Phrases that will help you to ‘earn’ your director’s pay:
- “this is a great initiative, but in my experience these things must be properly planned”
- thanks, we’d hoped to just bumble along till you helped
- “this must be executed in a controlled fashion, where things need to be done in the correct order”
- that’s strange, we thought one made things by just throwing things in a big pot and stirring
- “in my experience, it’s important to ensure we have the right people”
- no, we’d hoped that complete bozoes could pull off this new product launch
- “I don’t think we should have to consider papers at the last minute”
- yes, we’ll just slow our customers down to wait for you
- “I think that the papers we were sent needed to be summarised”
- sorry, more than one page a day’s reading must be hazardous to your health
- “I think we’d all feel better with a bit more backing to these figures”
- oh great, something to keep us all busy for the next month which you’ll probably want summarised
- “it would be nice to get all these numbers on one sheet of paper”
- well gosh, it’s nice to know that our business is that simple
- “couldn’t we look at this another way?”
- what do you think we’ve been trying to do
- “this will clearly need proper consideration”
- sure, why procrastinate tomorrow when you can procrastinate today
- “well, I have one objection already…”
- of course you do, we’re 30 seconds into the presentation of a new idea that you don’t even understand yet
- “what we need is a single, integrated plan …”
- back to the drawing board
- “the board is going to have to take responsibility for these budgets now”
- oh great, when things turn this bad we let the least competent people (the board) grab the budget reins – a bit like asking the passengers to fly the plane now that it’s an emergency
- “this is exactly what I have been saying for years we should do
- you may well have mumbled to friends in the gents but you never suggested it formally to the board or provided the requested finance for the project [courtesy of Adèle Thorpe]