boil the ocean
Colloquial/bɔɪl ði ˈoʊ.ʃən/phrase (evasive)
Etym.From a literal maritime taunt, recycled by management consultants in the 1990s as a pithy metaphor for impractical mandates, see R. Camden, Corporate Lexicons, 1998.
A rhetorical maneuver that reframes a solvable issue as an all-encompassing, impractical project to obscure specifics, stall decisions, and share blame.
'We are not going to boil the ocean this quarter', Q3 Board Deck, slide 12