[Closed] "Ringfencing the unicorn"

If you want to endure daily language strangling, hang out with lawyers.

We're brilliant at knocking the fun out of everything.

I have to write a report thingy about my placement, I'm going to have to get ringfence the unicorn in it, aren't I?

Said by a deputy headteacher addressing a whole-staff meeting:

"Let's look at the www's and the ebi's..."

Apparently:
www = what went well

ebi = even better if...

What happened to 'strengths' and 'weaknesses'?

This is the best thread for ages.

I keep meaning to play corporate b/s bingo when the head of our business-stream comes in to talk to us but I've never got round to it.

Is it only my business who are obsessed with talking about 'silos' and 'silo-isationalism'?

What happened to 'strengths' and 'weaknesses'?

Probably some idiotic way to avoid assuming that someone is better or someone else worse.

During my placement, it was emphasised that attempting to ringfence unicorns is a largely pointless exercise as doing so will only encourage others to ringfence their own unicorns rather than ringfencing the corprate unicorns, which, in essence are those unicorns most desperately in need of ringfencing

But surely by ringfencing both corporate and private unicorns you create a public-private partnership thereby leveraging the synergies of blue-sky unicorns as well as brown-field unicorns?

Note - these are not the unicorns you're looking for:

What if, in this scenario the unicorns represent myths and the ringfencing represents the gathering up and compartmentalising of all those myths in order to see the true situation more clearly.
Or in otherwords:
"Let's just cut out the BS" - making it BS squared or Unicorn Sh*t.

Is it only my business who are obsessed with talking about 'silos' and 'silo-isationalism'?

Hello Ed!

No, my lot have been obsessed with it, though it seems to have fallen away recently.

Mainly, everyone is overusing "in my world", "that's Dave's world".

I have no idea what this means, but I love it. We forget to turn round?

We keep putting different people in the job every 6 months, we re-train them and turn them into someone useful, then we change them for someone fresh who we train and turn into someone useful....repeat until further notice.

I have just left a terrible 2 hr brief. There a couple of pearls that fit this thread:

Sweating the assets

Botox the capability

and a beautiful mixed metaphor (unintential but perhaps more lovely for it):

Talking off the same songsheet

I love my life 😥

Handsomedog - do you have 'polished silos of excellence'? We do.

Sweating the assets

Worryingly I sometimes find myself using this sort of language at work and considering it normal.

I have a hard stop for this meeting at 12 = I have to leave at 12
Let's freeze it here for a bio-break = I need the toilet

Hey guys, I know I am seeing a lot of back-and-forth on this topic, but I really need to push back and raise some red flags here. Some of these phrases are foundational to our ability to drive efficiencies in a corporate landscape. Sure, some are just boilerplate solutions, leveraged to the hilt and really only keeping us at a 30,000-foot-view of things. Others, however, really allow us to get better granularity, find better directional-indicators, or loop back and dive deep into some critical issues on a go-forward basis.

I think if you all start using more of these phrases, you'll find yourself trending toward the positive, but you'll have to keep an eye on the puck. Gut through it, reduce thrash, and let's stay in lock-step on this. Yes, we will synergize!

What's the root cause of the hatred of management speak? I'll put my layman's hat on and guess that it comes from movies such as Office Space and Dilbert cartoons. But we all know that these phrases allow us to touch base in a much more efficient manner.

I have to time-box this comment, as I have a hard-stop in a moment when I will have to jump onto a call. So, just one more point that I want to cover-off on: let's socialize the idea of speaking with more management speak and loop back to see whether we're being more impactful. From a management standpoint, I think that we can get the traction to do it.

So, net/net, ignore the naysayers, sidebar the folks that are stuck in the weeds, and don't waste cycles or bandwidth on folks that don't align strongly with this mission. Try it out, and we'll have another touch point in a little while to see if we've moved the needle.

If you need me, I will be online again in a bit.

-- sent from my iPad

Brilliant! I don't think I'm cut out for the corporate world, if people were talking to me like that all day I would have to exterminate their mockingbird (with extreme prejudice), or something.

The plain english campaign have a gobbledygook generator. This should help get one noticed in a meeting with management present.

[url= http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/examples/gobbledygook-generator.html ]Gobbledygook[/url]

or should i say,

[i]Only geeks stuck in the 90s still go for regenerated third-generation processing.[/i]

Hey guys, I know I am seeing a lot of back-and-forth on this topic, but I really need to push back and raise some red flags here. Some of these phrases are foundational to our ability to drive efficiencies in a corporate landscape. Sure, some are just boilerplate solutions, leveraged to the hilt and really only keeping us at a 30,000-foot-view of things. Others, however, really allow us to get better granularity, find better directional-indicators, or loop back and dive deep into some critical issues on a go-forward basis.

