In German usage the word carries no suggestion of weakness or of principles surrendered. Ein tragfähiger Kompromiss — a load-bearing compromise — is the standard phrase, and the metaphor is structural. The compromise is a thing that has to hold weight.
words
Relationship selling
An established American sales tradition holding that the relationship precedes the transaction and outlasts it. Entire sales organisations are structured around it — account managers who keep the same clients for years, whose job description is the relationship itself.
Advantage through technology
Vorsprung durch Technik — advantage through technology — has been in use as a German advertising line since the 1970s and passed into English untranslated. The claim is that the lead comes from the engineering, not from the marketing.
Negotiating the matter
Sachverhandlung. Sache again, attached to negotiation. A negotiation about the matter. That the compound exists at all implies the alternative — a negotiation about something else — and marks it as a different and lesser thing.
Balance of interests
Interessenausgleich. Balance of interests. The German legal term for what an employer must negotiate with the works council before a major operational change. The statute names the objective, and it is not agreement or settlement. It is balance.
The bounded trial
The German probationary period — Probezeit — is legally capped at six months, and once it ends the full protection of the dismissal statute attaches. The trial is bounded, short, and followed by something close to permanence. Both sides know the date.
Back to the drawing board
Said cheerfully. The phrase concedes that the attempt failed and moves immediately to the next one, in the same breath. There is no stage in between for assigning blame.
There must be order
Ordnung muss sein — there must be order. The most quoted German phrase on the subject, and it is a statement of necessity rather than preference.
Alles hat seine Ordnung — everything has its order.
Das hat Hand und Fuß — that has hand and foot, said of something properly constructed.
Wie es sich gehört — as is fitting, as it belongs. Said of a thing done the correct way.
Bureaucracy
In American usage the word is an accusation, and it is applied to private companies as readily as to government. Elsewhere the word can describe a form of organisation. In American English it describes a failure of one.
Plug and play
An American phrase for hardware that configures itself on connection, and it passed into general business speech for anything that works without setup. The claim is about the absence of preparation.