This week I attended an important training event in the City of London which I had organised and was to introduce. Its scheduled start was 9.30 for 10 in the morning. I had a choice of two trains to catch – one which would get me there just on time and one which would mean arriving early. I chose the earlier train. On my way to the station, I was held up by a queue at a temporary traffic light (which would certainly have got longer if I had arrived later) and then another traffic jam at the junction to the road to the station. I still just made the early train. Then in London there was a queue for the tube I planned to take going right out from Waterloo station onto the street. So, I started walking looking for a taxi – three refused to stop, one was taken by somebody just in front of me. When I finally hailed one it then waited for what seemed like ages in heavy traffic at a red traffic light. I eventually arrived with still enough time left to have a coffee at Pret a Manger and forget my eventful journey, before going to the training early, refreshed and ready to go. Had I gone for the later train the chances are I would have been late and missed my introduction.

What I had done, without consciously thinking about it in this way, was to leave a margin for error. This is a term “that probably originated in the popular reporting of results of public opinion polls but has made its way into more professional usage.” I know this may seem a bit obvious, but it is amazing how often people do arrive late to meetings for reasons beyond their control because they were trying to attend just on time. See this LinkedIn article 10 advantages to arriving early to meetings which says:

“One of the techniques of successful people is arriving early for meetings.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, formerly Gen. Eisenhower who led Allied forces to victory in WWII, was famous for his “when-to-arrive-for-a-meeting” philosophy. If you weren’t 10 minutes early for the meeting, you were late.”

One of the benefits is “You arrive with more peace of mind” so that “You are at a significant advantage if you start a meeting fully prepared, relaxed and focused — as opposed to the competitor who arrives out of breath, complaining about the traffic delay, and not fully organized. Put the odds in your favor.”
You also gain the chance to have conversations with your colleagues and people on the other side of a negotiation, which can prove invaluable in furthering and developing important relationships before the meeting actually starts. You can also set up equipment you are using to present. How many times does a presenter, arriving at the last minute, have technical difficulties in connecting their laptop to the conference screen, which is embarrassing and unprofessional – and wastes even more time.

However, reflecting on this topic I suggest that “margin for error” has a broader application in professional practice than just being on time for meetings. In a sense hurrying and last minute appearances are perhaps symptomatic of a deeper and more challenging malaise. The chances are that if we are rushing and leaving no margin for error on a regular basis, then this is a sign of a more general failure to manage our working (and also by extension home) lives and means that we are inherently not giving ourselves the space and time to deal with matters and make decisions. Everything gets done in such a rush, moving straight from one issue to another with no time to think, that the quality of our work and indeed our lives suffers.

See, for example, this blog Creating Margin: Time Management Tips to Avoid Overwhelm which observes “One of the most overlooked ways that people become disorganized is failing to build margin into their days. Lack of boundaries and good time management leave people stressed and overcommitted. Here are some specific ways – in the fabric of your daily life – you can create margin to slow down, be present, and truly enjoy your life”  and “Modern life presents so many more demands than ever before and we have kept taking more on our plates without creating space to decompress and reset.” It suggests coping mechanisms around “building in restful ways to our daily lives.”

See also this Forbes blog The 5 Best Time Management Tips To Help Improve Your Life which advocates beginning the day early and prioritizing tasks commenting:

“If something unanticipated pops up: a sick pet or child, a surprise meeting, someone popping into your office and needing more attention than you anticipated, etc. make your schedule flexible so it gives you some margin for error time wise, and makes it easy for you work on something else if a particular project comes to a halt or you are waiting for feedback”

I also found this interesting LinkedIn blog ‘Margin for Error’ in Project Management which observes in the different context of projects that “‘Margin for Error’ is the ‘room’ or ‘space’ or ‘leeway’ to make mistakes and still not jeopardize the successful outcome of an endeavor.”

As the legendary jazz musician Miles Davis said: “Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing”.

While the writer Victor Hugo suggested “He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.”
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And the American author Zig Zigler shrewdly observed “People often complain about lack of time when lack of direction is the problem.”

As the professional development manager for my function I am deeply interested in the process of learning. What does a busy professional have to do to effectively learn new things and keep up to date with best professional practice. Perhaps the easiest way is to passively attend an online or, perhaps better, in person talk or lecture or YouTube video where a fellow professional describes whatever the topic is typically using PowerPoint slides and with any audience participation limited to questions at the end. An improvement on this is a panel of speakers who each make a short introductory speech and then discuss the topic facilitated by a chairperson who gathers questions from the audience maybe through the Chat function for an online event.

