As I look back over the last year and longer throughout my career I am struck by the challenges presented by advising on large and complex outsourcing contract negotiations. The hours spent in conference rooms, from the well-appointed suites in lawyers’ offices and hotels, to basement rooms without windows. The well-meaning customers who keep changing their requirements because they never really understood them in the first place. Suppliers struggling to find a way to meet demands for low cost while still delivering high quality.
And yet despite all the tension and tedium these major transactions with their extreme challenges bring with them immense opportunity. You never come out the same as you started. You always learn something of value whether it is about your specialist subject, in my case the law, the rapidly evolving technology underpinning the contract delivery or the best way to approach a difficult negotiation.
But, and here’s the real challenge – it depends how we approach these tough situations. It’s all too easy to feel sorry for ourselves and the difficulties these tough deals always present. It really helps to see them as opportunities not problems. This blog on 7 Lessons You learn Through Life’s Challenges whilst more general in its approach than professional negotiations suggests quite sagely that Instead of looking at external circumstances and blaming them for unfortunate life events, look at yourself first and see if there’s anything you can improve. Can you change the way you live so that your life situation can improve?
In a similar vein this blog 10 Simple Things You Can Do To Get Through Difficult Times proposes that our ability to navigate the difficult times, you not only live a happier life, but you also grow as person.
Returning to my negotiation example it is when things get tough that you can learn most. I like, for example this Harvard Law School Blog on How to Negotiate Under Pressure and this Stanford piece Five Steps to Better Negotiating which suggests a different approach But what if you reframed the whole idea, to think of a negotiation not as a fight but as a problem-solving exercise? And one in which emotions can play a systematic and powerful role?
All improvement derives from and is honed by the biggest professional challenges we face. Without them we would stand still or maybe even move backward. And sometimes it can be as simple as having the courage to attend the next day’s meeting. As Winston Churchill said “If you are going through hell, keep going.”
It is also about attitude and seeking solutions not arguments, dealing in ideas and resolution not fighting over petty issues. Eleanor Roosevelt once commented “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
Dale Carnegie gets it about right when he says "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
For me the final word on this subject of learning from adversity goes to Martin Luther King The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
And yet despite all the tension and tedium these major transactions with their extreme challenges bring with them immense opportunity. You never come out the same as you started. You always learn something of value whether it is about your specialist subject, in my case the law, the rapidly evolving technology underpinning the contract delivery or the best way to approach a difficult negotiation.
But, and here’s the real challenge – it depends how we approach these tough situations. It’s all too easy to feel sorry for ourselves and the difficulties these tough deals always present. It really helps to see them as opportunities not problems. This blog on 7 Lessons You learn Through Life’s Challenges whilst more general in its approach than professional negotiations suggests quite sagely that Instead of looking at external circumstances and blaming them for unfortunate life events, look at yourself first and see if there’s anything you can improve. Can you change the way you live so that your life situation can improve?
In a similar vein this blog 10 Simple Things You Can Do To Get Through Difficult Times proposes that our ability to navigate the difficult times, you not only live a happier life, but you also grow as person.
Returning to my negotiation example it is when things get tough that you can learn most. I like, for example this Harvard Law School Blog on How to Negotiate Under Pressure and this Stanford piece Five Steps to Better Negotiating which suggests a different approach But what if you reframed the whole idea, to think of a negotiation not as a fight but as a problem-solving exercise? And one in which emotions can play a systematic and powerful role?
All improvement derives from and is honed by the biggest professional challenges we face. Without them we would stand still or maybe even move backward. And sometimes it can be as simple as having the courage to attend the next day’s meeting. As Winston Churchill said “If you are going through hell, keep going.”
It is also about attitude and seeking solutions not arguments, dealing in ideas and resolution not fighting over petty issues. Eleanor Roosevelt once commented “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
Dale Carnegie gets it about right when he says "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
For me the final word on this subject of learning from adversity goes to Martin Luther King The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
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