British English has many short phrases for taking a problem on oneself.
I’ll sort it: I will deal with it myself.
Consider it done: The matter is in hand and needs no more thought.
To crack on: To get on with the work without waiting.
To get stuck in: To start work with energy.
To use one’s initiative: To act on one’s own judgment without being told.
Not my department: It is someone else’s problem. The phrase is usually said with disapproval.
British English has many approving phrases for leaving people to do their work.
To give someone a free hand: To let someone decide how to do a job.
To give someone free rein: To give someone wide freedom to act.
To let someone get on with it: To stop checking and let the work proceed.
Why keep a dog and bark yourself?: There is no point in paying someone to do a job and then doing it yourself. The proverb is recorded from the late sixteenth century.
British English has many phrases that praise care and method.
To do it properly: To do it thoroughly and in the right way.
A proper job: Work done well.
By the book: Following the rules and the correct procedure.
To dot the i’s and cross the t’s: To attend to every detail.
Measure twice, cut once: Check carefully before acting, because a mistake cannot be undone.
Cutting corners: Saving time or money by not doing something properly. The phrase is a criticism.
Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. The saying is known as the 7 Ps and is described as a British Army adage. Its exact origin is uncertain. A shorter version, the “five P’s,” was described in 1956 as an infantry division slogan from the Second World War.
On 10 January 1979, during a wave of strikes, Prime Minister James Callaghan returned from a summit in Guadeloupe. At a press conference at Heathrow Airport, he was jocular and mentioned a swim in the Caribbean. A reporter asked about “the mounting chaos in the country.” Callaghan replied: “I don’t think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos.”
The next day, The Sun ran the headline “Crisis? What crisis?” Callaghan never used those exact words. His speechwriter Roger Carroll later agreed they were an effective paraphrase: “He asked for it, I’m afraid, and he got it.”
Within four months, his government had fallen to a vote of no confidence and lost the general election.
British English has many phrases that favor adjusting what exists over replacing it.
A tweak: A small adjustment.
Evolution, not revolution: We will improve what exists rather than replace it.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater: Do not discard what is good while removing what is bad.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel: Use what already works.
Steady as she goes: Keep to the present course.
Softly, softly: Carefully and gradually. The phrase is short for softly, softly, catchee monkey.
Dave Brailsford became performance director of British Cycling in 2003. He described his approach to improvement this way: “It means taking the 1% from everything you do; finding a 1% margin for improvement in everything you do.”
He later led Team Sky, launched for the 2010 season with the aim of producing a British winner of the Tour de France within five years.
On 3 April 2012, the British government published its design principles for digital services. The first is “Start with user needs.” Another reads: “Iterate. Then iterate again.” Its text begins: “The best way to build good services is to start small and iterate wildly.”
A third principle, “Design with data,” begins: “Let data drive decision-making, not hunches or guesswork.”
On 14 May 1796, the doctor Edward Jenner took fluid from the cowpox sores on the hand of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid, and inoculated James Phipps, a boy of about eight. About six weeks later, Jenner inoculated the boy with smallpox. It had no effect.
The Royal Society declined to publish his first report. Jenner gathered more cases. In 1798 he published An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, with 23 case reports.
On 6 January 1958, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft, resigned in a dispute over public spending. The other Treasury ministers, Enoch Powell and Nigel Birch, resigned with him. The next day, the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, left London Airport for a tour of the Commonwealth. He told the press: “I thought the best thing to do was to settle up these little local difficulties.”
The phrase is often misquoted in the singular, as “a little local difficulty.”