I think if you all start using more of these phrases, you'll find yourself trending toward the positive, but you'll have to keep an eye on the puck. Gut through it, reduce thrash, and let's stay in lock-step on this. Yes, we will synergize!

What's the root cause of the hatred of management speak? I'll put my layman's hat on and guess that it comes from movies such as Office Space and Dilbert cartoons. But we all know that these phrases allow us to touch base in a much more efficient manner.

I have to time-box this comment, as I have a hard-stop in a moment when I will have to jump onto a call. So, just one more point that I want to cover-off on: let's socialize the idea of speaking with more management speak and loop back to see whether we're being more impactful. From a management standpoint, I think that we can get the traction to do it.

So, net/net, ignore the naysayers, sidebar the folks that are stuck in the weeds, and don't waste cycles or bandwidth on folks that don't align strongly with this mission. Try it out, and we'll have another touch point in a little while to see if we've moved the needle.

If you need me, I will be online again in a bit.

-- sent from my iPad

that's all microcooler and jazzhands, but if we're going to Brangelina this mother i need to initiate opticals on a unicorn.

I suspect that "bio-break" originated in World of Warcraft; certainly that's the first time I came across it, long before it bled into the boardrooms.

Years ago now, I heard a young hot-shot sales director come out with "just to chuck a **** on the woodpile" in a meeting, in front of a board that was at least three quarters ****stani / Indian. Oddly enough, that was the last time I saw him.

Struggling to see how anyone could think that was an appropriate turn of phrase anywhere, let alone in a business meeting. Eejit.

Is it still just me that thinks "ring-fencing the unicorn" sounds like yet another euphemism for "sinking the Bismarck" or "dropping the kids of at the pool"???

Maybe use it next time you need a dump at work... "I'm just off to ring fence the unicorn, I'll be back in 10" I think would go down quite well... At least all the serial bullshitters would think you're off working hard, not checking STW on your iPhone whilst sat on the John...

Who's with me? 😀

**** on the wood pile reminds me of an email I received once asking me to "nail the companies coloureds to the mast"

Interestingly this was sent by a chap of afro-Caribbean descent. He had only ever heard this phrase, assumed it was racist and used it completely incorrectly.

Meaning. To defiantly display one's opinions and beliefs. Also, to show one's intention to hold on to those beliefs until the end

His meaning. Get rid of anyone who doesn't agree with the company line.

Handsomedog - do you have 'polished silos of excellence'? We do.

Nope, all silos are bad. We strive for boundaryless boundaries...

Rotational amnesia

This is what goldfish do, isn't it?

(Also standing ovation for philconsequence 🙂 )

Interested in battling BS? [url= http://www.dorisandbertie.com/goodcopybadcopy/category/words-that-should-be-banned/ ]Good copy, Bad copy[/url].

My old boss, one of the UK's leading corporate lawyers, boomed along a corridor in the office "I'm just the **** in the woodpile".

At exactly the same moment the only black secretary in the department appeared into view.

Oh, and djglover, that is a work of genius.

Hope you wrote it on the bog.

WHAT????

it may be that what the op's speaker is ostensibly referring to is some form of bonus chat but what he's actually revealing is his interest in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century medieval european textiles, specifically the unicorn tapestries which, by no means the only representation of the unicorn but, in the uk context, probably the most famous. (there's an interesting correlation between the unicorn figure and those of the winged stag tapestries woven in rouen. see also women and unicorn tapestries - das eindhorn mit jungfrau).

his choosing of this specific image is interesting and makes a metaphorical bridge between 'the bonus' and the sacrifice of christ, the unicorn in this context traditionally being a metonym for death and resurrection. thus the ringfenced unicorn raises the task in hand from quotidian labour to that of a divine mission.

while a copy may be seen in stirling castle the original ringfenced unicorn can be see at the cloisters in new york
http://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/interactives/adults-teachers/the-unicorn-tapestries

i claim my prize

What about talking about things offline. WTF Does that even mean. I'll tell you, it means either. Let's call somebody or you're boring everyone else here. Shut up.

and what's a "strawman"?

and what's a "strawman"?

This, silly.

[img] [/img]

Thanks Dorothy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.

To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

I think I might email a link to this to my g/f. She's a civil servant working with the Army in primary clinical health care, and I'm sure she might be highly amused by some of this b/s; even have a use for some of it...

do you have 'polished silos of excellence'?