A German craft bakery chain has 145 stores and more than 1,350 employees. Many of its workers said they disliked being monitored through checklists. The firm then removed two of these checklists in half of its stores, chosen at random. Economists from Cologne and other universities studied the results. Sales in the stores without the checklists rose by 2.7 percent on average. Turnover among trained staff fell by 35 percent. In team surveys, employees named spürbare Wertschätzung, appreciation they could feel, as the reason. The co-author Matthias Heinz summed it up. Wer Mitarbeitende zu stark kontrolliert, schadet dem Unternehmen. Whoever controls employees too much harms the company. The effect was not the same for everyone. Unskilled workers left more often after the checklists were gone.
A Prize That Buys Freedom
The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Preis is awarded every year by the German Research Foundation, the DFG. It has existed since 1986 and is called the most important research funding prize in Germany. Each winner receives 2.5 million euros. Winners can use the money for their research for up to seven years, nach ihren eigenen Vorstellungen und ohne bürokratischen Aufwand, according to their own ideas and without bureaucratic effort. Up to ten prizes can be awarded per year. The ten winners for 2026 were chosen from 144 proposals. By December 2025, twelve Leibniz winners had later received a Nobel Prize.
Between Trust and Control
In summer 2021, the staffing firm Hays and the Rheingold institute surveyed 750 managers in companies in Germany with more than 100 employees. The topic was leadership when staff work from home. 61 percent said they already follow more closely when, how and how many employees work. 58 percent set more requirements and give out smaller work steps.
The study was titled Zwischen Vertrauen und Kontrolle, between trust and control. It was carried out during the pandemic.
The Daily Scrum
Daily Scrum ist die meistgenutzte agile Technik. The daily Scrum is the most used agile technique. This was a finding of the study Status Quo Agile 2017 by Koblenz University of Applied Sciences and the project management association GPM. The daily Scrum is the team’s daily status meeting.
More than 1,000 people from over 30 countries took part in the study. Most of the responses came from business units located in Germany. The question on techniques was answered by people who work with agile methods.
Among these users, the daily status meeting was the most widely adopted practice.
The Vocabulary of the Long Leash
Melde dich, wenn was ist.
Get in touch if something comes up.
Wenn was ist, rufst du an.
If something happens, you call.
jemanden an der langen Leine lassen
To keep someone on a long leash. To give him a lot of room.
jemandem im Nacken sitzen
To sit on someone’s neck. To press and watch him all the time.
Every Three Years
Every Max Planck institute has a Fachbeirat, a board of outside experts who review its work. The board meets alle drei Jahre, every three years, and in some cases more often. It assesses the quality and originality of the research and whether the strategy and the resources fit. It does so in beratender Funktion, in an advisory role.
Every six years, there is an extended review. It looks at related institutes in one research field together.
Once a Year With the Boss
In a survey commissioned by the Königsteiner Gruppe and published in July 2025, 1,073 employees in Germany were asked about the Mitarbeitergespräch, the formal talk with their manager. Seven in ten are invited to such a talk at least once a year. 18 percent have no such talk at all. Only 22 percent have this talk every month or every quarter.
A 2025 report by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found structured staff talks in a little over 70 percent of private firms with 50 or more employees, both in 2012 and in 2023. It describes the performance appraisal as meist jährlich, mostly annual.
Letting the specialist work
Freie Hand lassen — to leave a free hand.
Das ist Sache des Fachmanns — that is the specialist’s affair.
Da rede ich ihm nicht rein — I don’t talk into that.
Machen lassen — to let someone get on with it.
Four ordinary German expressions, all approving, all describing a client who has stepped back.
The target agreement
Die Zielvereinbarung. German employment practice fixes objectives for the year in a documented conversation, often with a bonus attached, and reviews them at the year’s end.
Agreed once, assessed once. Between those two points the manager is not scheduled to ask how it is going.
The word is an agreement rather than an assignment — the objectives are negotiated and signed by both, which is part of why they are not revisited every fortnight.
Mistrust, a Virus
Follow up in Germany is a sign of mistrust, of doubt in one’s reliability, in that person’s ability to deliver what they have promised. For Germans typically only commit if they are close to absolutely certain that they can execute.
Germans are very sensitive about mistrust, and do not deal with it well. A fictitious example: Small team. The members have their individual tasks, but need to collaborate at certain points. They work well together. The team lead can pay less and less attention to them. A new team member, though, begins to take advantage of the lead’s hands-off management style by looking for personal advantage.
The other team members become a bit unsettled. A few others also begin to think only of themselves. Mistrust creeps into the team, the points of contact become strained, collaboration more difficult. Their boss sees the signs and reacts by scheduling team meetings more frequently, checking on each team member’s work. Then come the emails and phone calls going into more detail.
The increased follow up strains relations. Several of the team members begin to look for alternative jobs within the company. A top performer is gone within a month. Others have sent out their resumés. Follow up can lead to mistrust, a virus with potentially deadly results.