Negotiation

One of the modern day negotiation mantras is “win-win”, essentially stating that everyone at the negotiating table has to win. At Microsoft, it’s a “win-win-win”, underscoring the importance of the “invisible” and often ignored customer/partner as the third winner. Excellent strategy at the outset! However, it may not always work because of its premise – everyone has to win.

What I have come to realize is that there are times when one may have to lose – and that one may very well be me. There are times when the larger interests should be kept in mind – such as corporate goals – to ensure what is best for the company is agreed upon by all involved regardless of who wins and who loses. While it’s not always about winning or losing, it’s also not always about winning for everyone either. This gives a whole new dimension to the art of negotiation. It’s most certainly about winning for the company – an attitude that demonstrates the negotiator’s value add to the company.

It’s important to realize that Negotiation is not a battle, but a tool available for negotiators to ensure the interests of the party they represent are safeguarded at all times. The challenge I have seen that many negotiators have is identifying the party they truly represent. This is often times mistaken to be the organization they fall under.

Last year, I was working on a project in collaboration with over a dozen different groups. All these groups were contributing for my project, and a couple of groups were actually developing components. Everything was going smoothly until… the time of delivery to user acceptance came. One of the groups delivered a mismatched interface from original requirements. Thus began the negotiation. While I was pushing hard with the group to get their interface changed so that it matches my requirements, my opinion at that time was that this particular group was not cooperating, despite their “failure”. This was a challenge I had to overcome to ensure success for my group or I am looking at the failure of the project. I knew that I had all the “ammo” to win the battle.

Right about this time, I was given some very high level insights into what else was going on in that group, an insight I did not have before. This made me look at the challenge from a different angle. My goal is to ensure success for the party I represent – not the org I fall under, but the company I work for. Winning for my group would mean at least a couple of things – one, putting a severe strain on the relationship with this group, and two, putting strain on the corporate goals. So, I discussed the issue with my team, did some research and found that accepting the deliverable “as is” and changing the component my team developed would be easier than pushing forward with my narrow agenda of winning. I would have ensured my victory, but would have lost a possible ally, made many professional enemies and strained corporate goals.

In the next meeting, I communicated to the other group's representative that my group will make the necessary changes to complete the integration successfully. It required some more testing on our part. However, it did not strain the relationship nor the corporate goals.

Strictly speaking, this was not a win-win. However, after properly defining some key terms, and understanding what is not being said at the negotiating table, it turned into an all-round win – project was successful, the group relationship and the corporate goals were at a status quo.

Key Message – Negotiate to succeed, not necessarily to win.