Winning English - Mastering Idioms, Slang, and References
Top-down • Bottom-up • Drill down • The devil is in the details
Recently I overheard an international business meeting during which many examples fell into my lap. Clearly idioms and slang words are essential to understanding business English!
When solving a problem within a company, you can either take a top-down approach or a bottom-up approach. Which approach is better depends on the situation.
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An “approach” is a way to come toward something. In a company, a “top-down approach” means that managers have created a solution to a problem, and then they require employees to use that solution. A “bottom-up approach” is the opposite. Employees at lower levels in the company are allowed to create the solution, and managers support that approach.
(Note that it’s not “bottoms up”. Instead, that’s a fun way to say, “Cheers!” or “Let’s drink together as friends!” The idea is that you will raise the bottom of the glass all the way up above you and drink everything in it.)
No matter how you approach a problem in your company, it’s likely that you will have to drill down to find out what exactly is causing the trouble. If you don’t, you might not really fix the problem. Many times the devil is in the details.
Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash
“To drill down” comes from the world of oil. You drill down in the ground to find oil. If you don’t drill down, you’ll never find anything useful. People say “to drill down” to mean you have to study the small details of a problem or an idea in order to fully understand it and create valuable insights.
“The devil” in the saying “the devil is in the details” is the most evil person in Christian culture. When people say “the devil is in the details”, they could be saying two similar things. In one case, it is a way to simply say, “We need to understand the details of a problem in order to fix it.” In another case, it can mean that bad things are in the small details of something, and we need to find those bad things to protect ourselves. This can come up with legal contracts. You want to make sure you’re not agreeing to something that’s bad for you.
Thanks for reading Winning English! Make sure to listen to the podcast, too, in order to reinforce your learning. Talk soon!