I was privileged to get some tickets through the LTA ballot for myself and my son to the Wimbledon tennis last week. We watched from Henman Hill and No 1 Court. Great day out. I travelled by car paying half price for the official parking as it is electric. On the way I had “an argument” with Google Maps! Don’t get me wrong I think this a fantastic app and service, and I use it all the time. BUT if you set a particular route, it can be very obstinate and keeps taking you back to this chosen route. I wanted to go a particular way at a junction to avoid road closures in Wimbledon Village. Instead, it insisted I turned left off a dual carriageway when I was in the middle lane and did not really want to. As I rather distractedly attempted to change lanes the yellow lane warning sign came on in my car’s wing mirror (really useful add on) and as I glanced left, I saw a car in the lane I was approaching. I stopped the action and avoided a collision. I was fortunate and knew when to stop a potentially damaging or dangerous action.
 
This principle applies equally in our professional working life. It’s not all about planning and doing things well, but also having the knowledge, instinct and experience to know when to stop doing something rather than carrying on regardless. As a manager conducting a performance appraisal sometimes you have to bite your tongue and avoid saying something over critical or derogatory. This can leave the employee resentful or disengaged. There are generally better ways to get your point across. A very good junior solicitor once came to me for a review of a short but critical agreement. It was not well drafted. I almost told her it was rubbish but just stopped myself. She did not need this criticism, and just looking at me and then back at the agreement herself observed it was a very poor and hurried effort and she would start again. 
 
In IT contract negotiations there are so many times that jumping in with a critical or negative view is far more damaging than intended – especially to people’s delicate ego’s! - and can be really detrimental to progress. It is far better to say nothing aggressive and think of a more constructive way to make the point. Specifically in negotiations some simple “stopping” techniques that help are:
 

• Use silence deliberately. If you feel a reaction rising, pause before responding — even a few seconds allows a reset.
• Reframe the other side’s tactics as moves, not attacks. “They’re anchoring low” is less threatening than “they’re disrespecting me.”
• Ask questions instead of reacting – and then wait patiently for a response. “Help me understand how you got to that number” buys time and shifts from defence to information-gathering.
• Call a lunch break or even stop for the day to allow emotions to settle and solutions to appear.

 
See this Harvard Law School blog Emotional Triggers: How Emotions Affect Your Negotiating Ability which observes “Emotions—of all kinds—shape our thoughts, behavior, and even our physiology. In negotiation, researchers have long documented the impact of integral emotions—feelings triggered by the negotiation itself.” It suggests we should identify our own “personal emotional triggers” and indeed those of our counterparts on the other side of the table and concludes “By learning to recognize and label incidental emotions in ourselves and others, negotiators can reduce their disruptive effects and keep discussions focused on substance rather than mood.”
 
More generally according to AI, citing a Harvard Business Review article, professionals should stop an activity or project when data shows it no longer serves its strategic purpose. It is time to step back when your team is in danger of falling into the "sunk cost" trap - continuing simply because you've already invested significant time, money, or effort. There are several clear markers to help professionals identify when it is time to halt a specific activity or initiative including:
 

• Lack of Strategic Alignment.  A project should be stopped when regular monitoring shows the gap between the effort put in and the outcome is consistently widening. Letting go is a sign of good stewardship, not failure.

 

• Diminishing Cognitive Returns. Proactive engagement  demands intense mental effort. Research shows that forcing extra effort on a routine can deplete cognitive reserves, leading to more errors. If an extra activity is making you worse at your overall job, it should be stopped.

 
This links into managing our work on a daily or weekly basis. It can be important to be aware when to say no to some proposal or activity - see this article Learn when—and how—to say no in your professional life which suggests “We strongly recommend getting into the habit of being deliberate about what invitations to say yes to, even before you get to the point of filling up your weekly calendar. You can do that by conducting an informal cost-benefit analysis.” This is especially true in our interconnected and always on working world where demands and requests come not just across negotiating tables but through Teams, e-mail and instant messages – and even by phone (remember phone calls?). 
 
See this Warwick Business School  Careers blog: The importance of saying no which advises “The ability to say no is a crucial career skill that could prevent burnout while protecting your wellbeing. By declining certain commitments, you preserve time and energy for high-priority work, establish professional respect, and contribute to the creation of healthy workplace dynamics.” There is even a book on this topic Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes  summarised as follows. “Many of us comply much more than we realize. How many times have you wanted to object, disagree, or opt out of something but ended up swallowing your words, shaking your head, and just going along? Analyzing cases ranging from corporate corruption and sexual abuse to everyday acquiescence at work, the doctor's office, and in our personal lives, award-winning organizational psychologist Dr. Sunita Sah delves deep into why the pressure to comply is a corrosive and often invisible force in our society.” 
 
The American comedian Bill Crawford observed “Sometimes knowing what to do is knowing when to stop”.
 
