Bring the ideas of integrative (not competitive) negotiation to bear as you lead daily and large-scale organizational activities. The integrative approach means that as many issues as possible, from as many stakeholders as possible, are on the table at the beginning, are allowed to evolve throughout the process, and can be packaged or broken apart. The goal is to increase value across the stakeholders such that buy-in is is natural. The dynamics are of problem solving, not a battle. The solution is often a solid mix that supports the needs of all the stakeholders in a creative way none would have thought of on their own.

Everyone may not get everything they want, but they will get more of what they need and will understand the process that got them there.

Key: We already know the basic skills of negotiation. This means the game plan gets a running start.

Problem

No more lifetime employment (unless you work for yourself). No more work/life balance (it’s work/life integration now). No more careworn tools that we can hand down to our children (it’s bring-your-own-tool-of-the-moment since not even your information tech gurus can keep up).

We live and work in a world that is constantly changing in terms of the ways we communicate, collaborate, make decisions, find jobs, and entertain ourselves. Our organizations often need to operate globally, work jointly with other organizations to take on big tasks, and share research and results with employees, customers, clients, and partners as never before. The people inside our organizations are probably more diverse in terms of age, technological sophistication, and cultural background than just a few years ago.

To be effective in this changing world, we need to find ways to work and manage across all of the related organizational processes, technology tools, and people populating our workplaces. Can you keep all that in your head and come up with a great solution on your own? I know I can’t. If I tried, my single-perspective solution would likely be flawed and impossible to implement. Organizational and environmental complexity, as well as demands for transparency, require a more engaging approach to leadership and work.

Solution

Bring the ideas of integrative (not competitive) negotiation to bear on both daily and large-scale organizational activities with a goal to increase value across the stakeholders. The dynamics are of problem solving, not a battle. A negotiation approach helps to create solutions that are sustainable and support the needs of all the stakeholders in a creative way none would have thought of on their own. Different stakeholder needs are made visible by the process of negotiation. Trade-offs can be seen and understood. Leading by negotiation creates more powerful, engaging, and effective organizations as the process is more transparent, creative, and aware of the diversity of needs.

The integrative approach means that as many issues as possible, from as many stakeholders as possible, are on the table at the beginning, are allowed to evolve throughout the process, and can be packaged or broken apart to create the most value.

Begin by brainstorming about the stakeholders to the situation. Be inclusive - given the complexity of our world, you never know who will have a critical need or a spectacular idea. The detail you go into should parallel the importance of the situation. Low importance: Use these next steps as quick thought experiments. High importance: Get out the computer and open up the spreadsheet -- knowing that you’ll edit it over the course of the situation.
List the stakeholders across the top of a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are great as they can be edited to add rows or columns as you learn more about the situation.
For your own preparation, begin a list of likely “issues” (things that stakeholders would care about and need to bring to the table). Be sure to consider issues related to all of the:
- People involved -- who they are, their training, their preferences
- Technology tools -- everything from electronic to physical (like conference room space). Are these tools that you have or might need? What are their cost and support needs?
- Organizational processes -- standard operating procedures that might need to be adjusted, new policies that could help, work flows to adjust, choke points to get around.
Think about each stakeholder and list the possible issues down the left side of the spreadsheet.
Still working on your own preparation, add rows under each issue for the different possible outcomes that could occur related to that issue. These include the outcomes you hope you reach, and those you hope you don’t. Be sure to put yourself in the other stakeholders’ shoes as you think about these options.
Next step is to write-in estimated responses for each of the issue/outcome/stakeholder cells. To keep it simple stick to four categories: neutral (don’t care), strongly for or against, moderately for or against, deal breaker/maker (use this one rarely, if at all).
You’ve now done your basic preparation -- the issues are “on the table” and you are ready to being negotiating - whether or not you call it that. As others come to understand this approach, have everyone draft a spreadsheet and then start discussing your drafts to tighten up the predictions and estimates. It’s often interesting to see how far off people’s estimates of other stakeholders’ preferences are. This is a great way to increase understanding.

The goal is to increase the value from a decision that any one person would have come up with on their own or from what would have happened from a different style of decision building. Have a bias toward trade-offs versus compromise. Compromises leave everyone with less than what they want. Trading off lower value outcomes on one issue in return for a big value outcome on a different issue generally creates more value overall.

Everyone may not get everything they want, but they will get more of what they need and will understand the process that got them there. Commitment to the decision will be higher as the stakeholders were publicly involved, participated voluntarily (hopefully), and if there’s a handshake, a kiss, or a “so help me God” at the end, there is an expectation that the deal is set. (There is a reason weddings and swearing-in ceremonies follow the same public, voluntary, hard to get out of procedures -- these are great behaviors to create commitment.)

Leading by negotiation gets a running start since we already know the basic skills of negotiation.

Practical Impact

When key stakeholders are involved in a negotiation, they will work to protect their own interests. This frees the group to find solutions that integrate different stakeholder's needs. The benefit of this approach over other forms of leadership is that it allows people to worry about their own outcomes, while still keeping the result in-tune with the needs of the whole.

