An American compliment with no real equivalent elsewhere. She’s a doer. He’s a real doer. The praise is not for judgment, knowledge or care. It is for the propensity to begin.
words
Paralysis
Analysis paralysis. Overthinking it. Navel-gazing. Spinning your wheels. Stuck in the weeds. American English has an unusually large vocabulary for the failure of thinking too long, and no comparable vocabulary for the failure of acting too soon. The second failure is described, when it happens, in ordinary words.
The American Dream
The phrase was coined by James Truslow Adams in The Epic of America, published in 1931.
Nineteen thirty-one. Unemployment near a quarter of the workforce, banks failing, the Dust Bowl beginning. That is when the country produced the phrase for its own optimism, and the phrase stuck.
The reframe
American workplace vocabulary systematically renames difficulty.
A problem is an opportunity. An obstacle is a challenge. A failure is a learning experience. A collapse is a setback, which contains the assumption that forward motion resumes.
None of these are euphemisms exactly. Each one carries a claim about what happens next.
Batting average
A number carried to three decimal places, quoted from memory by ordinary fans, and applied outside baseball to anything from hiring to sales calls. The unit of judgment is what actually happened, divided by how many times you tried.
Pi times thumb
Pi times thumb. The German phrase for a rough estimate.
It is almost always said with a small apology attached, flagging that what follows was not properly derived. The speaker marks their own method as inadequate before anyone else can.
Insight
The American business word for a finding worth acting on, and it has largely displaced finding, result and conclusion. An insight implies a consequence. The word itself carries the claim that something should now change.
The named deputy
German organisations name a stellvertretender Leiter for most positions of responsibility, with the substitution written into the job description. Advancement runs through a stated apprenticeship to the role, in public, before the role is held.
Sloppy
Sloppy. And the judgment is aimed at the method, not the outcome.
Schlampig gearbeitet — worked sloppily — can be said of something that came out fine. It means the result cannot be relied on, because the way it was produced would not reliably produce it again.
Own-costs
Own-costs. The German term for what a thing costs the producer before any margin, and it appears in ordinary commercial speech as well as in accounting.
Zu Selbstkosten abgeben — to hand something over at own-cost — is a specific and meaningful statement in German business. It names an exact point on a scale everyone is assumed to know exists.