Business English

If you’re faced with a unique and complicated issue at work, you may need to think outside the box to find a solution.

When you think outside the box, you try to use your imagination to come up with new and unusual ideas. The purpose of thinking outside the box is to challenge yourself to think differently about a subject, so that you can approach it from a new perspective and ideally, produce original ideas and solutions.

When you have a lot on your plate, you have a lot of important tasks to manage. This could mean that you’re trying to balance multiple projects at one time, or you’re dealing with one large, demanding project.

When we look at the big picture, we view a situation as a whole. We do not focus on the small details of its individual parts.

Have you ever worked on a long-term project that was delayed because too much time was spent on the small details? When we look at the big picture, we focus on the most important facts of a situation. We then evaluate how those facts will affect the overall situation in the future. 

The words "draw" and "up" take on a new meaning when you put them together. The idiomatic phrase "draw up" is usually used to talk about plans or contracts. It means to prepare a written document with details of a plan or arrangement. 

Draw up can be used in any tense. Here are some examples of how to use it:

When two people or organizations negotiate an agreement so that each one profits, they cut a deal. You each have to give up, or "cut", some of what you want so that you can both make some profit, even if it's not as much as you wanted.

Here are a couple of examples: