Mind your language

What people say about their work can be so revealing. Here is how one chief executive recently briefed me about his company. His board is “chronically weak”. His chair is “a wily old goat but not to be trusted”. His director of finance was “parachuted in last year by the Yanks”, is good with figures but has “no emotional intelligence whatsoever”. IT is “a busted flush”. Marketing has “recently gone a bit flaky, become a real psycho case”. Communications is “on another planet”. HR is “useless, bureaucratic and risk averse”.