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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

"to skyfall"


It seems clear to me that we need a new verb.  It describes a well known operation, but as far as I know there is no word for it.  It happens in any organization which receives an order to cut some of its operations.  There are (at least) two ways to deal with such a requirement.

"to skyfall" - Definition:   If one is called upon to make budget cuts, then to skyfall the response is to claim that if the cuts are made, then "the sky will fall" and "armageddon will be upon us".

For example suppose you are the police chief and you have been asked to prepare for a 10% budget cut.

The first method, which might be called the honest one, is to propose cutting those things that you would actually quit doing if the reality of the cut comes to pass.  This would mean cutting the things that you do that you consider to be the least important.
In our example you might say well we will not get those new police cruisers that we were planning to get and we will make do with the ones we have for another year.

The second method is to "skyfall" it.   In our example, you might say that without that last 10% you will not be able to buy bullets for your guns and you will therefore not be able to  protect the city.  You might estimate the death of 12-15 police officers and 50 - 100 of the local citizenry.   You might say that, when you skyfall it, the sky is the limit because it is all BS anyway.

If you think that people who oppose budget cuts would not engage in such blatant dishonesty, then turn on the TV and watch your president try to stop a budget cut that he earlier proposed and signed into law.  It is embarassing.

1 comment:

  1. “to skyfall” works for me. Probably a little easier to say that “to chicken little it”.

    On a second and similar note I discovered early in my career that to get along in business you had to separate the business persona of an individual from the personal. The same applies to politics. Over the years I have also discovered that I can do that to an extreme degree, but that I do have a breakpoint. I am done with this President.

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