Advanced Negotiation
and Strategic Procurement Workshop
Featuring Case Studies of Global Sole-Source Vendors
and Applying Harvard University Global System™ Tools
Definition
Interest-based Principled Negotiation is about understanding and reaching out to
targeted players and building durable bridges based on mutual interests.
Its focus is on the creative ways and business acumen to enlarge the pie
and secure lasting value that is superior to what can be gained by compromise,
arbitration, courts, and other coercive means of dispute resolution.
Principled negotiations promote trust and effective long-term true-partnering working relationships.
Program Objectives
Through short lectures, discussions, individual exercises and group case studies,
this hands-on fast-paced program helps the participants acquire and apply principled-negotiation
skills, competencies, a proven framework and practical tools.
The focus is to incorporate the principled-negotiation approach to the day-to-day
behavior of the participants, and specifically to address difficult negotiations with vendors,
including sole-source suppliers, threats, risk mitigation and conflict management. Based on real-life examples
and case studies, the learning is practical and structured to be pertinent to the
experience of the participants and their organization.
The target audience includes executives, buyers, sellers, project managers,
team leaders and other professionals.
Following are the specific objectives of the program:
- Understand the principled-negotiation process
and acquire a thoroughly tested
pragmatic framework to prepare for and conduct, throughout your value chain, both strategic negotiations (upstream)
and day-to-day operational negotiations (downstream);
- Learn proven tools to understand internal and
external players (their perceptions,
hidden agendas and underlying interests); craft strategic and operational mandates
(see samples of Harvard University Global System™ instruments:
Negotiation Scope and
Harvard® Brainstorming Grid);
Assess the interests and
degrees of freedom of each party, and explore a wide range
of options and tactics to cover expected and unexpected situations,
before contemplating a strategy for mutual gains;
Scan for, identify and mitigate risk;
and secure reasonable contingencies
or a walk-away graceful-exit alternative (BATNA) at each major milestone,
if no agreement can be reached;
Learn to listen, empathize, communicate,
engage, and negotiate ethically,
with and without the benefit of authority, regardless of the
party involved; be it at or outside the negotiation table;
Learn to use collaborative power
constructively, and to respond effectively
to those who don’t;
Learn the ingredients essential
to the creation of lasting agreements.
Specifically, learn to allocate responsibility and avoid role conflicts
which impair implementation of negotiated agreements;
Practice face-to-face negotiations
under increasingly complex situations,
and with demanding vendors and negotiators who may need assistance vis-à-vis their
own constituencies;
Identify the various tactics used
by coercive and difficult negotiators, and
learn to address them without compromise, fear or favor;
Develop constructive ways to
prevent and manage hostility and deadlocks;
Detect how to call for a
recess or a graceful exit when the face-to-face atmosphere
is neither adding substantive nor relational value;
Act as an ethical, proactive and
caring negotiator; and never forget the
common good and the needs of each constituency, be it at the negotiation
table or not;
Contribute to the building of an
ethical and proactive principled-negotiation
culture within your team, your organization and its partners and ultimately throughout your industry
to improve effectiveness, governance and reduce the spurious and frictional costs of doing business.
Program Structure
This intensive program is divided into four parts:
Pre-readings: We believe learning
occurs most readily when quickly applied to real-life situations. In order to
devote much of the workshop time to deal with back-home situations, the participants must study the
pre-readings.
Survey of each participant needs
and background prior to the first workshop
A three-day Principled-Negotiation
Workshop (main workshop)
An optional 2-day
follow-up session.
Main-Workshop Outline
The main workshop comprises short lectures, demonstrations, role plays, group case studies,
and for those interested, personal consultations after hours.
1. Practical Tools to Understand and Profile Sole-Source Vendors
- How do they get strategic intelligence about your organization, its subsidiaries and allies
- How to glean cutting-edge knowledge on vendors legally and ethically
– Harnessing neglected human-intelligence sources within and outside your organization
– Virtual-intelligence sources (Invisible networks, WB-Machine,
PDI-News)
- Proven qualitative instrument to capture asymetric vested interests (F-Scale)
- Sole vendor's behavior in negotiation: Insights into stakeholder psychographics and power
- Validating competitive advantage: intellectual property, leadership levers
(sales, service, proximity, customization, critical mass, scale, performance metrics,
favorable terms and conditions)
- Lessons from Procter & Gamble: Implementing best supply-chain practices, best-in-class procurement
and group purchasing;
targeting global inter-operable standardization;
seeking the most favorable terms early; insisting on fair and ethical treatment of sub-contractors and building
long-term relationships through strategic sourcing
- Applying above tools to profile buyer/vendor strengths
– British Petroleum team exercise: F-scaling BP, Mitsui and GE interests
- Role of oil & gas associations (API, IPAA, PPDM, ISM Petroleum Industries Buyers Forum) in sharing
intelligence, syndication, group purchasing and standardization
- Road map for conducting principled negotiations with vendors
- 12-steps Negotiation preparation checklist
2. Validating Interests and Goals Behind Positions
- Differentiating between positions and vested interests
- Harvard Negotiation-Scope Tool for clients and vendors: Presentation and demo
- Tests for goal validity. Drafting the Negotiation Mandate
- Main Case Study: Making explicit the conditions beyond your control.
