"Outside The Box"

Being a lover of exasperating management jargon I once copied this down from somewhere:

The elephant in the room may be fully occupied going forward to push the envelope outside the box. But would it at the same time, be able to obtain closure draw a line under it and move on?

It came to mind when thinking about the Sheffield Moors Partnership's consultation sessions (sorry “Capturing Your Ideas” sessions). The 'boxes' in which post it note comments are to be placed are labelled in the sort of way that encourages “inside the box thinking”. This is a valuable management tool that gives a feeling of security to those planning the consultation. We can’t have too many people getting the idea that creative thinking is allowed. This is also behind one of the chosen themes, that of Sustainable Land Management. That word ‘sustainable’ is just so useful for managers.

Below two of the comments on post it notes appended to this theme:

1 ‘Sustainable Land Management’ as a title seems to be an effort to control the responses along desired ways. Definitions of ‘sustainable’ are not consistent. And it is notoriously used to confuse people who are never sure how it’s going to be interpreted by ‘the management’.
Why not just Landscape Character ?
Or simply Landscape?
Or Landscape and Wildlife?

2 Does sustainable mean ........
a) only what you can get farming subsidies for?
b) what Natural England says you’ve got to do?
c) whatever the conservation industry’s current definition amounts to?
d) whatever the managers want it to mean?