Negotiations are a part of everyday life. It is a process of using a wide variety of skills to create a valuable proposition for all concerned.
Never before has the ‘art of successful negotiations’ been as pertinent as today. If you wish to be a top notch employer or employee, or wish to skillfully juggle between a job and self employment, nothing will be quite as important as mastering the art of deft negotiations.
In the autumn of 2005, I met Professor Fred Crandall for the first time. I had heard a lot about his negotiations expertise and the extraordinary ‘negotiations’ course he taught each quarter at the IMC programme at Northwestern University. Dr. Fred Crandall is a senior member of Watson Wyatt’s (a reputed global consulting firm focused on human capital and financial management) office in Chicago. He has worked with organizations in a wide range of industries as financial services, manufacturing, distribution and logistics, retail and wholesale trade, route sales and service, health care, hi-tech and utilities. Dr. Crandall had also served as national partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and is an alumnus of UCLA, University of California at Berkeley, and University of Minnesota. With amazing credentials as above, I thought it imperative to enroll for the quarter long ‘negotiations’ course taught by Dr. Fred Crandall.
It was early days in the course. I was looking for a flash of brilliance from the intelligent man. He did not disappoint me and put a million dollar question to the 40 of us (select classmates and I) who had enrolled for the ‘negotiations’ course. He asked us if we thought ‘Everything is negotiable’ ‘That is a simple question with a simple answer,’ so I felt.
The class was rather vocal and a number of divergent opinions came out as the discussion progressed. The answers may have been right, but required deeper introspection and one precisely understood then, why negotiations is an art and science, and a fascinating discipline. The class was an amalgam of accomplished, intelligent, fun loving, versatile and competitive classmates from the East and West, who had worked across services, manufacturing and trading sector, including public service. Subsequently, we were involved in wide-ranging negotiations assignments and exercises for the quarter long course, encompassing domestic and international negotiations for personal and professional growth.
We had to record the progress we made as negotiators each week and to my delight the positive difference in my negotiating style was tangible. The course was a great blend of academic theory and pragmatic application of negotiations for success in almost all walks of life. It was one of the most interesting and intellectually stimulating courses of my academic sojourn at Northwestern University. Manipulative, absurd or unbelievable as it may sound, I was convinced by the end of the quarter that ‘Everything is negotiable.’
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Over the last three years, each time I have got into a professional negotiations exercise (within India or overseas) with the belief that ‘Everything is negotiable,’ it has worked for me. I am pretty certain not all my classmates would agree with the aforesaid statement and a number of you may have your doubts too, but I exhort you to read on and decide for yourself. I owe my ascent as a better negotiator to Dr. Fred Crandall. He is a brilliant negotiator — an absolute genius. He takes ‘negotiations as an art and science’ to new heights, and crafts his protege to win the negotiations process in a way that is beneficial to all parties concerned.
We seldom realize but negotiations are a part of our everyday life-with our beloved, family, friends, colleagues, associates and acquaintances. We negotiate and so does the person we communicate with negotiate. When we buy a car we negotiate, when we buy a house we negotiate, when we move jobs we negotiate, when we pursue a business deal we negotiate, when we are dating we negotiate, when we want a raise in pocket money from our parent we negotiate, when we communicate with kids we negotiate, when we buy a computer we negotiate, when we get a cellphone we negotiate, when we want a promotion we negotiate, when we want to save a job we negotiate, when we want capital for our new or existing business we negotiate, when we want to lease an office or residential premises we negotiate, when our manuscript is ready for printing we negotiate, when our painting is ready for exhibition we negotiate, and when we want something badly or at any cost we negotiate. Negotiations is not merely about saving money or asking for more. It is not about one-upmanship. It is a process of using a wide variety of skills to create a valuable proposition for all concerned.
The small world has created outstanding negotiators in all spheres of life-public and private enterprise. Observe a supplier and a retailer negotiate. Watch a car dealer negotiate with a prospective customer. Witness the negotiations between domestic staff and the lady of the house. Catch the sight of a CEO negotiating a bonus with the board of directors. See how an author negotiates an increase in royalty with the publisher, and witness a photographer negotiating his price with a client. All these examples will help you hone your negotiating skills. In a small world, you will find walking dictionaries and examples of adroit negotiators with or without formal or higher education. You can learn the art of negotiations from them.
Alternatively, you can read up books, articles, blogs and newsletters on negotiations, and then start negotiating (using a trial and error approach) on ‘small’ personal and professional matters, and develop your own negotiations style. You will make mistakes, but mistakes will make you a better negotiator. You can also enroll in for a short course or training programme on negotiations, which will provide you the necessary tools and techniques to skillfully negotiate pressing matters that govern your personal and professional life. Remember, the important thing is to formalize negotiations and give it a suitable framework that includes concrete, specific and measurable objectives, alternatives and an astute strategy.
The difference between a good, average and bad negotiator rests on the importance accorded to the basic premise ‘Is everything negotiable?’Try two scenarios and go into separate negotiations with a different mindset-first ‘Yes everything is negotiable’ and second ‘Some things are not negotiable.’ I am not asking you to compromise with your beliefs, but within accepted ethical behaviour, try the aforesaid approaches and observe the results. You will be surprised how the former approach will work for you nine out of ten times should you negotiate keeping in mind a ‘mutual benefit’ set-up or ‘win-win situation’ for parties to a negotiation. Start negotiating today. Negotiate small or big, negotiate in college or in university, negotiate at home or at work, negotiate overseas or within the confines of the country, but start today.
