ManagementSpeak: We are doing well — in fact better than planned — but we are still vulnerable to external factors.
Translation: If it all goes base-over-apex, it’s not my fault.
The phrase comes from Ralph Norris, when he was CEO of Air New Zealand. The translator preferred anonymity.
Imagine a map. Imagine yourself folding the map.
Now imagine an economist who, seeing the crease, complains about the canyon you just dug in the middle of someone’s corn field.
The actual headline read “Shocking New Accounting Rules.” Published in The Economist (8/19/2010), which really should know better, it explains that IASB (the International Accounting Standards Board) and FASB (America’s Financial Accounting Standards Board) are re-thinking the rules for booking operating leases, treating them much more like capital leases.
