Quickthink

Politics in the US these days is pretty nasty, or as journalists might say, “partisan”. Hence the title. One commentator said that being governor of Colorado would be like picking your teeth with a rattlesnake. Now that is nasty. But … just because many politicians seem to be nasty doesn’t mean that nastiness will always trump its opposite. Consider Colorado’s governor elect John Hickenlooper. Here is a link to his rather entertaining story.

People sometimes forget that politics is about winning elections. And winning elections is less about ideology than persuading people that you are a better bet than your opponent. Being likable trumps nastiness especially when voters don’t see an urgent need for the bad humor. Gov. Hickenlooper seems to be very good at making this case. I will follow hi progress over the next several years to see if he avoids the snake bite — and somehow, I think that he will.

BTW, the same is true in negotiation.  Playing power games and pushing people around may be effective in squeezing a few cents out of the other side in a bargaining session. But it won’t set you up for the next deal.

My old friend Chuck Lipton used to say that a contract is an invitation to the dance. Nothing more. The dance? Right. That is what happens over time during the commercial relationship. It is a realistic point of view, describing pretty well how commercial actors think about their consensual legal obligations.

Thus I had to chuckle a bit reading how Kraft Foods is complaining of a “flagrant breach” of contract by Starbucks. What is the difference between a “flagrant” breach and a regular old breach? Legally there is none. There was either a breach or there was not. And a party to a contract either wants to complain about it or not. But in this case Kraft wants to signal that Starbucks is being a really, really bad boy. Thus the hyperbole.

What is going on? Starbucks made a deal for Kraft to sell Starbucks coffee in retail markets. It seemed to make sense for both sides at the time as Kraft has a lot of experience doing that and Starbucks has a good brand name. But at some point, Starbucks realized that it could make much more money doing the retail deals itself — especially if it comes out with its own single service packs and branded machine. So Starbucks wanted out of the deal. Using Chuck’s terminology, it was time to find new dancing partners.

Once Starbucks made that decision,  it became just a matter of how much it will cost. Not surprisingly, Starbucks’ initial offer of $750 million was not enough. And BTW, Starbucks probably knew it was a low ball figure. My guess is that Kraft wants around $1.2 billion and might settle for as little as $1 billion. So Kraft took the next logical step, paying its lawyers to cry bloody murder in court in order to up the ante. Meanwhile, Starbucks is pretending … I mean arguing … that Kraft had breached earlier giving Starbucks the right to terminate … while it waits for a counteroffer. Will this go to trial? I sincerely doubt it — unless something very odd happens. Here is a link to the story.

BTW, this is pretty much how “distributive negotiation” always works. The relationship is over. It’s just a matter of who gets what. So don’t pay too much attention to the screaming. It is in fact all about the money.

FOLLOW - Ooops. I forgot to mention one thing. Readers should not conclude from the above that all negotiations are like this. They are not. We all still bow down before the great and mighty Roger Fisher and his buddies who wisely noted many, many years ago that sometimes relationships are more important than money. That is what Chuck Lipton was talking about too — from a slightly different angle.

Trust me on this one. It is not easy in a tough negotiation just to say “no deal”, stand up and walk away from the table. But sometimes it has to be done — especially when the party on the other side is demanding something that runs contrary to your core values. When is that? It happens more than you might think. But each case is different because we operate with our own packages of values. So case studies of saying “no” are perhaps the best way to get the idea.

Paul Krugman thinks that Barrack Obama needs to say “no” now to extension of the Bush era tax cuts for the rich that Republicans are demanding. He lays out a pretty good argument why “no” is better than “let’s make a deal” — even though raising taxes in a recession carries political and economic costs. It is worth reading in light of this rather ticklish negotiation problem. Here is the link.

FOLLOW -  Well, President Obama decided to give up the opportunity to end the Bush tax cuts for the very rich for 2 more years in order to get support from Republicans on other issues. He did a deal. Was it a mistake? He will argue that it was necessary to get benefits for the middle class. But I don’t know. It looks a lot like a betrayal of a core value as well. I am reminded of the tax deal that the first President Bush did — that eventually contributed to his defeat by Bill Clinton. Remember “read my lips. No new taxes”? It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

The Negotiation Course is Nearly Upon Us!

A few days ago, I posted on the difference between bargaining and negotiating.This is a quick follow up.

In my experience, highly skilled negotiators are able to create an atmosphere where the actual bargaining becomes relatively easy. Inexperienced negotiators tend to have the opposite experience. One of the reasons is the emotional effect of racing towards the bargaining mode.

