What with one thing and another, Crikey has decided it’s necessary to put together a Spiv-tionary for terms that you only hear in conjunction with high-level dodginess. Starting with:
A “tickle from up top”: A new (and slightly gross) phrase from Daryl Maguire, it means to secure help for a deal from a more powerful source that yourself.
ICAC-able: Activity or material able to be captured and investigated by the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
For example: “Former NSW MP Daryl Maguire has conceded that his desperate campaign to secure a ‘tickle from up top’ by sharing Gladys Berejiklian’s email address with a “pissed off” Louise Waterhouse was an ‘ICAC-able’ offence.“
Please, dear readers, send us some suggestions for other words and phrases you only hear in shonky circumstances.
‘I wasn’t in the room at the time the decision was taken’ – meaning they walked out and yelled there instructions from outside the door.
For those who think this is fanciful I have been in exactly a meeting like that in the bureaucracy.
Was there a responsible recorder of Minutes at that meeting?
Ahh but the trick is that minutes are only to cover the decision and not discussion. And absolutely not to identify who said what.
That is NOT how Minutes are to be recorded if I am a participant at a meeting and I have had some ding dong rows with CEOs in this regard.
A synopsis of the general direction the decision *is* to be be recorded along with any dissenting views from the majority.
If there is no record of who said what then the meeting could have occurred in North Korea!
Well you could take that line and see how long you still have a job for. In defence of the decisions only approach knowing discussion is being recorded does inhibit it to a degree.
In developing countries where I have worked people barely want to be acknowledged as attending let alone any record of what they said. They seem to prefer decisions materialise from thin air – or failing that it was the international consultants who did it.
My personal approach has been to do my own record of meetings which does cover discussion. Always useful as back up. In the case of the serial offender my anecdote was about we had an in house code. ‘X left the meeting shortly before it concluded’ was recorded in the minutes.
I am in agreement with ALL three of your paragraphs Peter because all three paragraphs *do* accord with my experience and I am sure we could trade examples from those thee paragraphs for some number of hours.
For competent attendees the recording of discussions does NOT inhibit the discussion; in fact, with a view to immortality and a place in history, such recording encourages discussion.
Very often, one can justify the recording of discussions by a simple appeal to the ‘Mission Statement’ of the organisation; i.e. the place can be played at its own game.
However, agreed : depending upon the circumstances, one’s contract is seldom renewed but one typically walks with a moderately impressive reference making the point that the bearer has an ‘eye for detail’ that either strengtheners or compromises one’s CV. Take yer pick.
If you have a go, you get a go.
And if you get a go, you gotta pay.
I don’t need to know that bit (a feeble attempt to distance oneself from dodgy knowledge during an intercepted phone call)
Pay to play – which has now been reworded by marketing to ‘if you have a go, you get a go’.
A golden oldy reemerging. Lurk as both noun and verb.