The problematic "Forward"

I wrote this in response to HM's blog entry on "The way forward" which has become really a rather irritating buzzword these days and it frankly does not mean much. This is a thought-provoking topic to me, because I hear it so often in my workplace. I admit I use it rather often, and frankly it is said for trying to explain situations away or to save face. Neither do I have any confidence in the people who use it without providing feasible and meaningful suggestions and follow-up action, and actually get down to implementing them.

To me, when people say they "look forward", it used to be a nice phrase to say they move on with life, to be willing to let go of what has happened. However, many a times people use that phrase when something bad has happened, and while there may be valuable lessons learnt, they just take it as a convenient and quick way to brush the incident aside and move on to continue with the way things are done. As such, they continue with their existing ways which are already problematic and refuse to change or rather avoid change altogether, hence setting themselves up for yet another disappointment when the same problem surfaces again.

Maybe it's the skeptic or cynic in me, but that seems to be overused and exploited. Grr!