Negotiating gurus Roger Fisher and Dan Shapiro wrote about this rather well in their book “Beyond Reason” where they refer to certain emotional triggers that we should be aware of. Very true. Experienced negotiators have an instinctive feel for these triggers and use them. You can too with a bit of thought and practice. And I can say without exaggerating that taking these ideas over could have a major impact on your relationships at work, home and elsewhere.

I will be discussing these triggers (among many other topics) in our negotiation course that is starting soon. Here is a link to the course schedule from the Estonian Euromanagement Institute website.

Thinking about signing up? Send me an email (michael at laf.ee) and I would be pleased to chat with you about it. Can’t make it in October?  Marju is offering the basic course again in February and then in May 2011. But even more important than whether you take the course, think about it. Could you be more effective when you are working in groups? The answer for all of us (me too) is yes. We just need better tools and more practice in using them.

FOLLOW - I am asked from time to time whether I am a “Fisherite” in my teaching on negotiation. The answer is yes and no. I recognize the benefits that Prof. Fisher has provided us with his model, but think it works only part of the time. And it can lead to disaster if applied without understanding the broader context.

I was forwarded a nice article the other day by Kristiina Tõnnisson on negotiation called “Mulle palun maailm, päike ja kuu! Tõhusad läbirääkimised” from the 2007 Director Magazine archives. Here is the link.

Kristiina is a good friend and colleague and she offers good advice in the article. I think it is worth reading. But I do have one small problem. The article is actually about bargaining. Bargaining occurs within the negotiation framework but it is only part of the overall process.  This is often misunderstood to the detriment of persons who rush too quickly into bargaining mode. So go ahead and follow Kristiina’s advice when the time is right to bargain, but be ready to think carefully as well whether the time actually is right.

How do you know that? Well … this is one of the topics I cover in my negotiation course offered via Estonian Euromanagement Institute. Hint, hint. Here is a link for some course information.

One of the most difficult aspects of negotiating well is to learn how to see things from the perspective of the other side. This is especially difficult when you are in conflict. But we have to do it if we want to say anything that is constructive.

One of the tools that I use to do this to try to see myself in a different way. Sure I have my own values, interests and desires. But I also try to see myself on the stage of life. To watch and analyze myself as a third person would. A sympathetic third person, of course, but outside of myself none the less. I found at first that it can be a bit disconcerting to see myself, warts and all. But one gets used to it. And I have a role model - Michel de Montagne.

Sir Kenneth Clark called him the most civilized man of the late 16th century. He retreated from the religious violence of his day, and from his tower in southern France carried on an extensive dialogue with himself and others. And He invented the essay form of writing. His main rule in this was always, no matter how painful, to see things from the point of view of the other person.  He treasured this old saying (that he had etched into a ceiling beam) which is fascinating if you think about it

I am a man and think that nothing human is foreign to me.

And as for self righteousness? He said

In trying to make themselves angels, men transform themselves into beasts.

This is not the type of chit chat for the weak of heart. But it does help me to settle down and think more clearly whether an agreement might be possible even while someone is shouting at me.

FOLLOW -  An odd footnote — I first wrote above that I have “interests and desires” as if this defined who I am. The word “interests” is a term of art in the field of negotiation training and that is why I used it here. But when I re-read the post, I realized that I had left out the word “values”. Values, of course, produce interests and thus are more important in forming our individual identities and passion for connecting in groups. Values energize us. For that simple reason, values can be more dangerous as a negotiation anchor especially if we think that they are not shared in a given context. In that setting, we then tend to see our negotiating partners as “outsiders” and in extreme cases, perhaps even less than human. This is one of the reasons why I criticized the approach taken below in the book entitled “Honor Code”. This is also why I like Bill Ury’s “yes, no, yes” formulation so much. It starts with an affirmation of shared values.

FOLLOW -  One way to understand this better is to think of communication from two different perspectives. To break apart the communication into its substantive and functional meanings. To understand the functional meaning of the communication you need to think in terms of its effects on the listener. To do that, you need a tool to “get inside his or her head”. Voila. We have entered the intellectual world of Montagne.

FOLLOW -  But how does this square with the advice one hears about building energy from finding an enemy? I have posted about this before. Here is a link to the core idea. Here is a link to a second perspective about “being in the arena”. The answer is simple. We should not take the word “enemy” too literally. It is a substitute for “opposite”. We tend to see things more clearly in terms of their opposites. Lincoln was fascinated with this idea. Indeed, it is also Hegelian. If we take over a value, we are naturally energized by seeing its opposite. It is, in a sense, our “enemy”.

