deck chairs on the Titanic

Beginner 💼 Corporate / Business

Definition

Making trivial changes or improvements to something that's fundamentally doomed to fail. Rearranging superficial elements while ignoring the iceberg-sized problems.

Example Usage

Updating our brand colors while losing 40% of our customer base is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Origin

References the futility of rearranging furniture on the sinking RMS Titanic in 1912

Fun Fact

The Titanic's deck chairs were actually bolted down, making the metaphor doubly futile.

Source: Common business idiom

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