The Naked Negotiator

Our assumptions often act as barriers that stop us coming up with creative solutions.

Dairy farmers have long believed that twice-a-day milking is a must, in order to maximize output and productivity. But farmers who have tried once-a-day milking have put a lie to this assumption.

Cows are much happier when they are only milked once a day. Being milked in a cramped shed is high stress if you are a cow. Cows give almost the same milk in once-a-day milking as they would in two. Being more content, they spend more time sitting and don’t eat as much grass. That means more cows can be put on the farm, ensuring overall milk production doesn’t fall. With less, the cows health has improved.

Once-a-day, farmers are also much happier. Staff love the change. Once-a-day milking has resulted in an improved life style for most dairy farmers and their staff.

The once-a-day milking story reminds us we need to take time to question our most basic assumptions about the way we work and create value.

When a negotiator on the other side challenges your basic premises, be prepared to listen and question deeply.

Think “cows and once-a-day milking.”

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Between 1969 and 1973 Henry Kissinger conducted secret negotiations with North Vietnamese diplomats in an effort to negotiate a face-saving end to the Vietnam War for President Nixon.

Kissinger was undoubtedly very bright, he had three degrees from Harvard and had written a raft of papers and books on international diplomacy and arms control. Kissinger also rated himself as a formidable negotiator. When a journalist asked him what personal qualities it took to be a diplomat Henry replied,

“Knowledge of what I am trying to do. Knowledge of the subject. Knowledge of the history and psychology of the people I am dealing with. And some human rapport…To have some human relations with the people I am negotiating with. This takes some rough edges off. They will make concessions they wouldn’t otherwise make.”

In his first secret meeting with North Vietnamese diplomats in Paris he believed he had made progress. He reported back to Nixon the North Vietnamese had signaled possible concession.

Later Kissinger had to admit, the North Vietnamese had agreed to “nothing more than a willingness to hold future secret discussions at unspecified future dates.”

Xuan Thuy Hanois’s representative “had no authority to negotiate. His job was psychological warfare,” Kissinger later concluded.

Kissinger had made the elementary error of confusing “the monkey with the organgrinder.”

The dangers of negotiating with someone who has no authority is something we all need to guard against.

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How good are you at reading the capabilities, power and influence of the other side?

Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s chief foreign policy adviser and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in ending the Vietnam war, always rated himself as a master practitioner of the art of diplomacy. Skilled in the arts of real politik, Kissinger’s doctoral dissertation had been on Metternich. Metternich was the mastermind behind much of the 1815 Congress of Vienna settlement that led to a century of peace (until WWI broke out in 1914).

When Henry Kissinger as President Nixon’s National Security advisor first visited China in secret in July 1971, he was wowed by the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai then in charge of Chinese foreign policy.

For seventeen hours, Kissinger negotiated with Zhou. “Zhou ranked with Charles DeGaulle as the most impressive foreign statesman I have met,” enthused Kissinger. Kissinger was blown away by Zhou’s power and presence.

“In reality we now know,” writes historian David Reynolds, “Zhou was treated as Mao as his round the clock, groveling lackey. In 1972, Mao denied Zhou treatment for bladder cancer lest his premier outlive him, and even refused to pass on a full diagnosis. THe statesman who dazzled Kissinger, was in reality nothing more than Mao’s ‘blackmailed slave’.”

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Protocol remains important. Few people ever forget being slighted - specifically being ignored.

In 1954, President Eisenhower’s, then Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles refused to shake Chinese communist leader, Zhou Enlai’s hand at the Geneva conference on Indochina.

In a secret visit to China in July 1971, the Chinese had made it clear to Henry Kissinger that the humiliation - Zhou being snubbed by John Foster Dulles - remained an unhealed wound.

So, when President Nixon followed up his historical visit to Beijing in 1972, he was acutely mindful of the need to rectify the earlier slight.

Nixon walked down the steps of his plane in Beijing with his arm outstretched to Zhou.

“Your handshake,” Zhou told Nixon during the drive into Beijing, “came over the vastest ocean in the world - twenty-five years of no communication.”

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“Sequencing in negotiation involves lining up deals so that each deal raises the odds of knocking over the next one.”

When President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were planning their historic visit to restore diplomatic relations with Communist China in the early 1970’s, they were mindful of an even bigger need to get the Russians to agree to a summit, to discuss placing limits on nuclear weapons production.

For 14 months, the Americans had talked to the Russians about holding a summit - with little concrete progress. The Russians kept stalling and stalling.

However, the announcement from Washington that Nixon was planning a visit to China, put increased pressure on the Russians. The Russians were worried the Americans would ally with China into an anti-Russian Sino-America alliance. The Russians quickly shifted ground.

At a meeting with Henry Kissinger on June 8, the Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, became in Kissinger’s words, “…totally insecure.” The Soviet Ambassador stopped being “grudgingly” and “petty” and spoke in a spirit of “goodwill”. Moscow was now very keen for a summit, but asked the Americans to “come to Moscow before going to Beijing.”

Kissinger said no. Meeting with the Chinese would create further leverage for the U.S. when they had talks in Moscow.

Whenever you’re planning to negotiate with a critical but difficult party, ask yourself which prior deals or agreements with another party will tip the balance towards agreement with the most important player you ultimately need to do business with.

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