I used to watch a sitcom called, “Drop the Dead Donkey.” It was awash with great characters but the one that sticks in my mind 30 years later was the Chief Executive, Gus. He was an exercise in management stereotypes with a gloriously crazy way of speaking.
- “Alex! I’ve got a few ideas – I want to pop them in your goldfish bowl and see if they blow bubbles.”
- “Today is tomorrow’s tadpole of opportunity.”
- “We’ve got to downsize our sloppiness overload.”
Gus was positively brimming with management jargon, but at least Gus’s phrases were clearer than some I’ve encountered. My biggest frustration is that these terms are supposed to add color without sacrificing clarity, but commonly drain color and add opacity. I recall sitting in a series of meetings with someone who insisted on doing things soup to nuts. He was using the term so often I started to count the number of times he said it. At the time I had no idea what the phrase meant, and couldn’t even derive a meaning from the numerous examples of incessant use. The day he was joined by lady who constantly wanted to table things was the day I developed my own meeting bingo card.
Tabling things presents a problem when a Brit first hears it because when we table something it requires immediate action. For a while it was totally confusing to me why we were tabling all of these things, and then totally ignoring them. I was telling myself that if putting stuff on a table (or desk) meant it was to be pushed to one side, then I ought to avoid asking this person to do anything; when something is on my own desk I work on it.
It crossed my mind to start throwing random furniture into the conversation:
- “I think we ought to cupboard that idea.”
- “Could we fridge this to do list.”
- “The whole process is a total desk lamp.”
We can’t necessarily know that different people will interpret our phrases in different ways, there are obvious topics to avoid, like local knowledge and pop culture. Sports can be fine if the sport is played widely enough. The world is broadly familiar with baseball. When we are covering bases, touching bases, and hitting things out of the park are easily understood.
Cricket is not so popular. [I can’t imagine why a game that stops for lunch and tea, can last five days, and is perfectly acceptable to end with no winner, should not have been more widely embraced.] If it were we’d be staying in our crease, playing with a straight bat, and hitting things for six for often in business meetings. As an aside I would love to incorporate some of the strange names for fielding positions in cricket into some business speak – silly point, deep extra cover, and cow corner – but if I did my colleagues will soon be making bingo cards for me.
Universal topics are the safest options:
- Equine ~ You can lead a horse to water but you don’t want to put it before the cart because that would be like locking the stable door.
- Sailing ~ When you’re in the doldrums you’re in deep water so you probably want to give them a wide berth and batten down the hatches.
- Weather ~ I was on cloud nine until he stole my thunder, but on reflection it proved to be a bit of a storm in a tea cup.
- Farming ~ you have to make hay while the sun shines because you can only reap what you sow and we want to secure the cream of the crop.
Keeping things simple is best, at least for me. I’ve seen firsthand the perils of mixing metaphors, idioms and similes. I’m also not the sharpest cookie in the jar and will commonly burn the bridge when I get to it, but at least I know that if there is an elephant in the room you don’t begin with the low hanging fruit.