While the Australian cricketer Spencer Johnson suggested "… letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on."  
 
And as the French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy put it “You have to know when to stop – that’s wisdom.”
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​I have for the past two months been organising a tennis session on a Sunday morning at the club I belong to. Not particularly taxing you would have thought, but in practice surprisingly challenging. First, you need to book 4 courts every week in advance, but as the club will not allow block bookings (I tried challenging this policy but to no avail), you need a team of 4 fellow members to be bookers. This means going online to the club’s website at 8am 6 days beforehand. You have to be on time because others compete for the courts and time slot we want. Also, although in theory you can book any court, mid-way through my stint some lady players complained to a colleague and to the chair of tennis that we were booking “their” courts! Then once the courts are sorted you need to find the players from a pool of some 55. Again, should be easy but people are busy, get injured, have other commitments or just change their availability. Or their response goes to junk mail. Sometimes we had 16 and sometimes only 6 players. All had to be paired with someone they had not played with recently. 
 
Anyway, it all went well and looking back on it I realised this was at least to some extent because I planned carefully, almost as if it had been a professional transaction. In addition to the team of 4 bookers, I had 2 reserves who were both required at various times. I created Word templates for the bookers and again for the players on the actual day. Not rocket science I know, but the point I want to make is that while we all readily criticise poor or even non-existent planning (see my blog 2 years ago Walk the Week - XXXX Poor Planning), we should also recognise when the best-laid plans of mice and men (to paraphrase badly) actually do work out and deliver.
 
By way of a more work-related example, some years ago when I was in private practice a very large client who was procuring some very complex and expensive technology invited me to an in person planning session. I was surprised because normally as lawyers we are only asked to attend the actual contract negotiation, with perhaps a short pre-meet in a café. This was different. Every member of the team covering all the disciplines – commercial, procurement, technical, finance, legal, operational and management – were present. The team leader (who had invited me - not interestingly the in-house legal team though they concurred) led us through creating a procurement and negotiation plan in great detail. We role played and filled a conference room with flip chart pages of notes capturing our work and the plans we arrived at. And all this was well before any contact with would be suppliers. Not surprisingly the procurement was a success, although there were subsequently some delivery challenges as there often are with the introduction of new technology. Even then we were well placed to advise again (with the rest of the team) because we had been on the whole journey, and not just called in to negotiate the terms and conditions.
 
A way of looking at this is as “scenario planning” which at an industry level was pioneered by Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970’s. Confronted with unpredictable oil markets, Shell pioneered formal scenario planning rather than relying on linear forecasting. This foresight allowed the company to survive the 1973 OPEC oil crisis largely unscathed and eventually become one of the largest energy companies globally. Scenario planning is a strategic management tool used to map out multiple plausible futures. Instead of predicting a single outcome, organizations identify critical uncertainties to prepare for "what-if" moments. This enables proactive risk management, robust decision-making, and long-term resilience. See this IBM article What is scenario planning? which discusses “the process of creating multiple scenarios for potential futures, based on a range of different uncertainties”. It comments that “With scenario planning, organizations can visualize different scenarios and reveal critical uncertainties long before a crisis occurs. This process can provide a competitive advantage by enabling enterprises to brainstorm and think through ahead of time what actions might need to be taken”. It proposes steps to create a scenario plan and discusses some different types including exploratory, operational and strategic.
 
I propose that this sort of approach can be applied just as readily and effectively to contract negotiation as to business or function strategy. AI suggests that “Scenario planning in a negotiation means mapping out multiple potential futures and preparing specific responses for each.” Harvard Law School discusses this approach in The Program on Negotiation suggesting that “Studying and examining negotiation scenarios allows us to sharpen strategic judgments, manage feelings before, during, and after a negotiation, and allow implicit ideas, assumptions, and theories to surface.” Staying in Boston this Harvard Business School paper How to Prepare for a Negotiation proposes that “Planning for expected and unexpected outcomes is essential to negotiating effectively. Negotiations are unpredictable. It's often difficult to know how the other party will respond. Preparation can make the difference between success and failure.”
 
My research suggests that it is very easy when considering this topic to stray into negotiation tactics, which is a laudable but, in some ways, narrower subject. Looking across the whole of a procurement with the negotiation and delivery teams at a strategic level before any negotiation shot is fired is a different and more profound activity. It also has the incidental benefit of creating not just a negotiating team with a common purpose and objectives, but a set of people who understand the project and can be reengaged if it starts to go off the rails. This happened with the example I cited above and meant we could reconvene as a team to reset and stabilise the project.
 
Nowadays I think technology such as AI can help with this process, but as yet anyway, is no substitute for getting people together in a room to discuss and develop a common purpose and approach.
 
As Benjamin Franklin said “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
 
While the American baseball player Yogi Berra shrewdly observed “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
 
And the racing car driver Bobby Unser proposed “Success planning is where preparation and opportunity meet.”