I once told a girl...

I once told a girl that I thought that she looked like Greta Garbo, not a drunken moment but certainly a tipsy momentarily lapse. The third quarter is the tipsy planning quarter, a quarter of wild promises of future deliverables and ambitious wonder.

And there has been more than a bit of tipsiness going around the office, but since some of us want to confine our tipsiness to Greta Garbo throw-away lines, we need to be on guard. We have been asked to deliver 25% more, if only that was inefficiency, but no it's that thing that's even more mysterious than love, it's value.

We are currently working on our "push-back," this is after all a negotiation and we want to, yes you have guessed it, keep that target flat.

Now we need to create the sensation that flat is a stretch, a monumental effort to attain, and in some instances it will be hard to achieve. I can suggest how you could begin to argue for flat but I can't guarantee that it will work. Anyway here are a few of suggestions:

1. Find some element that fluctuates, it could be currency, it could be commodity prices, it could be daylight. Then construct an argument around it, currencies depreciate by how much only time and brazen analysts will tell; commodity prices climb when there's war or shortage or FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) by how much only CNN's embedded business reporters will admit to, and sunshine, which is environmental and equates to less light more SAD (seasonal adjustment disorder) and less productivity, how much less only wellness experts can forecast and it's bound to be more. More what? Wellness!

2. The magic three year cycle. One cycle always has come to an end and another one is always just beginning. You could argue that you were at the crest of the wave and it's only downhill from here but what's important is a pragmatic, long term view. It just sounds so sensible.

3. Pronounce that you are aware of a potential change in strategy, you would say more but it's still a very confidential whisper, and strategic reviews often involve movement of personnel and a decrease in morale of the business unit. You are just flagging it.

4. Create "if" and "but" scenarios that suit you, we can deliver "if" there is more Capital Expenditure, we can deliver "but" we need an increase in interest rates, just pick a rate, there's a fair chance that it will increase.

Then while those arguments get whittled down get ready to make a counter offer of a 5% increase as a stretch target. By then the tipsiness would have passed, democracy would have been replaced by a fixed autocratic target of 10% which you can now play around with the wording, 8-12% increase equals stretch, which is not as sexy as the Greta Garbo, 25% target but it's still pretty tipsy.