Whether you are in the creative or analytical profession, whether you work for a profit or non profit entity, whether you are a student or have just graduated, whether you are without a job or are about to shut shop as self-employed, and whether you are gainfully employed or are a successful entrepreneur, it is imperative for you to continually hone the art of negotiations.
The journey from 2010 to 2025 may include success and failures, fame and ignominy, profit and loss, the memorable and the unforgettable, but chiselling and polishing the art of negotiations will keep you saleable and razor-sharp to ride over adverse or moderate circumstances that arise out of factors beyond your control or not of your making.
Tomorrow’s CEO Will Come From HR and PR-Develop Your HR & PR Skills
Prior to my academic sojourn at Northwestern University, I served dual roles at CCMC. In addition to being a consultant on marketing and sales with a focus on bank cards and personal finance, I was responsible for the public relations function that included media management and external communications. CCMC and I were accorded regular media coverage by prominent publications in India, namely The Economic Times, The Times of India, The Financial Express, Business Standard, and Business Today.
In the year 2000, The Wall Street Journal, New York, quoted CCMC in a story that appeared on the first page. This was brought to our notice by a reputed business journalist in Mumbai. And what followed was more visibility with the media and increase in the client roster. I was responsible for CCMC’s mention in The Wall Street Journal (happened again in 2004), primarily because I followed a simple dictum-use Public Relations (PR) to build a brand.
Yet the credit for making me a far more holistic and cost effective marketer goes to Dr. Patricia T. Whalen because I attended her incredible ‘Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics’ class at Medill School, Northwestern University, during the winter quarter of early 2005. Prior to her academic career, Dr. Whalen spent nearly 20 years in corporate marketing and communications positions. She served as the top corporate communication executive for Clark Equipment Company, a Fortune 300 automotive manufacturing firm that is now part of Ingersoll-Rand and Eaton Corporations.
Dr. Whalen also served for eight years as Director of Marketing and Communication for Comsat Corporation, a Washington D.C. based international telecommunications firm that was subsequently acquired by the Lockheed-Martin Corporation. While at Comsat, she received the chairman’s award as the firm’s most productive manager and helped her division achieve the title, Telecom Marketing Department of the Year’ from Sales & Marketing Management Magazine.
Professor Patricia Whalen’s class was rather participatory, even as she went out of her way to encourage domestic and international students to share their thoughts and experiences. She wanted us to learn from each other. What ensued was exchange of interesting PR occurrences and episodes that encompassed US and international work arenas. To my mind, Dr. Whalen’s endeavour was to provide us an understanding of discerning public relations practices that would enable us to better integrate PR with allied functions within an organization, namely marketing, finance, human resources, among others.
The benefit of being taught PR from a multitalented individual who had been an acclaimed marketing and public relations professional and now a top notch academic meant the best of real world training and academic guidance encompassing PR strategic planning and research, media relations, corporate communications, crisis communications, PR measurement and evaluation, internal branding and employee communications.
I am often asked by college and university students, “Where will tomorrow’s CEO come from?” As requirements vary between industries or business, it is difficult to make an accurate prediction. But if you were to ask me to hazard a guess or make an educated inference, my opinion will not impress most. I am in the minority. Most will say finance, marketing, engineering, production or information technology, but at the risk of being proven wrong, I put my money on Public Relations or Human Resources (HR). My inexplicable sixth sense tells me that by 2025, a number of big and medium sized companies will have CEOs from a PR or HR background.
With talent management, social responsibility, image management, ethics and corporate governance becoming increasingly important factors for stakeholders (including investors and customers) in an organization, I can envision a future where PR and HR will be treated at par with perhaps, two of the most important (widely regarded) present day functions of businesses — marketing and finance.
People make iconic companies and perception makes them credible. HR and PR epitomize these aspects better than any other management function. You can hire the experts i.e. the best CFO to create more wealth, the ablest CTO to develop the most innovative hi-tech solutions, and the smartest CMO to be the trailblazer for cutting-edge, innovative and customized products and services, but for an uncertain, evanescent and fast evolving world, you require a ‘change manager and sagacious human capital specialist’ as a CEO, which to my mind would be best provided by an HR specialist or expert. In a competitive world where discerning individuals decide which organizations to work for based on its environmental friendly policies and customers buy from companies that have adopted social responsibility goals as a belief system, the public relations czar too would be a great choice for the CEO role. It is a fallacy to continue to assume that marketing and finance people know best how to run companies. If this were true, why did the economic crisis of 2008-09 touted as the biggest financial wreckage in decades mar the fortunes of some of the most renowned or iconic companies across the world? Apparent reasons — greed and wrong decisions. Veneered reasons — Lack of visionary leadership and image management skills. Marketing may be my first child and public relations the second offspring, but at the cost of speaking out of turn or shooting myself in the foot, I do feel that future CEOs will come from public relations and human resources domain.
Young Minds, HR and PR are getting hotter by the day. You are requested to remember a cardinal principle-You cannot create an iconic brand without strategic PR nor can you create a great organization without adept HR.
"TOMORROW’S YOUNG ACHIEVERS": 31 career defining insights for a radically different tomorrow
By Pushpendra Mehta
