Business Tech: Negotiation

I have a friend who teaches business at the college level. Recently, I've been thinking about asking her if I could guest lecture. As a result, I've been looking for a bite-sized topic; something I could convey in one sitting to people who may or may not have business experience beyond the theoretical. I do a lot of bite sized topics here, in print, and when I speak professionally, but this would be a — theoretically — less experienced audience. So, I thought that negotiation might be the right topic.

Let's see if I can talk you into it.

The Bottom Line

The national gun debate, reproductive rights debate, and countless other debates, have made me rethink a lot of my views. Truth being truth, most of my adventures in rethinking brought me back to the same positions. I am better qualified to tell you how I feel, but largely I still feel the same. Doing this reminds me that a good debate is the process of offering another person the chance to come over to your side, while being open to a journey of your own. Debate is not supposed to be hate speech or a tool for forcing the "opponent" into the corner. If you do it right, there are no opponents, just alternate viewpoints.

In business, we need to consider this same approach. One of the reasons IT is often not invited to the kick off conversations has to do with our habit of cutting to the chase. We use our considerable analytic skills to find an answer and then state it, expecting the rest of the room to see the point without offering them sight of the path which took us to that same point.

We can't afford to walk into the room and say, "Bad idea. Let's do this instead." We have to learn how to walk others through our process and see if they — and we — arrive at the expected destination or if, having seen our approach, the others might offer productive course correction.

Crossing the Line

One of the best tools for changing debate from adversarial to exploratory comes from defining the "line." I was in a debate about guns recently — I have no interested in sharing my perspective on that topic here — and I launched the following line of inquiry: "Do we all agree that citizens should not have access to unlimited nukes?" The question is bizarre, but it let me get to this idea: "Since we agree on nukes, we axiomatically agree that there is a limit of some sort on the right to bear arms. Now all we have to do is agree on where the line is."

Once we all accept that we each have a line we won't cross, then we become a group of people trying to mutually agree on the placement of that line. Sometimes you have to swing over to the absurd to make the point. Often you can then dial it down and use a more moderate example.

The business example might include things like building a web presence. Someone once asked me, why can't you just make the search work like Google. Instead of yelling, or jumping to "no," I asked them how much they wanted to spend on this feature. I pointed out that the distance between their budget and the Google budget for designing search was pretty far apart. Then, I showed them Google's results as it applied to their site and they realized that they don't want what Google does, they want a tailored version of what Google does. Instead of fighting with me, they started drawing lines.

One line defined the upper limit of their budget for this change. Another delimited the things that were nice to have vs. the things which they needed to have. We didn't fight, we just defined lines.

Blurring the Line

Part of the reason we have to negotiate at work stems from our differing expertise. While Jack knows how many widgets the world is willing to buy at $6.99 MSRP, Jill knows to the penny what they cost in each variant of our base design. So, Jack talks about $6.99 as a target because it meets the need he understands. Jill talks about $8.99 because she knows what the margins have to be. Neither knows that our partners have pre-negotiated a 50% of MSRP price for wholesale, which requires the MSRP to be $17.99 to meet Jill's margin. Both know that no end customer wants the product at $17.99. They need to stop fighting over the moot issue of $6.99 vs. $8.99 and discover the real problem. What Jack and Jill need is a bridge.

Some people are bridges. They have skills in multiple disciplines and are allowed by their management to exercise those skills. If Jenny knows manufacturing and marketing, she can help Jack and Jill get on the same page. When the lines between departments are absolute, there can rarely be bridges. We need to blur the lines to make negotiation faster and more effective.

Falling in Line

Perhaps the hardest part for us analytic types is the moment when we need to stop debating and just get the job done. Falling in line is painful. Especially when you know, deep in your heart that the choices made are poor ones. Just remember that sometimes, what we know is wrong.

So, why fall in line? Why not, to coin a phrase, rage against the dying of the light? Sometimes the argument is worth having. Often, a bad decision is survivable. So long as you haven't backed the "other guy" into a corner, it may not be so bad to let them make their mistake. At the end of the day, I like to be acknowledged when I am right, but I'd much rather have my advice followed than ignored. If walking off in the wrong direction lets others come to see what I see, even if I don't get the credit, I can let life convince them. Of course, I have to be open to the fact that they might just prove that a supposed "wrong direction" is really a brilliant shortcut.

Every time I'm wrong, I learn something. Every time I'm wrong and militantly stick to my guns, I teach people to stop listening to me. If those are the choices, I'd rather be the person doing the learning.

Line Up

I don't know if I'll ever get around to approaching my friend about guest lecturing. All this might have just been a useful thought exercise. If I never give this talk, I still learned something by taking this detour. Sometimes we are the people going the wrong way.

Let's hope we've encouraged the folks around us to meet that sort of wander with patience and partnership.

Featured:

Mar/Apr 2013