German business cards carry Dr., Dipl.-Ing., Prof. — and so, still, do doorbells and letterboxes. The title travels with the person outside the workplace entirely. It is not a job. It is something they became.
words
The chance hit
Chance hit. The German word for a right answer arrived at by luck.
It is not praise. Naming it marks the result as unrepeatable, and therefore as worth nothing beyond the single case.
The vocabulary of results
Results-oriented. A standard phrase on an American résumé. The claim is not that the person works hard or knows the field, but that they can be judged by what came out.
Deliverables. American project language names the output as the unit of work. Not tasks, not effort, not hours. The thing handed over.
Track record. Not qualifications, not references, not what someone believes about themselves. What has already been produced, and can be pointed at.
Best practice. Methods are adopted from a competitor, another industry, another country, on the grounds that they work. There is no loyalty in the concept — the practice earns its place by outcome and loses it the same way.
Return on investment. Every expenditure becomes a candidate for the calculation, including training, meetings, research and attention. The question is not whether the thing is good. It is what came back.
Transferable skills
A standard American résumé heading and a standard interview argument: the claim that what was learned in one domain applies in another. The burden is on the field to show why the skills would not transfer.
The closer
An American sales title and an American compliment. She’s a closer. The praise is for the ability to convert a conversation into an agreement, treated as a distinct capability from anything preceding it.
The career change
Americans change fields, not only employers, and the career-change is a recognised genre with its own advice literature, bootcamps and retraining programmes. Arriving from outside a field is treated as a credential of adaptability.
Business intelligence
American software vendors named an entire product category after the idea that data becomes valuable when it changes what someone does. Not data management, not information systems. Intelligence — a word borrowed from the military, where the whole point of knowing something is the decision it enables.
Holding the pen
Federführung — the quill-leading. The German term for which department holds the pen on a document, a project or a negotiation. It is contested openly, because whoever drafts determines what is discussed.
The dealmaker
An American occupational identity. Investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, sports representation, entertainment — all have a recognised role whose skill is bringing parties to agreement. The title is not a euphemism. It is on the business card.
Two kinds of superior
German organisations distinguish the technical superior from the disciplinary one. Two different people, two different kinds of authority, and the split is normal enough to have standard vocabulary. Authority over the work and authority over the person are treated as separate things that need not sit together.