What does "adjusting screw" actually mean?
Benno Maggi explains in his column "What does... actually mean?" terms from the field of marketing and communication. This time he shares his thoughts on the term "adjusting screw".
While people in the industry are predominantly throwing around digital buzzwords, a term that dates back to a time when everything was still analog has recently made its way into consulting workshops in particular: the adjusting screw. Especially in the historic industrial country of Switzerland, it is worth taking a closer look at the increasing popularity of this word.
The set screw differs from the common screw in that it is used to adjust, regulate, fix, or secure distances, things, or changes, and is not just a threaded, headed bolt that is screwed into something and used to fasten or connect something. So far, so clear.
Industrialization of the consulting service
If all this is still too concrete for you, you might find it helpful to consider that today, even in Switzerland, we are no longer in an industrial society but, as we know, in a postindustrial one. Due to technological progress, knowledge and information are the main sources of economic value creation in this society, and no longer primarily labor and capital resources. As a result, the communications industry in particular has experienced an incredible boom: today, communication often seems more important than production. Malicious tongues claim that this is why there is more talk than action, or in good Swiss German, "me glafered, statt glifered.
In order to refute this accusation, those who primarily do the first then like to use a term that implies the second. "What are our levers?" they ask the group in a shirt-sleeved manner, catering to everyone's slightly nostalgic need for something tangible. They don't have to be nails with heads and they don't have to be solutions for good - hopefully we are all agile by now - but they do have to be as concrete as a thread that allows us to regulate what needs to be regulated. But instead of serving to set, define, or secure processes, most consultants who use the word seem more like people who want to drive screws into the wall with a hammer. But even that can have its effect: Bam!
* Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He has been eavesdropping on the industry for over 30 years, discovering words and terms for us that can either be used for small talk, pomposity, excitement, playing Scrabble, or just because.
