I have been negotiating to change my car over the last week. For the final conclusive meeting with the dealer I set myself an additional sum I wanted off the asking price. I asked for more but achieved my target.
It is surprising how often in a negotiation if you set a reasonable target you can get there. Certainly, not setting any negotiation objectives is like navigating the oceans without charts. You will end up somewhere but it may not of course be where you intended.
The aims should also be realistic. I recall getting off a plane in San Francisco with a team preparing to discuss an IT contract that was a crucial part of a corporate deal. We were all jet lagged – which was probably why at dinner that evening with one of our senior executives, who also happened to be staying in the same hotel, we agreed to seek a target price that in the cold light of the net day we rather regretted. In fact to everyone’s surprise we eventually achieved it!
As Michelangelo said “The greater danger for most of us isn’t that our aim is too high and miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
There are of course some risks with aggressive goal setting. An interesting article from Harvard Business School comments: Intense focus on narrow goals can keep negotiators from seeing the big picture. As a result, goals may distract them from absorbing broader lessons they could apply to future negotiations, research suggests. In addition, negotiators may be tempted to adopt competitive strategies rather than cooperative ones to meet challenging goals and, as a result, miss out on opportunities to create value for their organizations in the process.
The other challenge is to make sure that the whole team understands and buys into the negotiation goals – I have seen carefully planned strategies fall apart and goals missed when somebody not involved with the core team steps in and tries “to help”.
There are of course other reasons than the absence of goal setting why negotiations founder. Still as Dwight D. Eisenhower said “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
It is surprising how often in a negotiation if you set a reasonable target you can get there. Certainly, not setting any negotiation objectives is like navigating the oceans without charts. You will end up somewhere but it may not of course be where you intended.
The aims should also be realistic. I recall getting off a plane in San Francisco with a team preparing to discuss an IT contract that was a crucial part of a corporate deal. We were all jet lagged – which was probably why at dinner that evening with one of our senior executives, who also happened to be staying in the same hotel, we agreed to seek a target price that in the cold light of the net day we rather regretted. In fact to everyone’s surprise we eventually achieved it!
As Michelangelo said “The greater danger for most of us isn’t that our aim is too high and miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
There are of course some risks with aggressive goal setting. An interesting article from Harvard Business School comments: Intense focus on narrow goals can keep negotiators from seeing the big picture. As a result, goals may distract them from absorbing broader lessons they could apply to future negotiations, research suggests. In addition, negotiators may be tempted to adopt competitive strategies rather than cooperative ones to meet challenging goals and, as a result, miss out on opportunities to create value for their organizations in the process.
The other challenge is to make sure that the whole team understands and buys into the negotiation goals – I have seen carefully planned strategies fall apart and goals missed when somebody not involved with the core team steps in and tries “to help”.
There are of course other reasons than the absence of goal setting why negotiations founder. Still as Dwight D. Eisenhower said “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
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