The Naked Negotiator

I am often asked how long it takes someone to make their initial judgment on a person when they first meet them.

I used to answer, “4 minutes.” This reply was based on research on the time it took job interviewers to make up their mind on the suitability of a job applicant. However, I now answer “10 seconds.”

In their remarkable studies, social psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, have shown that we often form positive or negative impressions of people in a mere “blink” or “think slice” of time.

After subjects watched three two-second video clips of professors teaching, their teaching ratings predicted the actual end-of-the-term rating by the professor’s own students.

To get a feel on someone’s energy and warmth, the researchers concluded just six seconds is usually enough.

First impressions matter because, we lock down on our first impression. Once we have made a judgment we tent to look for confirming evidence to reinforce our initial impression — good or bad.

Popularity: 12% [?]

As negotiations drag out, the practical responses you have to solve a problem run out.

As your options shrink, time pressure increases, you concede more and the deal turns from your Best Possible Agreement (BPA) to at best Barely Acceptable Deal (BAD).

The triangle of doom warns us:

1. We need to spend more time, investigating and strengthening our alternatives.
2. We need to monitor, capture and analyze problems in real time if possible.
3. For large, complex negotiations projects you need a real time reporting and response process. Some times the best deals you make are the ones you walk away from.The more time we invest in a deal, the more committed we become to sealing a deal – regardless of its consequences.

Popularity: 21% [?]

In our supposedly globalized economy, businesses are advised to charge across borders as if the whole world were one.

But the world isn’t so flat after all. Businesses that don’t take into account specific political, cultural, and economic differences are set up to fail. Redefining Global Strategy, by professor and strategy consultant Pankaj Ghemawat, offers a reality based view of globalization - and practical tools to help your business cross borders profitably.

His book is full of insightful, useful information. I love his tools especially his CAGE distance framework which helps you identify barriers that your global marketing strategy will have to overcome.

Here is a summary of the CAGE Framework.

• Cultural distance
  • different languages
  • different ethnicities
  • different values
• Administrative distance
  • closed economy
  • extent of home bias
  • corruption
• Geographic distance
  • physical distance
  • time zones
  • geographic remoteness
• Economic distance
  • rich and poor differences
  • differences in cost/quality in infrastructure
  • economic size

Ghemawat proves differences do matter when you market outside your homeland. Redefining Global Strategy is a must read for anyone with ambition for profits from the international economy.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Some of my clients are what are known as secondary consultants.

As secondary consultants they subcontract to a primary consultant.

If they are not careful, they end up taking on the risks of the primary consultant.

In The Fat Tail, The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing, authors Iam Bremmer and Preston Keat offer 6 practical ways to deal with risks and uncertainty.

1. Isolating: You can isolate and separate critical assets, either to lower their overall vulnerability or simply to ensure that not all our critical assets are open to the same set of threats at the same time.
2. Smoothing: You can distribute risks over time and across various theatres, business subsidiaries and entities.
3. Warning: You can establish warning systems to better prepare for specific contingencies.
4. Agility: You can reduce the time and costs and response to crises and lower the risks associated with them.
5. Alliances: Alliances among firms and private corporations, non-governmental organisation (NGO’s), international instsiutions, and private stakeholders can help mitigate the risks inherent in uncertainty by spreading risk among them.
6. Environment Shaping: You can mitigate risk by influencing the environment where they operate.

Consider these six approaches when you face having to negotiate a complex, risk riddled contract.

Read Bremme’s and Keat’s book The Long Tail as well. It is powerfully argued. Bremmer and Preston Keat have played in the political risk management game for years.

Popularity: 13% [?]

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit a third time - a tremendous whack.”

- Winston Churchill

In her book, POP!, Stand Out in Any Crowd, author Sam Horn tells us that one of the most dramatic examples of a crafted soundbite was one used by the late Johnny Cochran, one of the defense lawyers for O.J. Simpson.

Can you remember the trial?

It went on for months. The jury heard testimony from dozens of experts and witnesses. But the dramatic moment came when O.J. Simpson was asked to try on a glove arguably worn by Nicole Simpson’s murderer.

Many people believe O.J. Simpson exaggerated the difficulty of putting on the glove, but Johnny Cochran amplified the doubt over O.J. Simpson’s guilt with this pile driving soundbite.

“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

Many legal analysts believe that this - Cochran’s summation encapsulated by this one soundbite - won the case. The phrase was doubly impactful because it recalled a visual demonstration.

The best PowerPoint presenters conclude with a pithy statement that recalls an earlier slide that had high visual impact.

Popularity: 17% [?]