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Business English Phrases Professionals Use When Plans Don’t Work Out
- Erin West
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
In this article: A real work situation and a quick quiz
We all know that plans don’t always work out. For non-native professionals, explaining that can be difficult or even uncomfortable. You may know the right words, but still hesitate in meetings when something goes wrong, or a plan doesn’t land the way you expected.
In this article, you’ll learn the Business English phrases professionals use to explain what happened. You’ll see how they come up in real meetings and work conversations, and there’s a short practice task at the end to help you use them naturally.
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Today’s Challenge
A client is changing how their staff orders office supplies. Starting this week, everyone has to use a new online form instead of sending emails.
Your team built the form.
If something goes wrong, people won’t be able to place their orders, and it will affect their day-to-day work.
Late in the day, someone on your team notices a problem: sometimes the form doesn’t save the order correctly.
Fixing it now means staying late. Waiting until tomorrow would be easier — but risky.
That’s when you decide it needs to be fixed today, and you say:
We can’t afford to _____ the ball. The client is counting on us.
A) fall
B) drop
C) kick
D) miss
Choose the option that sounds most natural in this situation.
So, what’s the right choice here?
That's right! The correct answer is B) drop.
DROP THE BALL
idiom
to make a mistake or fail to do something you were responsible for when other people are depending on you
We can’t afford to drop the ball here. The client is counting on us.
Someone dropped the ball, and the update never went out.
I dropped the ball on that — I should’ve followed up sooner.
When professionals use "drop the ball"
Professionals use drop the ball when something important goes wrong and someone did not do what they were supposed to do.
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Business English Phrases Professionals Use When Things Go Wrong
When plans don’t work out, professionals don’t usually explain every detail. They use short, familiar phrases to show that something went wrong and move on. In this section, you’ll see more Business English phrases people use at work when plans fail. These are the kinds of phrases you’ll hear in meetings, calls, and everyday work conversations.
It didn’t work out.
The plan failed.
We tried a few options, but it just didn’t work out.
In the end, it didn’t work out, so we moved on.
We couldn’t make it work.
We tried different options, but none of them solved the problem.
We thought it might be fine, but we couldn’t make it work.
We spent most of the afternoon on it and still couldn’t make it work.
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It/ Things stalled.
Progress stopped.
After the first update, the project stalled.
Things stalled once we hit the approval stage.
We hit a wall.
We reached a point where no more progress was possible.
We hit a wall when the requirements changed.
Progress was steady, and then we hit a wall.
We ran out of time.
There was not enough time to finish the work.
We had a good plan, but we ran out of time.
We were close, but we ran out of time.
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It didn’t get off the ground.
The plan never really started.
The idea sounded good, but it never got off the ground.
That project didn’t really get off the ground.
The problems kept piling up.
New problems appeared again and again.
Once testing started, the problems kept piling up.
First it was a delay, then a bug — the problems kept piling up.
It got messy.
The situation became unclear and hard to manage.
After the last change, it got messy.
With so many people involved, it got messy fast.
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There was no way around it.
A problem happened, and because of that problem, a difficult action had to be done.
We found a serious bug. There was no way around it — the release had to be delayed.
The deadline was missed. There was no way around it. We had to explain it to the client.
Practice Business English Phrases Professionals Use When Things Go Wrong
Read the situation. In real life, what would you say here?
Professional situation 1: One issue after another
The team is trying to move customer orders from an old form to a new one. On the first day, some orders don’t save. Then the system sends the same order twice. This morning, people start reporting missing orders, and support begins getting emails.
You say:
First it was a delay, then a bug — the problems _____. Every time we fix one thing, something else breaks.
A) finally got resolved
B) slowly faded away
C) keep piling up
D) are planned ahead
Want more practice like this? The full practice set is available inside the Members' Library. It includes more real work situations, plus extra practice with phrasal verbs and idioms.
Erin West is a Business English educator, writer, and founder of RealBusinessEnglish.com. She creates practical lessons, quizzes, and learning materials that help professionals use clear, natural, and confident English at work — with just the right amount of fun.
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