An ordinary American weekend activity in which private individuals sell household goods and every price is understood to be open. Children learn price negotiation there before they learn it anywhere else.
words
The original matter
Ur, primal or original. Sache, the matter. The cause is the original matter — the thing that was there first.
English took cause from the Latin causa, which also gave us accuse and because. The German word contains its own instruction: go back to the thing underneath.
Planning lead-time
Planungsvorlauf. Planning lead-time. German projects allocate a named period before execution begins, and it appears in the schedule as a phase with its own duration. Starting work before it has elapsed is a departure from the method, not an acceleration of it.
Years in the field
German job advertisements specify years of Berufserfahrung in the relevant field, and it is what the culture treats as the source of judgment. Discretion is granted to people who have been formed, not to people who are clever.
Ground and reason
The same German word means the ground beneath your feet and the reason for something. Aus welchem Grund? — from what ground? Im Grunde genommen — taken at bottom.
In German, the cause of a thing and the floor of a thing are the same word. You have not found the reason until you have hit the bottom.
A plan is a plan
Plan ist Plan. Wir bleiben beim Plan. Das war so nicht geplant — that was not planned that way, said as an objection rather than as a description.
And the opposite: Wir fahren auf Sicht, we are driving by sight, used when the plan has been abandoned. It is never said with satisfaction.
Escalate
An American organisation’s answer to a judgment beyond your authority is to name the next level and pass it there, with the reasoning attached. The escalation path exists so that judgment can be exercised at the right height rather than suppressed.
De-escalation as a taught skill
Deeskalation. De-escalation is taught as a named technique in German policing, nursing, teaching and public service, with its own training courses and certificates. Slowing a situation down is treated as a professional skill with a curriculum.
BATNA
Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. An acronym from Getting to Yes that entered general American business speech. Its function is to convert your willingness to walk away into a calculable quantity, so that the price conversation has a floor you can name to yourself.
Protected titles
Die Berufsbezeichnung. Certain German occupational titles are legally protected. Calling yourself an engineer, an architect, a tax adviser or a master craftsman without the qualification is an offence. The title is not a claim about what you do. It is a statement about what you have been certified to be.