German examination assesses the process as much as the answer. Apprentices are examined on practical execution before a chamber committee. Engineering students show the derivation. A right answer reached the wrong way is marked accordingly.
business
A/B testing
Show half your users one version, half the other, and let the numbers decide. No argument, no theory, no meeting. The disagreement is resolved by running both and reading the result.
The thank-you note
After an American interview, a pitch or a meeting, a note follows. Its content is conventional and everybody knows it. Sending it is read as care. Not sending it is noticed.
The workaround
An American word for the informal route people use when the official one does not work, and it is largely neutral in tone. It is discussed openly, sometimes documented, occasionally adopted as the new official route.
Glassdoor and Levels.fyi
American employees publish their own compensation to public databases, by company, level and location. The market price of a role is crowdsourced and freely available to anyone considering a move.
The work breakdown
Der Projektstrukturplan. The work breakdown structure. A German project is decomposed into work packages, each with an owner, a deliverable, a duration and a number. The plan is not a list of tasks. It is a structure, and the numbering shows how each piece hangs off the whole.
The Super Bowl ad
American companies pay several million dollars for thirty seconds and frequently spend it on a story that barely mentions the product. The purchase being made is an emotional association, and everyone involved knows it.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
Used in American business to end a discussion — specifically, a discussion about whether something is ready. The sentence casts perfectionism as an adversary, and the good-enough version as the thing under attack.
The bill of materials
Die Stückliste. The bill of materials. A German parts list is structured, levelled and versioned — every component, every sub-assembly, every quantity, with its own part number. The product exists as a document before it exists as a thing.
Empowerment
An American management word, and companies built programmes around it: front-line staff authorised to resolve a problem up to a stated amount without approval. The Ritz-Carlton figure, widely reported at two thousand dollars per guest, became the standard illustration.