I am on holiday. As many of us do, I read a lot on holiday. In my case, I read crime and mystery books but never anything too challenging. When you are steeped in something the way we at Scotwork are in negotiation, you tend to spot connections in what you read and hear. In my current book, the hero rescues a woman from an assault in the street by a vagrant by holding a gun literally to the vagrant’s head: “Shaw didn’t say anything, he wasn’t somebody who negotiated or bartered. He kept the gun steady…” If you have a Glock automatic – essential equipment for the goodies and the baddies in the books I have been reading – and you are holding it to the head of a miscreant, it seems to me that there will be little room or need for negotiating. “Do as I say or get your brains blown out,” seems to me to be a compelling reason for speedy obedience. No need for negotiation when you have ultimate power and the counterparty can do nothing to mitigate your hold over them.
Fortunately for us as negotiation specialists, this happens very infrequently, otherwise our job would be teaching people how to maintain your dignity while doing as you are told. The truth is that negotiation is usually about assessing your own power and that of the counterparty and using your skill to optimise your outcome. I recall some years ago, at a previous employer, I had engaged a very well-respected academic to address a conference in Switzerland. He had written THE book on managing global corporations. He was received with acclaim. We paid him $15,000 for the day. Shortly after this I went to see him and asked him to work with some very senior global leaders in a seminar in Seattle. He said he would and then said: “My fee will be $30,000 plus first class air fare.” I said: ‘That’s outrageous!” He said: “I know. I double my fee when I cross the Atlantic. There is one of me in the world, take it or leave it.” A couple of minor wish list items later, I took it. He removed his finger from the trigger of the Glock.
In another book I read, this one by Richard Osman who is a funny and accomplished writer, he quotes the Roman philosopher, Seneca: “Fortuna est quae fit cum praeparatio in occasio incidit” although his quote was translated: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” I am just showing off my “O” Level Latin. So, when you are in the situation where your counterparty does not have the negotiator’s equivalent of a Glock, you have the opportunity to prepare effectively and to be ready to make some luck for yourself. My colleague Horace McDonald wrote here recently how important preparation is when we negotiate. He was right – when we prepare, we get ourselves ready to seize opportunities which may be presented to us. To do this effectively means that we should not just think what it is that we want to achieve but also what our counterparty wants to achieve and how badly. If we don’t know how badly they want it, one of our key tasks is to try to find that out because that might give us leverage (or power or Glock or whatever you want to call it).
If we spend time in advance (it’s very, very hard to do in the heat of the moment) identifying where we can get this leverage – using what we know and preparing questions to identify what we would like to know, then we open up options for ourselves. The more fluid and flexible we are, the more likely we are to spot that opportunity where our preparation can be made to pay off. One last thought here, our Negotiating Capability Survey – the biggest collection of data about negotiating behaviour anywhere – warns us that the tendency amongst many negotiators is to concentrate on yourself and your objectives when you prepare. Remember to think about the counterparty in just as much depth and detail, too. It will help you to identify with them and what you know about them and, importantly, what you need to know about them so that when that opportunity to make a great move happens and you can exploit your “luck” your preparation is fit to meet it.