Any of these can work, but take a look at the Learning Pyramid graphic which shows one view of the most effective retention rates for different methods of learning. This can really help to inform how best we can learn: the traditional “lecture” comes out worse with a 5% retention rate bettered even by just “reading”. There are of course different “qualities” of speakers from the worst, who simply read a script with no slides, to a dynamic audio visual presentation (which on its own has a 20% retention rate) with slides videos and audience participation by, for example, online surveys. Nevertheless  it is intriguing to see that that “discussion” and “practice doing” rate more highly in this analysis, with “teaching others” coming out on top with 90% retention.

I suggest that whatever method is used one of the forgotten arts is just to take the time to actively learn. Reading around the topic and the speaker before a talk and finding time to digest and put learning into practice can turn a passive exercise where you just receive knowledge into an active learning experience. In law firms trainees used to spend 6 months actually sitting with a senior lawyer to learn how they operated – almost learning by osmosis.

The objective of the speaker also matters. What are you trying to do as a presenter of knowledge:

• display your expertise
• sell your professional services
• entertain as well as inform.

I suggest the objective of all professional development is not just learning but changing and improving behaviour in a professional context as a result of the training. Teaching new or improved ways of helping legal or commercial clients or medical patients.

See this blog 8 Ways to Prioritize Your Professional Development which defines professional development as taking positive steps toward improving your skills and knowledge exploring eight strategies for doing so including:

• “Focus on Objectives – list the skills and knowledge you most want to learn
• Make learning a habit – build learning into your daily routine
• Learn at your best - schedule your learning for times of the day when your energy levels are high”
• 
  

This Harvard Business Review article Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development critiques the learning processes of many organisations observing “Not only is the majority of training in today’s companies ineffective, but the purpose, timing, and content of training is flawed”. It advocates spreading learning out over time and lean learning saying:

“Today’s fast-moving business landscape calls for organizations and their people to adapt to changing circumstances rapidly, and to always be learning. As Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly puts it, “Get good at beginner mode, asking dumb questions, making stupid mistakes, and teaching others what you learn.””
It also advocates “peer learning” that tried and tested but undervalued method when you simply “ask a colleague” who, where there is a culture of learning and development, will be only to pleased to help.

See also this Forbes post 5 Ways To Optimize Your Learning And Development which advocates Bite-Sized Learningand A Personalized Approach:
“On-demand courses tailored to employees' needs and preferences are the best way to motivate them to dedicate time to professional development. Corporate learning should also correspond to employees’ work and growth needs.”

And yet learning thoroughly can also take time; there are not necessarily effective shortcuts.  In the Tai Chi class I attend we are learning a form, a series of movements, derived from a martial art. It is very tempting to want to learn all of the 24 moves quickly. However, we are actually doing it more slowly and thoroughly over several months. The teacher learned in an even more traditional Chinese model where he was simply not allowed to learn the next move until he had perfected the last one.

I have concluded that in reality learning is a mix of the approaches described in the learning pyramid and in practice some combination of the methods can probably result in a higher knowledge retention rate. I propose learning is a continuous process that in real life is a combination of formal learning sessions, application in practice and learning from and teaching others. For organisations it is about creating a culture of continuous learning – see my blog in April on A Learning Culture. For us as individual professionals it is about having a curious and open mindset however long you have been practicing. The really true expert knows how little they actually know and how much there is to learn.

And what does the future hold. Maybe virtual reality will move from the gaming world into professional development, simulating issues we may encounter in real life. We can also use AI and improve our knowledge base with ChatGPT and the like. However, the same willingness to learn and to find the time to do so will still apply to professional development as a part of a busy day job, whatever medium we use for it.

As the speaker and author Brian Tracy observed “Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.”

While Henry Ford said “Anyone who stops learning is old at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young”.
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And Benjamin Franklin sums up this topic nicely “Tell me, and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

I have just finished reading a book that has been on my to read list for ages – Never Split the Difference. Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on it by Chris Voss. The author is a former FBI hostage negotiator who brings a different perspective to that staple activity of most of our professional lives in one way shape or form – the art of negotiation. It’s fascinating because he anchors the topic by reference to real life negotiations in most of which it was not just a question of how much you pay or what you receive in return, hostages lives were at stake. In this context he explains various techniques to understand and put yourself in the shoes of the other side, understanding their motivation at a deep psychological level and then exploiting this in the negotiation. He writes about how to:

• Quickly Establish Rapport
• Create Trust with Tactical Empathy
• Shape What is Fair

He advocates looking for what he calls Black Swans, critical “events or pieces of knowledge that sit outside our regular expectations and therefore cannot be predicted.” The book contains a useful appendix on how to prepare for a negotiation in a way that applies the lessons it sets out.

