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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
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No prob. I actually quite like that sentence and agree with you; we do have to cultivate our language.
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Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 500
addict
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addict
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 500 |
See, I like "cultivate your business" rather than "grow your business". When I see or hear the term "grow your business" it usually is attached to a specific action: "grow your business by advertising with XYZ." But one doesn't say "I'm going out to grow flowers." when, say, weeding or planting or whatever. Growing flowers is a long-term activity involving many other separate activities. So I think I could learn to live with "growing a business" in the sense of "raising children" or "growing flowers", but not when it's used as a lazy way of saying "make your business grow".
Just my opinion, of course.
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290 |
Is the metaphor of a business as garden or crop that much different from the metaphor (and subsequent legal fiction) of a corporation as person? I have likened companies I have worked for to whales (working in the belly of the beast), labor camps (working in the software gulag), and Los Angeles (time to go off to Lalaland). Why not? It seems to me, if somebody can grow turnips and sugar beets, somebody else can grow a business. Can I not say: "I make my garden grow"? How is this different, in my intent, from "I grow my garden"? (Less fertilizer and Round-Up?) Or speaking of moods and states, instead of vegetables and companies, can I say "It makes my fatigue grow", instead of "I grow fatigued"?
"The pointy-haired boss grows my fatigue with each new meeting he calls."
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,788 |
zmjezhd ~
Please post a link to photographs of your "pointy-haired boss."
Father Steve
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
'grow a business' has always bugged me. But maybe it's just a matter of brevity. 'Make a business grow' could get pretty tiresome after four of five go arounds at at an MBA seminar.
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Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,154
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 2,154 |
I don't like the phrase, it sounds wrong to me. But then on reflection I realized that while I would say "I am growing lazy." I don't say "I am growing sweet peas." I tend to say that I planted them or I have them or they are growing in my garden (planters actually.) I provide what they need but I don't cause them to grow. So growing a business makes more sense than growing plants since it is not a natural process.
Hmmm, I seem to have convinced myself tother way round from whence I started.
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
> Growing flowers is a long-term activity involving many other separate activities.
zackly - that's what I meant by my suggestion that the context often implies a meta-business model. In other words, you might very well undertake an advertising campaign in order to increase your sales, but that would only be a tactical weapon used in your strategic campaign to grow your business, by multifarious means and over possibly a long period. After all, I have quite a few successful business clients who have no intention of growing their business - their strategies tend to other ends.
Apart from consideration of euphony, of course the reason this so irritates some listeners is surely the other common one: language is the badge of office for a disliked club. In other words, some people dislike the social context of the speakers rather than the language itself... see inel's gentle jab about MBA types as a subtle example! :)
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
I don't say "I am growing sweet peas."
Parboly you just don't up and say, "I am growing sweet peas." But you might say, in response to "Whatcha got goin' in your garden this summer, Big Z?" "Oh, I'm growing corn and zukes and sweet peas and a little Canadian thistle."
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
Quite true Fong - and how much less remarkable again does the phrase become if rendered other than present tense?!
btw, eta, I also like the very word grow. And the verb to roger, fwiw. :]
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 273
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 273 |
>btw, eta, I also like the very word grow. And the verb to roger, fwiw.
What about juxtaposing the two? Is that a jolly concept?
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