Stating the Obvious as Insight
In order to sound authoritative and insightful, you can state the obvious. This is a trick of senior management. The real skill is in making it sound like you've just birthed a new idea.
"The trouble is they're not scoring goals. You can't win football matches if you don't score goals." It's pithy, and true.
"They're not the same team without [insert name of player]." Again, this is unarguable.
"The Premiership is all about consistency. It's a marathon, not a sprint." Indeed it is.
"You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." Can't argue with that.
"It doesn't matter about their leaky defence so long as they're scoring more goals than the other team." Very true.
"It doesn't matter how good your business thinks it is. Most of your staff are, by definition, average." Certainly helps to keep the wage bill down.
"We are where we are." Course we are.
"It is what it is." Course it is.
"We're in business to make a profit." Really! I'm shocked.
"There's no point banging our heads against a brick wall." I quite agree.
"We can't turn back time." No, we can't.
So why do people do this? What's the point? Meaningless participation is one reason. You're there; you're expected to speak; so say something obvious and uncontroversial. It's also about managing emotion, not adding anything informative.
"We can't go back in time." really means: "Let's stop talking about what went wrong. We're not going to address the underlying issue."
A kind of conversational escape hatch. Like politicians, businesses like to "move on".