But if we personalize this, we tend to  reduce dialogue to melodrama and farce. This was why Michael Jordon’’s induction speech at the Basketball Hall of Fame sounded so odd. It was not because he revealed that he used the idea of the enemy as an energizing and focusing tool. He went further, defining his greatness in playing basketball in terms of personal anger towards real people (who had no idea that they had taken on this role). This tended to diminish his huge accomplishments. Back to our focus, personalizing opposition is nearly always counterproductive in a negotiation setting. I say nearly always because in some cases domination strategies can work. But it is not a pretty sight and they do not produce creative relationships.

Roger Cohen offers a thoughtful piece today about the Israeli blockade. This quote caught my eye

 Blockading Gaza is not difficult. But of course the blockade only nourishes the tunnel economy controlled by Hamas. Is this intelligent? Is this a strategy?

Here is the link. Obviously, it is not. Yet reliance on the tactic persists. And now that the tactic has been challenged, Israeli hardliners are likely to cling to it ever more tightly … as if it were indispensable. They will once again attempt to prove that Israeli will is unshakable. Maintaining the blockade will become a part of a larger dogma that unshakable resolve will prevail in the end. And what is the strategy? Or stripped to the essentials,  is this just blind trust in unshakable resolve?

By the way,  the great and mighty leaders of the great European powers just before the first great war shared a similar attitude. They all believed that it was urgent to demonstrate unshakable resolve in the face of a regional Balkan disturbance. Of course, the need to demonstrate unshakable resolve meant that finding a solution short of war quickly became impossible. Nor was it possible to stop the war even after it morphed into massive and pointless butchery. One wonders if those in their “Proud Towers” would have felt the same way if they could have foreseen the dreadful consequences of their clinging to dogma.  Come to think of it, this blind trust in unshakable resolve (backed with advanced technology) describes fairly well the attitude of US political and military leaders in the early phases of the Vietnam War as well. And of course, we should not forget that a more virulent form of the same trust in demonstrating unflinching resolve was at the core of Hitler’s madness.

Looking at this from a negotiator’s point of view, the above are all examples of domination strategies. This is where the urge to demonstrate toughness blinds us to everything else. Using American slang, “We lose it”. We all fall into this behavior pattern (mea culpa) rather easily when we perceive that something at issue is urgent and threatened, regardless of whether the perceptions are accurate (or have any basis at all). Why? That is a good question. I would just say that there appears to be a biological feedback loop at work that involves the amygdala in the brain. Huh? It may have been critical for us to have this capacity in the wild as a survival strategy. Unfortunately, the capacity works less well in civilized discourse. Nor is it a tool for building strategy.

Perhaps it is useful therefore, to keep in mind that to fall into domination strategies is human. To free ourselves from dogma is divine … and from a strategic point of view, useful.

FOLLOW - It was Roger Fisher and Bill Ury’s great contribution to negotiation theory that a matter may be urgently important, but parties to the related negotiations may see other values that might hold them back from pursuing domination strategies or one off bargaining.

2d FOLLOW - So, how is it that we are so easily wrong about our perceptions? How about this reason. it is because

… being wrong, (when) we’re blithely unaware of it, “feels (the same as) being right.”

from Dwight Garner’s NYT review of Kathryn Shulz’ new book, “Being Wrong”. Here is the link.

A week ago I was getting ready to write a blog post about the negotiations between the three major UK parties to build a coalition government. It looked like a classic auction was about to develop, with both conservatives and labour throwing bones to the lib dems to lure them over to their side. But it didn’t work out that way. Instead a deal was done quickly between the conservatives and the lib dems, leaving labour out in the cold. Interesting. What happened?

We can only speculate, but a couple of things seem likely. First, there was probably already good rapport between Cameron and Clegg. They wanted to do that deal rather than bicker over incremental details. Or, to put it another way, perhaps Clegg had already ruled out doing a deal with Gordon Brown (refusing to climb onto a sinking ship?). Second, Cameron showed that he understood the timing issue. If negotiations dragged out, he would be weakened in hiw own party. Perhaps Clegg faced a similar problem if people had time to ask why the lib dems did so poorly at the polls. And, as Dave Brooks writes

(Cameron) has potentially weakened the strong partisans in both parties, empowered the pragmatists who are better-suited to coalition politics and created a less polarized political climate.

Will this turn into a changing of the guard? The deal has created a favorable image contrast between Cameron/Clegg (as young and innovative) and Brown as the “odd man out”, and as a “tired old man”. And labour now faces an image problem as the exhausted party, even though it did better than some expected at the polls. It will be fun to watch if Cameron and Clegg find ways to make their style of pragmatism a prevailing norm. And what will labour do? Go “scorched earth” (as the US republican party has)? In the meantime, Cameron deserves credit for seizing the moment. Let the games begin!

FOLLOW - Roger Cohen also likes what he saw, and in his editorial, gives a bit more detail about the new cabinet and the initial policy steps. Here is the link.