Along with Chief Customer Officer, Chief Growth Officer, Chief Commercial Officer. American companies create C-suite titles around market-facing functions. There is no equivalent proliferation of titles around internal procedure.
words
Kept among us
Unter vier Augen — under four eyes, meaning between two people.
Das bleibt unter uns — that stays among us.
Schmutzige Wäsche wäscht man nicht in der Öffentlichkeit — one does not wash dirty linen in public.
Der Flurfunk — corridor radio, the German word for office rumour, and it is what a public hearing is understood to feed.
The title
American job titles proliferate and are read carefully — associate, senior, staff, principal, director, vice president. Companies create levels partly so that people can be moved between them, and the title travels on the email signature and the LinkedIn profile.
With eye-measure
Mit Augenmaß — with eye-measure. The German phrase for judgment exercised in proportion, and it is praise.
Fingerspitzengefühl — fingertip feeling. Sensitivity in handling a situation, and it is what experience is supposed to produce.
Nach bestem Wissen und Gewissen — to the best of knowledge and conscience. A formula used in German declarations and reports where certainty is not available.
Value
The central American product word, and it is a ratio rather than a property. Good value, value for money, best value. A thing is not good or bad. It is good or bad for the price.
The talking-out
Die Aussprache. A talking-out. The German word for the conversation in which a difficulty is worked through between the people involved. It is arranged, it is expected to take a while, and it happens without spectators.
Specialist and generalist
German uses both words, and only one of them is a compliment. Generalist is not an insult exactly. But it describes an absence, and in a German professional context the absence is of a field.
Long-livedness
Long-livedness. A German product virtue with a noun of its own, appearing in ecolabel criteria, consumer testing and advertising copy. The lifespan is a stated specification rather than an accident of build quality.
The individual case
German administrative and legal language returns to it constantly — im Einzelfall, in the individual case, Einzelfallprüfung, individual examination. The general rule is stated and the particular case is then examined against it.
Disposable and durable
Durable goods is a category in American economic statistics, defined as goods expected to last three years or more. Three years. The official threshold for durability in the United States is a period a German would not consider a product life at all.