The American retailer’s employee handbook became famous for its brevity: use good judgment in all situations, and there will be no additional rules. Whether the card was quite that short is argued about. That it became an American business legend tells you what the audience wanted to believe.
business
The social plan
Der Sozialplan. Where a German employer restructures in a way that disadvantages employees, the works council can require a negotiated agreement compensating those affected. If the two sides cannot agree, a conciliation board decides and its decision binds. The employer cannot simply proceed.
The quality management system
German firms across manufacturing and services hold ISO 9001 certification, audited externally at intervals, covering documented processes for every activity that affects quality. Certification is frequently a condition of being a supplier at all.
The Mediation Act
Germany passed a dedicated Mediation Act in 2012, defining the process, the mediator’s confidentiality and independence, and providing for judges to refer cases to it. Mediation is defined by the parties reaching their own solution. The mediator has no power to decide.
Ready, fire, aim
The joke inverts the correct order of the three words, and it is used approvingly. The point is that aiming after firing is possible, and that firing supplies information aiming cannot.
The all-hands
A regular meeting of an entire American company — sometimes thousands of people — at which leadership presents results, plans and problems, and takes questions from the floor. The format assumes that information belonging to the leadership is information belonging to everyone, and that the transfer should happen in one room at one time.
Chasing reads as doubt
A German supplier contacted mid-project to confirm that the agreement still holds will hear the question as it was not asked. The enquiry implies that something might have changed, that the priority might have slipped, or that the supplier might have forgotten. None of those is a neutral suggestion.
The process owner
German organisations appoint a Prozessverantwortlicher for each process, named in the quality system, responsible for its definition, review and improvement. The process has a person attached to it in the same way a product line does.
The settlement
The German settlement. Most civil and labour disputes end in one, and German judges actively propose terms rather than waiting for the parties to arrive at them. A judgment produces a winner. A Vergleich produces an agreement, and the system prefers the second.
The duty to inspect
Where both parties are merchants, German commercial law requires the buyer to examine goods immediately on delivery and to report any defect immediately — § 377 HGB.
Obvious defects must be reported within a day or two. Hidden ones immediately on discovery. Miss the deadline and the goods count as approved, and the buyer loses his warranty rights entirely.
The German customer is under a legal obligation to be attentive.