Vitamins and painkillers: Difference between revisions

{{a|shitmaxim|{{image|Huey|jpg|A vitamin fan yesterday.}}}}{{quote|

:— Huey Lewis, ''I Want A New Drug'' (1984)}}The theory goes, so say any number of [[Thought leader|thought-pieces]], that there are two kinds of business offerings: ''painkillers'' — that address acute immediate problems, and ''vitamins'' — that invisibly guard against problems over the medium to long term.

Opinion is divided as to which is better: painkillers yield quick revenues in the short term but have low barriers to entry and are, thereby ''on-piste''; vitamins generate returns more slowly but are stickier, build better relationships, and might be a more stable source of income over the longer term.

Seeing legal service as something that either masks a deep-seated malaise without fixing it — a “painkiller” — or that is a quick, cheap and hard-to-prove substitute for the boring work of living a healthy lifestyle — a “vitamin” — but anyway overlooking, you know, ''diagnosing and curing patients'' is the classic [[Legaltech startup conference|legal-tech take]].

 

Thus the appeal of Paracetamol: it is quick, generic, asks no great skill of those who prescribe it and, at first blush, it does the trick. A lot like [[legaltech]].

 

Painkillers work in three cases: where problems are ''superficial'', ''baffling'' or ''terminal''.

 

 

 

 

And here is the JC’s main gripe with the legal operations world: much of it presumes that you can solve deep-seated, difficult problems, with generic technology and cheap, low-skill labour.

 

 

Now the cynical view — one, by the way, the JC largely shares — is that most sticky legal problems ''aren’t'' all that difficult, being premised not on solving real-world problems, but feathering legal nests. Lawyers tell ghost stories and then charge their clients to plan ornate escape routes should these phantasmagoric contingencies come about.

 

If this is the problem to be fixed, then “optimising for absurd outcomes” — in other words, leaving the fantasies and complications in place, but muting the pain so customers don’t notice — is no great answer. Any bozo can do that.

 

What the customer needs is someone — or some''thing''— to debunk the ghost stories, demythologise sacred scripts, untangle knotted organisations, sort wheat from chaff and give simple, clear, practical advice.

 

 

 

{{quote|''Most people do not need to take vitamin supplements and can get all the vitamins and minerals they need by eating a healthy, balanced diet.''<br>

Painkillers, at least, make a quick, demonstrable difference. Vitamins are more oblique in their quackery: their instant appeal is to ''sound'' technical. Since, by design, vitamins aren’t ''meant'' to work immediately, patients are usually not disappointed when they don’t.

 

 

 

This permanently delayed gratification offers great scope for intervening causes. By the time the vitamin “effects” are meant to kick in, who knows? The patient could have mended its dissolute ways by itself, in which case ''you can take the credit''. Me and my magic vitamins!

 

More likely, of course, the patient will be sicker than ever. Even if you haven’t seized the chance to scarper, time allows alternative causal explanations to intrude. Geopolitical events — COVID, Brexit, Ukraine, climate change and so on — are easy to cite and magnificently unfalsifiable.

 

The real business of restoring a patient’s vitality is, again, much more work and much less glamour. However much prudent counsel might recommend this, ''it doesn’t pitch well''. No-one wants to be told to lay off the booze, cut out the fags, go jogging and eat more vegetables.