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There is something I love about random management phrases. I mean obviously I don’t like to actually use them, because they sound totally mad and often they really confuse the issue. However there are two words to do with the areas of your control and expertise that I really like.

The first is wheelhouse. It’s the name of the room where the captain of a ship stands. Literally, I guess, the room that houses the wheel of the ship. And this one is something you want more things in really. People say, “hey that’s right in Alex’s wheelhouse”. Well they don’t because they don’t use any of the cool phrases at my work, they just ask me to “action the pre-meeting”. But that’s what they would say to mean, “that’s right up Alex’s street”. It’s sort of about it being in your comfort zone, but comfort zone sounds a bit too wimpy. It’s actually used in baseball a lot to suggest that the ball was thrown to the place that the batsman really likes to hit from. So I guess you want more people to think that such-and-such will be in your wheelhouse.

Now bailiwick is the other word I like. Technically, this comes from the world of bailiffs and still exists in that world today. It means essentially ‘area of jurisdiction’. And of course, you might think, you as a young thrusting person would like to have more things under your control, the phrase is seldom used that way. It’s really used to explain what you aren’t in control of. Somebody says to you, “hey Alex, can you take this broom and sweep up the kitchen?”, you have to turn to this person and say, “I’m sorry Sir, but that’s not my bailiwick”. Basically, it’s a fancy way of telling somebody to shove off while also explaining that it’s “not my problem”. Of course I have never really used it [not at work, anyway – Ed] because it would make you sound like a mad person.

So while I fear those who freely use phrases such as, “We need to pro-actively seek to add value going forward”, I secretly also want the freedom to pepper my dialogue with these really cool words. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Perhaps saying such words isn’t in my wheelhouse?

People have been asking “What if?” questions since the dawn of time, I imagine. My guess is that the first time two amoeba existed, one turned to the other and said, “What would happen if you did that again?”. It’s human nature.*

When you were a kid, you were able to spend the time to play the game properly. You really got the chance to put the effort in, you got to milk the apparent turn by turn nature of history. However when playing with my brother, Just as I was trying to get him to consider just what would have been different if Caesar hadn’t quite got around to all his veni, vidi, vici-ing, Pete would say, “But what if the whole universe didn’t exist?”.

Of course as adults it easier to see that it’s very rare that the world turns on a single decision. Most things that we do are cumulations of decisions. Things conspire together. It’s closer to the gathering storm, as Churchill had it. A lot of times, a single attempt to buck the trend doesn’t achieve very much.

There is a more serious point to some of this which is to do with regrets. Oftentimes I hear people talking about their regrets and I wonder what they really mean. Very few things are closed forever.

People who wish they had learned to play the piano when they were kids but don’t do it now are kidding themselves. They could learn now but the same thing that made them not want to put in the effort when they were kids is the same thing stopping them now. Just go and do it. But remember that Myleene Klass is disapointed that, because of her media career and kids, she doesn’t get as much time to keep up with her piano these days. Nowadays, she can only manage to practice for one hour a day! Being good at something takes a lot of effort. So you’d better get started.

The other side is that people regret things that are part of what makes them who they are. You are, to an extent, the product of the decisions you’ve made. So instead of wishing you could go back and change something (and unless you’ve invented time travel, you can’t do that), you should take the information you learned and make sure you aren’t making the same decision again. Remember that most days you decide to do the same thing you did yesterday. You don’t think you are deciding, but you are.

I was reminded of all of this when I met a friend’s three year old son. Lukas was just at the stage of incessantly asking “What if” questions. He just wanted to understand how the whole world worked. Those simple things that children all learn, how do these things fit together?, what happens if they don’t? We all start learning it. Some of us just stop. Anyway, at the end of our trip, we were getting on the plane and Lukas was trying to come up with things that might mean we didn’t have to go.

He tried several versions:
“What if they have no fuel?”
“They’ll get more fuel.”

“What if they’ve forgotten your bags?”
“They haven’t forgotten our bags, look they’re there.”

And then he had it, “What if the pilot talks nonsense?”.

And what, I thought to myself, if the universe doesn’t exist?

* And from the sounds of things, amoeba nature too.

A while ago I ran through a few of the phrases that I use at home http://www.gamboling.co.uk/2009/02/tragedy-of-self-mong.html and yesterday I asked you for your suggestions http://www.gamboling.co.uk/2010/01/what-is-your-favorite-at-home-phrase.html. I’m sure everyone has this kind of thing, but Katherine and I seem to have more than most. Now I’m not really talking here about something like slugabed. This is a phrase that means kind of layabout. I’d never heard it before I started going out with Katherine. I assumed she had made it up, but no, apparently it’s a real word. This is rather like, “honest indians”, that I use and I assume is American. It means, “no this is really true”, or “I swear”.

