This is as good a place as anywhere, I think :)

To be honest I had no idea what two out of three of those meant and would have been totally bemused if you has used them in a meeting with me :-(

I was introduced the other day to the idea of The Bike Shed Decision. You will very much have to forgive my shaky recollection of the technical bits of the anecdote but I'm sure you'll get the point!

You're building a nuclear reactor. The Nuclear Physicists talk about the things they need to make the reactor work. Everyone says ok and moves on. The Structural Engineers talk about the tunnels and funnels they need to build to make it safe. And everyone agrees and moves on. The mathematicians talk about the quantum computing that they will use to monitor the reactor. And everyone agrees and moves on. 

Then the building manager talks about the bike shed that's needed for people to get to work. And someone says it should be blue. And someone says it should be further away from the road. And someone says that we shouldn't have a bike shed at all, we should have more car parking. 

I find life in HR can be a bit like that. No one will question the chap who has the PhD in Computer Vision because you cannot understand the detail of his work because it's so technical. But everyone knows people and will weigh in with an opinion!

In reply to Keith:

I know! I'm very bad at that sort of thing and have to watch myself. It's better when I've built a team around a shared vocabulary, but working as an itinerant consultant, these days, I don't have that luxury.

In reply to Alys Martin:

Ha! Yes, I like this one. In my case, it was the smoking shelter.

I often use "the blancmange layer" - for when the top-level leaders have big ideas, and/or the wider pool of employees have energy and enthusiasm - but the change gets stuck in between those two groups, in the blancmange layer (whether you describe that as the bureaucracy, or middle management, or whatever).

I try to avoid using too much metaphor at work, as it can be less accessible to neurodivergent colleagues, colleagues from different ethnic or socio-economic backgrounds etc (I work in EDI, and manage a very diverse team).  That said, my favourite is the Duck Test - if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck, even if someone's trying to tell you it's an ostrich.  I find this one particularly relevant when discussing the external consultancies that are forever trying to flog us repackaged old ideas at an exorbitant price and call it innovation.

I use the Dublin one a lot when we are discussing culture change - we have to start from the culture we are in whether we like it or not. The "Underpants gnomes" is fantastic - I will use that one

In reply to Steve Bridger:

I agree, Steve.