Here’s a few more:
Is the climb worth the view
We all have to take a hair cut
If I thought that was the case, we’d be having a much different conversation
One meeting please
That was benchmark
The messaging is wrong
I’ll start socializing that with leadership
Don’t bring me problems without solutions
Where I worked the dreaded phrase from senior management was “white board time”.
That meant whatever we tried had failed and we had to start with a blank white board and come up with a better plan.
Another one:
We have to eat our own dogfood.
Used in my area of IT (networking) meaning we test something, roll it out on a limited area/basis to ourselves, and if it’s too much trouble, or confusing to us, or a royal PITA, then we scrap it and don’t force it on the masses.
Another one:
Forced march at dawn.
We roll something out gradually, rather than a sudden campus wide change for everyone.
Another one:
See how the sausage gets made.
No one wants to know HOW it works, just MAKE it work.
/personally, I like all of those, but HATE “proactive”. It’s usually used as opposite of reactive, but ‘pro’ in that context is meaning “before”, so it’s before you’re active. Of course it is.