I have never negotiated a hostage situation and never want to, but the approach and issues resonate with my experience over many years of contract negotiation. Whatever side you are on negotiations should start well before the actual event with detailed preparation. I acted for a large public sector buyer of technology with a team leader who put this into practice. We met in person several times beforehand to role play what might occur in the actual negotiations and how the other side was motivated and likely to act in the negotiation room. We posted flip chart pages around the walls on how to approach and succeed in the negotiation, including trying to work out how the people who we were negotiating with might behave. So, if we were dealing with a partner or senior lawyer, for example, we could anticipate that they really knew their subject matter and might prove to be more flexible because they would know what they could concede and what to stand firm on. A more junior lawyer could be fearful of making constructive concessions because they were concerned about conceding anything at all. In this case it really helps to have the right people in the room, or at least to have access to them. 

By contrast if in our preparation we determined to take a particular stance on an important issue we also obtained buy in from our client’s sponsoring executive prior to the negotiation. This helps to counter the tactic of the other team trying to go behind your back to appeal to senior management in your organisation. If they do this and you are aligned, then a response confirming your position can be really helpful. If not chaos can ensue and your negotiating strategy undermined by some senior intervention. This early involvement of senior colleagues also assists in the final governance process most businesses have to go through before they can sign up to a particular deal.

Even then surprising revelations of fundamental issues driving the other negotiating party can derail the discussions and upset your carefully prepared approach. On one deal we got through almost a full day of negotiation with the other side refusing to budge on any financial matters at all. Then they finally showed their hand and revealed their “Black Swan”: their company was in such dire financial straits that unless we fundamentally renegotiated the deal we were discussing they would have to file for bankruptcy. This would have caused major problems for our client because they had no alternative technology they could use. We called a lengthy time out (another useful strategy) in order to formulate a revised approach.

I also just finished reading (it’s only 32 pages) Sun Tzu’s The Art of War written around 500 B.C. in China which has been used by modern generals for tactical insights. See this blog The Art of War & Negotiation which draws twelve lessons relevant to negotiation from the ancient military strategy book including:

• “He whose ranks are united in purpose will be victorious.”
• “Know the enemy and know yourself.”
• “Generally, he who occupies the field of battle first and awaits his enemy is at ease; he who comes later to the scene and rushes into the fight is weary.”

In face-to-face negotiations it really helps to arrive early and have a pre-meet in your offices or a coffee shop to discuss and plan for the day. You can also do this online with a Teams pre-meeting, though actually being present face to face is still in my view better if this is possible. In this context Chris Voss also points out that in the time just before a meeting and at the end as things are wrapping up is a great opportunity to assess the other side and spot any characteristics or behaviour outside of the formal meeting when they are more on their guard. This is much harder to do in a virtual meeting because these rarely start early, but nevertheless there may be some chatting at the start before the formal meeting commences.

These pre and post meeting chats can allow you to assess the state of mind of the other side and what their emotional approach may be in the meeting. A refusal to engage in any side bar conversations, arriving on time or late and starting the formal meeting straight away or rushing off at the end is not a good sign. People who behave like this may also be terse or even aggressive in the meeting. See this Harvard Business Review article  Emotion and the Art of Negotiation which examines the impact of anger on a negotiation observing  “Bringing anger to a negotiation is like throwing a bomb into the process, and it’s apt to have a profound effect on the outcome”. It discusses the impact of other emotions including anxiety which is generally not positive and the impact of showing emotions in a meeting. It observes “The best negotiators achieve great deals for themselves but leave their opponents believing that they, too, did fabulously, even if the truth is different.” and concludes that it is helpful to manage emotions in a meeting – “To be a better deal maker, conduct a thorough assessment of which emotions you are particularly prone to feel before, during, and after negotiations, and use techniques to minimize (or maximize) the experience and suppress (or emphasize) the expression of emotions as needed.”

See also this Forbes article The Art Of Negotiation: 15 Tips For Business Leaders To Master which include:

• Align Stakeholder Success With Your Own
• Deliver More Beyond Short-Term Needs
• Start From A Place Of Empathy
• Develop A Flexible Mindset
• Ask Questions To Produce More Details

As Chris Voss said “Life is negotiation” and 

“Humour and humanity are the best way to break the ice and remove roadblocks.”
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While Sun Tzu observed “Those skilled in war subdue the enemy’s army without battle. They capture his cities without assaulting them and overthrow his state without protracted operations.”
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