The elephant in the room

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I came across a new management "buzz phrase" the other day. You know the sort of phrase I mean? "We need to touch base offline in order to think outside the box so that we can pick off some low hanging fruit and take a blue-sky approach."

If you go onto the Internet and try Googling “management jargon” or “consultant speak” you can find whole websites devoted to translating these often-preposterous phrases. I am sure you have come across many yourselves, either in your own companies or at conferences, or when dealing with consultants. So now that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet (sorry that one slipped in under the radar), let me tell you about this new phrase. I first heard it at a recent protection conference. The speaker was addressing an issue about underwriting that we have faced in the industry for many y...

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