Defining client and vendor risks and gray areas.
- Practical and rapid exercise to illustrate resistance to change and
the temptation to go back to positional bargaining
3. Brainstorming to Create Options and Strategies for Mutual Gains
- Differentiating between options, interventions, strategies and tactics
- Translating options into strategy, tactics and deliverables: Strategy formulation tool demo
- Case study: High-stake multi-partite negotiations with powerful players (Wakefield)
- Case debriefing: Focus on critical success factors to structure deals with lasting value
- Main Case Study: Teamwork on inventing options and debriefing
4. Legitimate Benchmarks to Strenghten Offers and Counter-Offers
- Best practices metrics in comparative benchmarking: Best-in-class values (costs),
Business-as-usual (BAU) baseline costs, Best-in-class terms & conditions for
comparable quality, quantity, time, location and context (QQTLC)
5. Preparing for a Graceful Exit, If Necessary
- Exercise illustrating the Best Alternative
to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)
- Debriefing discussion on a good BATNA and related disclosure dilemmas
- Main case Study: Teamwork on BATNA and debriefing
6. People Issues
- Differentiating substantive from people issues
- How to gain, communicate and use power constructively
– Characteristics, forms and sources of power
– Role of power in Principled Negotiations
- Practical template for conflict diagnosis and resolution
- Case study: Dealing with difficult people
– Negotiating with vendors who inappropriately
resort to higher authority to get their way
– Negotiating laterally without the benefit of authority
- Exercise: What should you do differently with difficult suppliers and clients?
7. Terms and Conditions; Pricing and Bidding
- Bidding exercise: Buying products and services
- Reservation pricing, terms and conditions, framing, escalation, soft money,
splitting the difference, predatory pricing and other tactics
- Negotiation exercises involving real transactions with offers and counter offers
- Progress payments: Counterproductive sole-vendor practices neglected by most oil
and gas companies
- How to validate bids and cost estimates; dealing with hidden profits, spurious costs and saving claims
- Teamwork exercise on terms and conditions
8. Planning and Managing Closure and Tracking Implementation
- Ten steps to ensure a worthwhile deal and avoid deadlocks,
premature or inadequate closure
- Main Case study: Harvard® Responsibility Charting.
- Focus on veto prevention and role conflicts
- Group exercise integrating responsibility, accountability, power and authority
- Main Case Teamwork: Process to avoid premature closure and forge
a lasting agreement
- Boeing-Hygea case study: Lessons to ensure compliance by sole vendors
- Strategic frequency of controls for strict monitoring and governance
- Counterintuitive tips to validate progress reports: 360° rapid reviews
- How to anticipate and correct schedule-acceleration risks
- Addressing life-cycle liability
- Adequate documents for open-book accounting and sole-source audits
9. Conducting Negotiations and Putting It All Together
- How to avoid serious negotiation mistakes
- Harborco high-stake negotiations: Advanced multi-group multi-issue case study
- Harborco debriefing: dealing with trust, uncertainty, imperfect information,
technical complexity, fleeting coalitions, changing players, agents, and surprise events
10. Synthesis & Conclusion
- How to negotiate without confrontation, coercion or manipulation
- Characteristics of exemplary negotiators: essential knowledge (not necessarily diplomas),
skills, attitudes and values
Program Leader: Alain Paul Martin
Trained in negotiation and mediation at Harvard Law School, Alain Paul Martin went on to develop entrepreneurship skills at Harvard Business School (1997-1999) and is a 2012 Fellow in Advanced Leadership (ALI), an inter-faculty initiative at Harvard University. At Harvard, he also delivered presentations on strategic thinking and large-scale risk management to Harvard fellows and MBA students and on leadership at the Ivy League Summit. He led principled negotiation and project management seminars in Europe, the Americas and Asia for companies including Boeing, Bombardier, Desjardins Financial Group, PEMEX, EON Renewables, Teck Metals, Textron Bell Helicopters and governments.
A bar-certified trainer, Alain continues to conduct negotiation workshops for lawyers, judges and policy makers. An innovator and patent holder with advanced technology and operations-research background, Alain concurrently leads a team focusing on innovative and sustainable job creation and retention through optimal complexity reduction, critical thinking, brainstorming and decision-making skills in education and the workplace.
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Assisted by P. M. Jean Chretien, Alain Martin leads a senior executive workshop
titled "Building a Great Nation" for Cabinet ministers, senior executives and legislators.
Photo Courtesy of Jean-Marc Carisse available
under GFDL License.