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Business English vocabulary · Office Idioms and Phrases

Make headway

Meaning in business english, with examples

idiomCommon term

In business english, make headway means: To make clear progress in a task, discussion, or problem, especially after a slow start or earlier difficulty.

In Turkish: ilerleme kaydetmek

How it is used

Common in project updates, meetings, and status emails when work starts moving forward after delays, confusion, or resistance. Often followed by on, in, or with.

Example sentences

  1. After finance approved the revised budget, we finally made headway on the hiring plan and opened three priority roles.

    Here, made headway shows that an earlier obstacle was removed and the team could take concrete next steps on hiring.

  2. We made headway in the compliance meeting by agreeing on a single approval path for cross-border data requests.

    In this sentence, the idiom marks meaningful progress because the discussion produced one workable process, not just more debate.

Common collocations

  • make headway on a project
  • make headway in negotiations
  • make significant headway
  • follow upTo contact someone again about something you discussed earlier, in order to check progress, ask for an answer or add information.
  • circle backTo return to a topic or person later, usually because there is not enough time or information to deal with it now.

More terms: Office Idioms and Phrases

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