There is a persistent myth about in business, government, and community circles that hard won, dragged out, negotiations lead us to the best outcomes. Today this is becoming a universally accepted fact for those who teach negotiation tactics at the macro and the micro levels. However... To sustain a long, and drawn out, negotiation campaign you need a team, collective, army to form your collaborative entity. And the most common example of such a collaborative entity - within modern Western Societies - is a Union. The binding feature of a Union when negotiating pay rises, workers rights, benefits, etc is the projection of their sense of collective solidarity. And the"battle-tested" process for obtaining, maintaining, and sustaining collective solidarity is to appoint "delegates" who are beholding to a narrative [script] that has been thrashed out within a Caucus of people who have come to dominate their membership. This negotiating narrative describes the desired outcome that will be delivered by the delegates for the benefit of all members. Of course the initial negotiating narrative is often ludicrously ambitious. It is deliberately framed this way because all the delegates know that the most viable outcome must be much less on all measures of their initial demands. Thus the delegates [often disciples of an ideology] go into the negotiating process well prepared for a long drawn-out war with management or whomever is the keeper of the status quo. It is this system that has led most Western Corporations to under-perform since the turn of the Century especially given the advances made in technology and global reach of supply lines.
In practice all negotiations must be swift to form a lasting and viable solution to a problem. And what is surprising, perhaps, is that swift negotiations are simple because they are cooperative not collaborative [see photo]. The cooperative negotiation is based on trust and perhaps the most common example of this process in business, government, or life is the "handshake agreement". Shake hands physically, or virtually, with your new partner, supplier, work colleague, etc and the deal is done. It is done on the basis that all parties to this new agreement will work cooperatively to ensure a good, great, or excellent outcome. Within this trust-based process the narrative is negotiated not the outcome.
For more on negotiating the narrative not the outcome please click on the following link. See publication Learning to love Albert: negotiate the narrative not the outcome.
Richard
The mind of a minimalist is developed on a unique sense of you which, in turn, is based on individual needs not collective wants. For instruction on how to establish your sense of you: go to minimal-you.com and hit the "become a minimalist" button in the banner heading. This will take you to a payment scheme for a 10 day programme that will teach you how to design, enforce, and live with mind filters: these help you to be the best person you can be.
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