Integrative negotiation is a form of problem solving that also provides the benefits of training as you go (if you're involved in the negotiation, you're going to have a better understanding of the final solution) and increased commitment due to public, voluntary involvement that most people in business understand is a done deal once the handshakes are made.

First Steps

Next time someone says, "what should we do?" suggest framing the problem as a negotiation. If no one asks "what should we do?" but instead someone starts building a solution on their own, suggest that it be reframed as a negotiation.

Compare the negotiated results of the new solution to what had been in place, or to a similar process running in another part of the organization. Score the results in terms of the diversity of stakeholder interests that are addressed, the ease of implementation, and overall value/performance.

Credits

Thanks to Josh Dykstra for triggering the idea for this hack and Chris Grams and the rest of the MIX Hackathon Pilot Group for the energy to follow through.

Images

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July 6, 2011 at 8:26am

John Doe

Interesting approach. Approaching solution innovation and implementation through allowing the ideas to grow and thrive in a healthy environment definitely ensures that the most value is put into each idea on the table, which should lead to the best ideas.

But I'm curious about another point. Did any of your reading lead to any guidelines of when to utilize collaborative negotiation versus competitive negotiation versus quick, fast and unilateral decisions? Has collaborative negotiation been found to be a universal tool that fits every situation?

I'm thinking about the times when time is of the essence and teams have already bubbled the best ideas up to the considered. In my mind, there is a time/value trade off with solutions that have a value half-life.

I heard a random number thrown out at a conference, something like only 10% of decision within a high caliber company really need to undergo deliberation. The other 90% simply need ANY decision (within reason).

Also, do you find that collaborative negotiation works in groups with highly innovative and passionate teams? Seems like this could get pulled into a never ending loop of project plugs and incremental improvement budget increases. When you have competing ideas that have fundamental differences, must one switch to competitive negotiations after a series of collaborate negotiation sessions to begin cutting the ideas that didn't quite make the grade, or is this also part of the collaborative process?

I will definitely need to brush up on collaborative negotiation. Thank you for your contribution!

July 13, 2011 at 10:07am

Terri Griffith

I created a flow chart of "Should you Lead by Negotiation or Go It Alone?" Thank you for the inspiration. I'll add it to the images section at the bottom of the hack. Would appreciate your comments.

July 13, 2011 at 11:33pm

Alberto Blanco

I have found the flowchart really helpful. Well done!!

July 6, 2011 at 9:47am

Terri Griffith

Anthony, You identified an excellent needed dimension. Thank you. Yes, we do need to make choices about when to take the time to collaborate and when to just take action. I draw from Vroom & Yetton seminal work on leadership decision making when I add these questions:

Does the quality of the outcome matter?
Do you have the information to do this on your own?
Can the issues and stakeholders be identified?
Does commitment to the outcome matter?
Can the stakeholders' goals be met -- or is it likely to result in an impasse?

Vroom and Yetton provide a decision tree approach to then deciding on the strategy for making the decision. Give me a day or two and I'll create one for this hack. You are correct in that collaboration (like many group tasks) can take longer -- so we need to know that the benefit is worth the cost. Military teams do not hold a meeting when under fire...

July 13, 2011 at 10:10am

Terri Griffith

Added image of the flow chart (see last section of the hack)

July 12, 2011 at 11:16am

Alberto Blanco

A very interesting approach. It could be a sound start in promoting corporate strategy as everyone’s business. What I like the most of this hack is the fact that invite us to think about others during the ideation/preparation process. As terry wrote: "be sure to put yourself in the other stakeholders’ shoes"

July 13, 2011 at 9:16am

Terri Griffith

Alberto,

You hit on a key part of the process. If we can't get ourselves and our colleagues working to make the change better for everyone, we shouldn't be surprised when success rates fall below 50%. Great part of the negotiation approach is that you get multiple people working together -- more heads are better than one for the quality and the commitment!

July 13, 2011 at 3:03am

Sam Knuth (Folk-Williams)

I really like this approach. It reminds me a bit of some elements of design thinking (and actually a bit of the process I use for problem solving/solution building at Red Hat), but I've never considered actually framing the discussion as a negotiation. I've learned that it's often impossible to get "consensus" but that it can be feasible to reach an agreement. This is a great framework for that.

On the question of when to collaborate vs. when to make a decision, I find in my work that often the facilitator of the discussion needs to insert themselves to either push for a decision or re-cap the consensus view and move on. When people get into the heat of discussion they may forget about the outcome and just keep re-hashing the same points.

I'd love to see the hack on decision making!

July 13, 2011 at 9:13am

Terri Griffith

Hi Sam,

Design thinking is certainly part of the heritage of this hack. I just find negotiation an easier way to get there (more people understand the approach). You're right that this is a twist in that we also have norms in negotiation for what agreement means - very helpful when working through a problem. As to the "decision making" hack -- I hadn't thought of Vroom, Yetton & Yago's (1988) work that way -- but you're right! http://faculty.css.edu/dswenson/web/LEAD/vroom-yetton.html