A rose is a rose is a rose

Management Group has a subgroup looking at how we're doing against our performance targets so that any slippage gets flagged up in time for MG to react and decide upon remedial action. It's easy to be cynical, as Milton pointed out when he accidentally let slip that the Secret Society had these periodic Business Improvement Meetings. Or at least they had. After a couple of meetings they've been renamed.

Apparently, Jim made the mistake of reporting back on the BIMs to Management Group. At which point T.Aldous asked why they were called "Business Improvement Meetings" as

"They're not about the business library service."

All the people who might ever refer to "Business Improvement Meetings" were sitting around that table and were all clear about the scope and purpose of these meetings but T.Aldous insisted on a renaming and was only just prevailed upon not to spend the whole of that Management Group meeting talking about it. And so it was that at the next ex-BIM they decided on "Library Improvement Meetings," which prevailed for all of ten minutes. Milton came out of the meeting looking a bit shellshocked.

"What did they call it in the end?" I asked him.

"How do you know?"

"I saw T.Aldous going into the meeting room."

"He said that 'Library Improvement Meeting' sounded like we were talking about carpets and shelving."

"How long did he spend talking about it? Half an hour?"

"Not half an hour."

"An hour?"

"Not that long."

"What did he call them in the end?"

"Target Improvement Meetings."

"Doesn't that suggest that the meetings are about improving the targets rather than checking on our ability to meet them?"

"If you say that out loud again in this building you're a dead man."