion they (the management/the corporation/theorganization/the institution/etc.) require.And it is justpossible that the frequency with which movingforward appears in management-speak gives an indi-cation of the level of controversy or bunkum on offer.

But beyond the spin, these two words (movingforward) seem now to have become ubiquitous inreplacing one seemingly perfectly serviceable existingword (change). No point in ranting about this. TheEnglish language is adept at adapting to all kinds ofchallenges to established meanings and I would not besurprised to find that in time, as sometimes happens inwritten expression, the two words become one first byhyphenation (moving-forward) and subsequently bysimply dropping the hyphen (movingforward).Although by then, the term will probably have fallenout of favour in managementspeak to be replaced by amore spin-able and arcane term. And so does theEnglish language continue moving forward. Whoops.Sorry. I’ll write that again. And so does the Englishlanguage continue to change.

Armchair grammarians who wish to retain purity inthe English language might be well advised to recog-nize, as ably demonstrated by King Canute, the limitof human powers to intervene in the inevitable. Andthe fact that languages can, and do, die gives credenceto the modern notion that standing still is not anoption precisely because it very easily leads to extinc-tion.Think Latin. So perhaps the rise of spin is merelyone in series of adaptations that allows the Englishlanguage to thrive. If so then I, among others, mayhave been quite wrong to take against the way thewords moving forward have been appropriated formanagerialist and corporate purposes. Perhaps, I justdon’t like change? No. I don’t think this is it. I thinkthat what I react against is the pretense, the deceptioninherent in the euphemistic employment of language.Of course, the move to adopt a positive spin regardingchange is not new and to a large extent we have allbecome inured (although not immune) to the worstexcesses of managementspeak. From the cynics whoread conspiracy into every managerial proclamationto the naïve who accept at face value the intentbehind each edict, there are those who determine thattheir best interests are served by positioning them-selves so as to become a winner, rather than a loser, inany forthcoming change. We all have vested interests.So it may be that adopting the tenets of movingforward and incorporating the expressive idiom(moving forward) in place of change is the same asaccepting as legitimate the language of challenge orissue rather than problem. The problem with all ofthis is, of course, that old conundrum facing all thosewho wish, from below, to change the way things aredone. Is it better to try to influence from the outsidefrom a position of relative weakness or to attempt toclimb the corporate ladder so as to reach a position ofpower with the inherent danger of being converted(corrupted?) on the way up? Politics, eh? Can’t get bywith it, can’t get by without it.

Moving forward then, I am no longer sure how farthose who employ the term are engaging in decep-tion, not now it has become ubiquitous. For a while, Iwas disappointed to find moving forward being used

Editorialdoi: 10.1111/nup.12059

155© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Nursing Philosophy (2014), 15, pp. 155–156

in everyday conversations, being used by nurses whentalking about patients, and being used in studentessays. (Indeed, it was coming across this for the firsttime that occasioned this very editorial.) But now Ifind that I am thankful that moving forward has takenon an everyday meaning and that everybody knowswhat it means, for this drains it of the power todeceive.

Yet, I retain a deep distrust of moving forward as aspindiom (spin idiom, spindiom, get it?) for its placein the lexicon of institutions such as those of educa-tion and health care appears to represent an insidiouscreep of the triumph of the corporatization of institu-tions that, for many, have no business becoming cor-porate. The primary values of education and healthcare are not those of the corporation. Yes, corporateclaims that efficiency can act to enhance those humanvalues central to education and health care have somecredence, but when corporations fail to take accountof the human cost of changes on those who work inand for the corporations, those claims begin to ringhollow. If moving forward means, as it often seems soto do, that the conditions of those charged with pro-

viding services such as health care and educationbegin to have features contrary to the values of thestated aims of those services, then the contradictionseems lost on those who make determinations asdeemed necessary to move forward. Simply put, ifnurses are expected to care for patients, then surely itis reasonable to expect that health care institutionscare for their staff? If universities expect faculty toenhance student satisfaction, then surely it is reason-able to expect that universities enhance faculty satis-faction. Institutions have character only insofar asthose who work in them give it that character and it issurely no surprise that that character is influenced bythe way its leaders and managers behave. A hospitalthat cares for its nurses has every right to expect thatits nurses will care for the patients. A university thatshows a genuine regard for its faculty has every rightto expect its faculty to show a genuine regard for thestudents. If moving forward means that institutionsrecognize this simple axiom, then I’m all for it.

Derek SellmanUniversity of Alberta

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© 2014 John Wiley & Sons LtdNursing Philosophy (2014), 15, pp. 155–156