2020-09-02
16 分钟Hi there, this is Harry, and welcome to my podcast where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the english language to help you with your conversational language, your business language, all aspects to do with grammar, whether it is phrasal, verbs or other particular expressions.
And if there's anything that you want to add or anything you would like me to include, of course you can contact me, and I'll give you the contact details at the end of this particular podcast.
So, what I'm going to talk to you about today isn't connected, it's connected with business.
But these are certain idioms that are related to business or that we can use when we're referring to business.
So, idioms related to business or idioms that we can use when we want to refer to business.
So as always, I'll just read them out to you and then I'll go through them one by one, explain them and give you some examples.
Okay, to move the goalposts, a long shot, like flogging a dead horse in the driver's seat, back to the drawing board.
A learning curve.
It's not rocket science.
Back to square one.
And there are many others which we can mention.
So let's go through those and give you some examples.
So the first one to move the goalposts, well, most of us are familiar, I'm sure, with football.
If we don't like it or love it, in my case, then you'll know about it, because either partner, boyfriend or husband, or girlfriend or wife will be a football supporter, even if you're not.
And you'll understand the expression goal posts, where the goalkeeper stands and hopefully your team scores goals and wins the game.
Okay, so when we refer to moving the goalposts, of course, if you were playing a football match and somebody was able to move the goalposts, then you'd never be able to score a goal because every time it looked like you were going to score, somebody would move the goal posts left or right, and you would miss.
Okay, so when we use this expression from a business point of view, to move the goalpost means that your targets, your budgets or something is continuously moved by your bosses, making it very difficult for you to achieve your targets, and in doing so, makes it very difficult for you to get your bonus or commission, whatever arrangement you might have.
So let's have an example where John is working for David.
David is his boss and he sets his targets for a month or a quarter and halfway during the month, David calls John and says, well, look, I'm looking at these budgets, I think we need to increase them a little bit because I think we're undershot when we set them a few weeks ago.
And of course John grumbles a little bit and moans a little bit, but David's the boss, so he increases the targets.