Advance warning, given unprompted, about something the other person will otherwise meet without preparation. The metaphor is physical — lift your head, something is coming. It is offered as a courtesy, and it is expected as one.
words
The loop
Keep me in the loop. Let me loop in Sarah. I’ve been out of the loop. Are you in the loop on this? The loop is something you are placed inside by other people. Nobody speaks of getting themselves into it.
Verbs of pushing
Flag it. Escalate it. Socialize it. Share it out. Circulate. Cascade it down. Give me a heads up. Ping me. American business English has an unusually large set of verbs for moving information outward, and almost all of them take the holder as the subject. The holder acts.
Owner
Product owner. Process owner. Account owner. Risk owner. Problem owner. American organizations name roles after possession of the thing rather than responsibility for a function, and the word carries the expectation that the owner acts without being asked.
The second opinion
American patients are actively encouraged to seek one, by insurers, by patient advocacy groups, and often by physicians themselves. Doing so is not treated as a discourtesy to the first doctor. The patient is understood to be the one deciding.
Tribal knowledge
The standard American phrase for what a company knows but has not recorded. It appears in engineering, manufacturing and software without irony. The metaphor concedes the whole thing: the knowledge is oral, held by initiates, and passes by contact rather than by document.
Onboarding
American organizations have a named, designed process for bringing a new person up to speed, with owners, checklists and a timeline. It is a large investment in transfer, and it exists because transfer happens constantly.
Documentation debt
American software culture has a word for the accumulated cost of undone documentation, and it is borrowed from finance. Debt is something you take on deliberately, in order to move faster now, intending to pay it back later. Most of it is never paid back, and everyone involved knows that when they take it on.
Bias toward action
Named as a virtue and used in hiring and promotion. Amazon lists it among its leadership principles: speed matters in business, and many decisions are reversible and do not need extensive study. The word bias is chosen deliberately — it concedes that the tendency is not neutral, and recommends it anyway.
Executive
The American word for a senior manager comes from execute — to carry out. Not director, not leader, not chief. The person is named after the act of doing.