A tongue-in-cheek look at what modern day managers really mean when they say certain things. Well, at least most of them!

We repose great confidence in your abilities: You wish! This is a great no-confidence vote that damns with faint praise. The real meaning being: There is no one else we have and/ or wish to assign to resolve this particular issue. And as someone who does not rank highly in our opinion, you are all we can throw at it.

Please keep this strictly confidential: One of those statements that confers on the recipient a wonderful feeling of being part of the inner circle while the fact is that he may perhaps be the last one who has not guessed or been told about it.

I am okay with this but let finance clear the workings: Also known as the good cop-bad cop routine! It works on the mostly justifiable assumption that the CFO and his team will do their best to play the bad cop and bury the proposal regardless of its merits. If by chance it gets cleared and at some point bombs, this referral will seamlessly transfer the blame onto the finance folks.

We value feedback and will certainly act upon it: ‘ Don't you get it — please don't keep pushing this in our face again and again.' This is probably the real meaning behind this statement. And if one persists in this quest with the intensity of a Don Quixote, the system will find innovative ways to isolate the obstacle and flow around it.

We will take this discussion offline: A truly wonderful mechanism that gives the top brass enormous flexibility: It is like a missile with multiple warheads, capable of hitting several targets simultaneously. To name a few: removing issues that are sensitive from a public forum, deferring them till eternity, making the person who raised it believe in the system's fairness and equity.

Despite several challenges, we had a reasonably good year: An elliptical saying that would have been framed in simple English as follows: ‘We did a bad job this year and our financial results tanked. However, we have found enough excuses to ward off those who annoy us by demanding an explanation for the lousy performance.'

(To be continued)

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