But no, I’m talking about phrases here that have been created in the homestead or have been at least wildly taken out of context.

You’ve met me before

I don’t know where this comes from, but in some ways it is the most normal of this bunch, so I guess it gets to go first. This is used by me a lot to diffuse the mock shock and surprise that Katherine demonstrates when I go on one of my damn foolish idealistic crusades*. Eg.
Katherine: “Why are all of the spoons on the dining room table?”
Me: “I was trying to magnetise them.”
Katherine: “Why?”
Me: “You know… you’ve met me before.”

Tiny dinosaur arms

Katherine does have slightly shorter and weaker arms than me. I seem to remember suggesting that the reason she couldn’t open something one day was because she only had tiny dinosaur arms. I was thinking along the lines of the T-Rex style. However, this one has slightly backfired on me as I now often hear, “Can you do it? I can’t because of my tiny dinosaur arms”.

They’ll be closed

This one can be pinpointed exactly. In the first live stage show of the TV series Bottom, when very few lines of the play seem to be actually getting said, Rik Mayall says, “Come on, they’ll be closed”. Meaning the pub. This is invoked at home whenever one person is faffing. It sounds a pretty generic phrase but it still seems to cause confusion because other people say, “What’s closing? When’s it closing?”

Trouble with a capital TR

This is pretty straightforward as it goes. Some people are trouble, others are trouble with a capital T. Katherine is trouble with a capital TR. Because she’s more trouble than your traditional captial T Trouble-maker. This actually does rely on a strange understanding of the word trouble that we seem to employ, which is quite similar to cheeky.

Are you Joaquin Phoenix?

Well instead of saying “Are you joking?”, I tend to say, “Are you Joaquin Phoenix”. Yes I know. It’s not great is it?

Joaquin Phoenix it in

Well you must know that really you don’t pronounce Joaquin like joking. In fact it’s pronounced much more like “wha-keen”. And in my addled mind it sounds a bit like “whacking” hence “so take that cake and just Joaquin Phoenix it in the oven”. Yes it does tend to get me looks.

[And sighs from your Editor as you can spell neither Joaquin nor Phoenix. I thank the stars that these are spoken phrases.]

* This is from Indiana Jones and the last crusade. I’m pretty sure Nick said this about some crazy scheme I was plotting when I was about 12 or 13. It’s been accurate ever since.

There is a really broken thing on your computer and I am constantly amazed that it hasn’t been fixed. It’s the way addresses and contacts work. The issue is this: on a computer, you should never have to enter the same information twice, but that’s what keeps happening in your contacts.

Think about Katherine and me. How do we feature in your address book*. Most people used to have the couple at their home address in their address book with the house phone and then underneath you have something saying, “Alex Mob” etc.

But now in the electronic world you want to be able to know that when one of us calls you on the phone you have the right name pop up. So you set up both people individually, with their own mobile number. But where do you store the home address and the home phone number? Generally, you end up putting the home number on both people. Luckily my iPhone is smart with this and would say “Alex or Katherine calling” if the home number calls me.

But there is a problem. Something is broken. I’ve had to enter the home phone number twice, same problem with the address. But why? There is no real reason.

Personally, I think the way it should work is that you are able to nest information. So a regular person that you put in the contacts is at the top level. When you scroll through the contacts you only see this top set of people exactly as you do now. However you would be able to add a subordinate set of information – these would be houses, offices, children, etc. They would, in reality, be contacts exactly like the normal contacts, but they would be owned by at least one other contact, so don’t show up in the normal list.

That way, if we move you only need to change the address once. If your work friend, Karen, is in the phone and you want to add their partner’s name, you would make a subordinate contact. It wouldn’t normally show up, but when you need to remember Steve’s name, it’s there. Suddenly Karen can’t come to the football and Steve’s coming, you have a place to put his name and you can later work out which Steve it is. Then after the game, you actually exchange e-mails and suddenly Steve is a real mate so you promote him up and he no longer belongs to Karen. He’s just a regular contact and you don’t have to copy and paste that info out of some notes field you were using.

Surely this is the right way to do it?

*Obviously there’s a good chance we aren’t in your address book, but instead replace the names with some other random names of a couple that you know that you pluck from the air that make sense for your address book.