The Papercut Project Manager

Take Stock of What’s Important

Geoff Crane — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:45:22 +0000

I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails asking where I’ve been for the last several months. It’s a long story. Suffice it to say, after I graduated I got a lot of interest in the thesis paper I wrote last year. For awhile, the paper even led to a great consulting gig through the summer (which helped pay off my tuition–ack!). However, good things come to an end, so I started, once again, back on the job search track.

That part hasn’t been roses.

In this economy, job opportunities are tough to find. When I did find some, I considered myself lucky if I got picked up enough to start down the interview process. Unfortunately, either the positions went to someone else, got scrapped altogether, or in one case, months have gone by and the hiring manager “can’t make up his mind”.

If you’re in the job market right now, all of the above might sound familiar. It’s frustrating for sure, but you can’t let it get you down. One thing going back to school in mid-life taught me is that life is full of rich possibilities. You sort of forget that after living so many years with bills and routines and same old-same old.

So if you feel you’re stuck in a rut and have forgotten about the promise life has in store for you, maybe it’s time to sit down and re-evaluate the goals you have for yourself. From there (as any project manager knows), it’s a simple matter to develop a plan.

Here’s mine:

I’m going to keep going with school, pursuing a Master’s degree in Organizational Behaviour. I plan to do some serious research in the field that will make a difference in the way we work. I’ve met someone and I want to get married and build a fabulous life for ourselves. And while I’m doing all those things, I want to get back into a career so that I can pay for all of the above!

Life is rich, but it’s also short. I refuse to be distracted from it by a futile job search.

Once you’re back in touch with your objectives, all it takes is a little creativity to come up with a solution. What’s mine you ask? You’ll just have to come back tomorrow. The answer may make your jaw drop.

A History of Project Management – The White Paper

Geoff Crane — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:13:48 +0000

“What’s that, Geoff? 4500 years of World History AND Risk Management in one paper? OMG that’s more exciting than double-protection Aquafresh!”

So a lot of you have been asking me offline, Geoff, when are you going to get around to giving us that white paper you told us you’d be publishing back in December? For those of you who don’t know, I spent last autumn back at school. During that time, I took a reading course called “A History of Project Management”. This course revolved around the great projects of the past and evaluated them under the PMI’s PMBoK lens. For example, what does the historical record tell us about the application of process groups and knowledge areas during the construction of the Giza Pyramid?

In all, I studied twelve culturally significant projects over a period of 4500 years. The timeline is pictured in the graphic below, which also contains some high level annotations.

I found this exercise quite fascinating, especially since many people think of project management as a relatively new discipline. In point of fact, we’ve been practicing project management as a society, using the framework the PMI describes for as long as we’ve been able to make things. Maybe we didn’t call the steps we took by the same names we call them today, but evidence of the processes remain. This work we do is ancient.

Given the sheer volume of data available to me during my research, I chose to hone in on one particular aspect of project management for my paper: project risk maturity. Based on information contained within the texts, I performed qualitative risk assessments of all twelve projects, and scored their risk level before and after any mitigation strategies the project teams applied. The delta between these scores showed a very distinctive pattern over time (see the green curve in the above diagram).

In my attempt to explain this curve, I went back to the historical texts to see what was happening around the time of each project. Certain catastrophic events appeared to have direct influence over how much risk a given project was prepared to undertake. But those events informed not just individual project risk, but also influenced changes to risk management approaches intra-project. These details caused me to go over the historical timeline again and evaluate societal “sophistication” which I measured using a rubric. I then plotted this data against the risk maturity curve (see the orange-ish curve in the above diagram) and found an interesting correlation in pattern.

Could an organization’s sophistication be a direct function of its approach to project risk? What does that mean for modern projects?

My conclusion was that a project’s outcome depends on a healthy balance between anticipated risk versus reward. This balance emerges directly from a project’s objectives…which are set at the very beginning of a project. Too great an emphasis on one side or the other can sabotage the project and result in unsatisfied stakeholders. I called this balance risk-motivation in my paper and believe it follows a predictable, cyclical pattern (see the below diagram).

If, after reading all the above (yawn-o-rama), you’re still interested in thumbing through the white paper, you can snag a copy right here. The paper was great fun to work on, and has resulted in more than a couple speaking gigs. If you do give it a read, please feel free to publish your comments right here on this page. I promise I’ll let them through no matter how bad you decide to slag me!

(Incidentally I got 95% in the course! Woo hoo! *grin*)

How to Find a Job Without Losing Your Self-Respect

Geoff Crane — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 03:29:17 +0000

I received a lot of great feedback both on and offline about my last article regarding the state of recruitment. It’s a tough subject for a lot of folks because hiring (or the lack of) is something that hits home for a lot of us. Well, I know that a lot of you are freelancers and it’s not enough to agree that recruitment’s a mess…what you want are answers on how to navigate these increasingly turbulent waters so that you can land a gig. So I’m going to tell you what works for me.

Warning: This is a long post. But it’s worth it. Go get a coffee, come back, and settle in for a bit.

1. Stay the hell out of the meat grinder.

If you read nothing else on this page, read this. Keep away from online job boards, corporate recruitment systems and headhunters. “But Geoff,” you say, “if we ignore those things we won’t be considered for jobs.” Here’s the big lesson I want to teach you: you won’t be considered for jobs via those routes anyway. If you go down these paths, here’s what will happen.

You’ll send in your resume, which will be lumped in with a slew of other applications. People who aren’t doing the actual hiring will search the resumes for keywords that may or may not have been part of the posting (and so you may or may not have included them in your application). Chances are, unless you’re very lucky, your resume will be ignored. Time will pass while you wait for news one way or another that isn’t going to come. Your hope will fade. When you’ve been completely ignored enough times, depression will kick in and then you won’t be motivated to look for work anymore. I know this feeling intimately and I will do everything in my power to spare you from that.

Today’s recruitment process is an ugly, vicious, impersonal machine that leaves more human carcasses by the roadside than it finds happy new employees. Don’t let it take you, too.

2. Stop looking for a job.

If you keep looking for a position where you get paid money for having a pulse, you’re in for a long wait. As much as I’d love to say your body heat should be worth something on the open market, the fact is most people really don’t want to pay for something they already get for free. When you passively look for a job without creating value in the process, you’re basically just peddling the space you take up.

What people will pay for though, is someone who can solve a problem.

And that’s really what a job posting is about, isn’t it? The hiring manager has identified a problem of some kind, that they believe requires a warm body to help address. Is that the right solution? Maybe. But until the moist, warm mass of human tissue they bring in starts to produce results, that remains to be seen.

However if you knew what the problem was that prompted a job posting in the first place, you might actually already have the perfect, ideal, best-idea-ever solution! Will that show in your cv? Unless you can read minds, you’re unlikely to answer a question that nobody’s asking.

But maybe if you could talk directly to the person who’s struggling to find that right answer, you could sell yourself accordingly!

3. Don’t be a jar of pickles.

Labels are a big part of the recruitment process, aren’t they? A job posting advertises for a “project manager”, so it’s logical you introduce yourself to a prospective employer that way. The thing is, as soon as you accept the label, you stop being Ernie, or Nadine, or Tula, or Seymour. Instead, you become a commodity not unlike a jar of pickles on a supermarket shelf.

That’s not where you belong. Why? Because you are a human being with a rich history. You’ve made decisions and solved problems and inspired others. You’ve had your share of successes, and probably struggled too. These experiences…they make you who you are. So why shouldn’t you shine as bright as you possibly can?

Think and speak about yourself in your own terms and not in the terms your industry wants to tar you with. Don’t be a jar of pickles.

4. Set your sights on a target (or two)

Your next gig doesn’t have to be the one that lands you international fame and recognition. It just has to be something you think you’d like to do, using the skills you enjoy. Think of what you have to offer, and then think of a small handful of local companies who could benefit from hiring you. Don’t pick more than five companies to start, because you have a lot of work ahead of you. At this point, it doesn’t matter if they’re hiring or not. Even companies operating under a crippling hiring freeze will cough up money if they believe you can help make their lives better!

5. Research until you need glasses

Okay, so you have a short list of companies you’d like to work for, and you know that if you’re able to find a problem you can sink your teeth into at one of those companies, you can offer an awesome solution. Except…you don’t know anybody at the organizations on your short list. And you have no idea if they’re struggling with anything specific you could get a good handle on. Well that’s crap, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Executive Changes

When senior officers move around, they generally discover problems in their new position, or leave problems in their wake. This is a normal function of business, and it spells opportunities for anyone savvy enough to discover them. CTOs On The Move is a fantastic website that lets you research IT executives who are changing positions. The best part is, you can search by company. Just plug in the short list of organizations you identified in Step 4 above and see what bubbles to the surface!

Quarterly Reports

The best source of information about what’s going on at a company is the most recent report they presented to their Board of Directors. These reports are often publicly available, although sometimes they take a bit of digging to find. Within these documents you’ll find specific issues the company is trying to address, and high level details of some of the plans they’re putting in place to resolve them. You were looking for solutions to offer? Look no further! In addition to the details, many of these reports contain the names of the people tasked with execution. So if you were wondering whose prayers you might answer, their names may be right there in black and white!

News Feeds

If you can’t get a hold of a company’s quarterly reports, you can still pick up the newspaper. Instead of heading straight to careers, go to the business section to find out what’s going on at the organization. Any new press releases? Have they found themselves in hot water? Any important personnel or direction changes? All of these can help you formulate your plan of attack.

Better yet, why not subscribe to RSS feeds from local and regional websites? You can subscribe to the latest news from the companies you’re monitoring, and also from those journalists, pundits and analysts who follow them.

If you want really to harness the power of RSS, start messing around with Yahoo Pipes. This service will allow you to cut some insanely tailored feeds from sources all over the web. As you become proficient with Pipes, your research will become razor sharp, and incredibly current.

Okay if you’ve managed to find both a problem to tackle and the problem’s owner, the next place to stop is LinkedIn. I had one of the first 100,000 profiles set up, going way back to 2004. Despite that, I never really understood its value until recently. There’s loads and loads of websites devoted to this service, so I won’t go into all the details. Suffice it to say that if you have the name of a person you want to know more about, LinkedIn should be your very first stop to find more information. You can learn not just about their current position, but about where they’ve been before, and how they got to where they are now. And the best part? You might already be connected to them through one of your friends or colleagues and not know it! There’s no better place to get honest input on another person than from a trusted contact.

Job Boards

What? But Geoff, you said to stay away from the job boards! Silly rabbit. The job postings aren’t for you! They’re to help you see what your prospects are trying to do about the problems you’ve identified in your research. The first place to stop should be the career section of the company’s website. They’ll often be updated before third party sites like Monster.com. Job postings will usually be written in the hiring manager’s own words (although possibly revised by a well-meaning HR department).

You’ll also want to know about these openings because when you finally make a connection, you don’t want them to shut you down by saying, “yes, we know, and we’re already taking steps”. Compare what you know about the company already to the positions you see advertised. Are they doing the right thing? Do you have a better solution? Here’s where your years of experience come in to play and you can demonstrate some real value.

Plan and Contact

Okay, you’re almost ready. You’ve got all the information you need to be able to put together a great pitch to your prospect…but if you don’t sit back and think about how you want to make the approach, you might lose the whole schmeer. Before you make that phone call, spend as much time as you feel you need preparing the following checklist:

1) Can you summarize what you think you could do for them in 20 seconds or less?

2) Do you have a few short, non-invasive questions you can ask that could help set the stage for your pitch?

3) Are there any “gotchas” that could knock your plan out the window? Do you have ways of addressing them?

4) Although your initial contact should be high level, can you go one or two levels down into details if asked?

If you think you’re ready, take a moment to catch your breath, pick up the phone, dial the company and ask to speak with your prospect.

An important note about cold calling: ASSUME NOTHING!!! However up-to-date you think your research may be, it’s not as up-to-date as your contact’s is. The person you’re about to speak with should know a lot more about the issue than you do. If you go in there spewing your preconceived ideas all over them like you just contracted Linda Blair disease, they’re going to ask you to leave. All your hard work will have been for nothing.

Take your call in little baby steps, pause to ask questions, and let them do most of the talking.

A final word

Recruiters, human resources and technology companies aren’t 100% responsible for the mess that is modern recruitment, but they certainly help perpetuate it. They may not really like the advice I’m dishing out here. But I can tell you that the above does work. Even if you don’t get results right away, you’ve identified specific things you can do to help others, and have made valuable connections that can eventually help get you there. Congratulations, you’ve just created way more traction for yourself than 90% of the job seeking public!

And unless conventional companies are prepared to guarantee you a personalized and well-managed job search experience throughout your interactions together, I say this:

FUCK ‘EM! Do what’s right for you!

At Last! Recruitment is BROKEN!

Geoff Crane — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 04:51:55 +0000

Late last night, at three in the morning, I heard the familiar *bing* of the iPad on my nightstand indicating a new e-mail. I don’t know what possessed me to pick up the device when I should have just ignored the tone, but what I saw caused me to jump out of bed. My eyes were wide open with a “eureka” glint.

The source of the midnight glow was a comment from Emma Reynolds, of e3 Reloaded, a boutique workforce innovation firm in Hong Kong. In her words, her company “facilitates disruption in the recruitment industry”.

As many of you know, every once in awhile I tend to go off on a rant about the job market. Specifically, my gripe is with recruitment infrastructure. I never quite seem able to articulate what my main beef is, but I feel strongly that something is very, very wrong.

Emma’s comment absolutely nailed the problem for me. I immediately sent her a LinkedIn invitation and started to chat. I’m looking forward to hearing more of her thoughts.

So you can see what got me so excited, I’m publishing Emma’s words here (with her permission).

Emma Reynolds’ comment on a Harvard Business Review discussion

Recruitment is fundamentally broken. As a process, it is still stuck in the 20th century ‘monologue’ mindset of posting jobs and receiving applications. It sucks for candidates and it sucks for hiring managers!

What are some of the problems?

It takes too long
It costs too much (high agency spend)
Monologue
Black hole – ie you never hear back
Quality v quantity ratios are way out, in this world candidates can apply for hundreds of jobs with one click, so it becomes a sorting nightmare. Only 1 relevant application for every 1000 applications
Conveyor belt, everyone going through same process, very little room for innovation or trying to stand out, like cows being herded into slaughterhouse
CVs are dead
Job boards are dying a slow death
Past performance doesn’t predict future potential – yet we only select and interview and hire based on past performance
Very limited focus outside of industry, always looking for people with experience in the industry, with a degree, that fit the cookie cutter model
Not collaborative between HR, candidate and hiring manager
Hiring managers don’t take any responsibility for metrics like ‘time to hire’

What can we do / what are the opportunities?

Ditch CVs. Candidates shouldn’t create them, recruiters shouldn’t ask for them.
Don’t post jobs. Post a business challenge, get people co-creating, collaborating, select based on future potential, ideas, not on past performance
If you do have to post jobs, don’t state ‘must have 100 years experience, plus a PHD, plus, plus, plus’ try and encourage people with different industry experience to apply
Shift accountability and performance metrics to hiring managers, and take them out of HR. Hiring managers should be responsible for ‘time to hire’ etc.
Build talent communities and hyper segment your audiences
Stop thinking ‘recruitment process’ and start thinking ‘experience design’ to surprise and delight candidates. Think like marketers, not like recruiters.
Re-think how you want to get work done. Does it need to be full-time / FTE headcount. Instead of just posting a job, really think about other ways of getting the work done (freelance, contractor, consultant, project team etc)
Top talent no longer tolerates poorly designed experiences – and most candidate experiences are tragic, poorly designed and disengaging. Where are the points at which you are ‘losing’ candidates
Look beyond traditional ways of finding people and candidates try and pop up where hiring managers least expect it. Move beyond job boards, move beyond recruitment agencies, how can you stand out and build relationships with people outside of the ‘traditional’ recruitment space. Best example of this is the SEO example in NYC.
Think people first, relationships first, technology last. Don’t just jump to Facebook because you think you should. Really think about the relationships you want to build, either as a candidate or a hiring manager.

Okay. Right here, right now, on this little purple blog, I am going to tell you that Emma’s vision is the way of the future. You may not believe me. You may think there’s nothing wrong with today’s recruitment infrastructure. You may believe someone put LSD in my diet coke.

But I swear to you, she is right.

To put it simply, our infrastructure evolved, but we didn’t.

Do yourself a favour. Follow Emma. Follow e3 Reloaded. Keep tabs on the work they’re doing, even if it’s just to prove to yourselves that I’m deranged.

In the meantime I’ll put some humble pie in the freezer. You might want me to reheat some next time you come over.

Incidentally, if you rabidly disagree with me, feel free to call me out in the comments section below. I could never say I’m always right. *evil grin*

How Does Stress Affect the Body?

Geoff Crane — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 02:14:52 +0000

As you move through your life and career, there will be no shortage of issues that cause you stress. Most of us know that too much stress is a bad thing, but not everybody knows exactly what’s happening in the body when things start to get hairy. The following infographic is meant to help folks understand why a little stress can be a good thing, but a lot of stress can be very dangerous. Please pass this around to people you think might benefit. And yes, I made the infographic myself!

Coming soon…Project Management in History

Geoff Crane — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 02:00:05 +0000

Hi guys! As you know, I’ve been swallowed up by university. Who knew it was so much work? I wanted to give you the heads up that I’ll have some interesting stuff for you soon. I recently gave a presentation on the History of Project Management for my reading course. This wasn’t just some fluffy grade school primer about Henry Gantt’s techniques and systems thinking from the 1960s. When I say History, I mean it with a capital “H”.

I went back as far as the Giza Pyramid in Ancient Egypt. Working forward, I covered projects such as The Parthenon, Hagia Sophia, the First Railroad and many, many more. I took a look at these projects through the risk management lens, and performed over 103 qualitative risk assessments on various risk events I was able to identify across twelve major projects that shaped the course of history.

Those of you who remember my cheezy little Panama Canal short know this is a soft spot for me. It’ll take a bit of time to get everything together for you guys, but while you’re waiting, all the slides, along with my findings, are right here for you to take a peek at.

Cheers, hugs, and chat soon!

A History of Project Management

View more presentations from Geoff Crane

Inner Work Life and Project Teams

Geoff Crane — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 01:29:34 +0000

So I want to introduce you today to a groovy new book by Harvard Professor Teresa Amabile and her equally accomplished husband, Steven Kramer. It’s called The Progress Principle, and I think it contains a lot of important lessons for project managers.

The primary focus of the book is a concept called “inner work life”. Indeed, the book’s subtitle says, “using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work”. Regular readers know this is an topic I’m very passionate about, so I’m thrilled to review the book here.

What is this “inner work life”, anyway? Basically, it’s the sense of identity everyone possesses in regards to the work that they do. This goes beyond the 9 to 5 grind, or the sometimes petty rules of the office. A rich inner work life suggests an overarching belief that by getting up every morning and going about your business, you are performing something meaningful. A positive inner work life can inspire passion, creativity and enthusiasm. Inner work life is the driving force behind the level of ownership one takes in their job performance (cue my good friend Rick Valerga).

How often do you find yourself solving work problems in the shower? Or talking to your vendors late at night? When you meet colleagues for drinks, do you find your conversation ebbs and flows between relaxing conversation and taking care of real business? Our inner work lives are more than just the mechanics of going to work every day.

According to Amabile and Kramer:

“Inner work life influences people’s performance on four dimensions: creativity, productivity, work commitment, and collegiality. We call this the inner work life effect.”
“Inner work life matters for companies because, no matter how brilliant a company’s strategy might be, the strategy’s execution depends on great performance by people inside the organization.”
“The primacy of progress among the key three influences on inner work life is what we call the progress principle: of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work.”

Are these concepts ringing a bell? They sound a lot like those behaviours we actively look for in our project teams!

Teresa Amabile delivers an amazing talk about the “disengagement crisis” plaguing modern work culture.

The authors take us through some compelling territory. For example, they review the fate of “Karpenter Corporation”. This was a fifty year old company that found its way to a list of the “ten most innovative, successful companies in America”. In the space of four short years, a new executive management drove the company straight into the ground. Plummeting from the intoxicating heights of success, employees one day found themselves agog watching their office furniture sold at auction.

The culprit?

It’s difficult to point one finger at a situation like this. But the authors identified serious damage to the inner work lives of employees. Using that as a starting point, they walk us step-by-step through the systematic destruction of one of America’s corporate jewels.

“Waitaminnit, Geoff,” you yell. “This book sounds like it’s meant for top brass, so they don’t put their foot in it at a fiscal year-end presentation!”

Well, that may be one application for the information contained in The Progress Principle. But if you’re here, you’re interested in project management at least on some level. And I can tell you that the tenets Amabile and Kramer espouse in this book are just as applicable to managing a project as they are to managing a company.

The only difference I can see, is that corporate executives generally have much broader time horizons than we do to get things right. If anything, that makes The Progress Principle even more relevant to project managers. If you don’t have a strategy to get the most out of your people going into your project, you’ll find yourself short of resources by the time you realize you missed something. And as we all know, hitting the “project reset button” is pretty damn expensive.

You can get The Progress Principle in both paperback and Kindle versions. I highly recommend you go out and pick yourself up a copy today!

Hostage Negotiation and Project Management

Geoff Crane — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 01:13:58 +0000

So what does a project manager have in common with a terrorist negotiator? Well, if they’re both doing their jobs right, they’re driving specific behaviours from the people with whom they’re working. That’s right, a hostage negotiator’s job is to get a terrorist to act in a way that the negotiator wants them to. Do you think that works by coercion? Think again.

If the negotiator makes any move that the terrorist feels is threatening, he may kill a hostage. The stakes are ridiculously high.

As project managers, we have plans to which we want our people to adhere. To make sure this happens, we often use techniques like asking, demanding or threatening to get our way. These work to some extent, but really, we’re at the mercy of the people with whom we’re working. We get lulled into a sense of complacency though, because generally, team members want their jobs and recognize the hierarchy that the project manager represents.

The moment they decide what you want is less important than what they want, or what they can get away with…you’re hosed. Those techniques you might be used to wielding won’t help you anymore. And who’s held hostage? You are!

To prevent that from happening, let’s take a look at a model the FBI developed to drive specific behaviour from dangerous crazies. It’s called the Behaviour Change Stairway Model (or sometimes the Behaviour Influence Stairway Model) and it’s a valuable tool in the project manager’s arsenal.

The FBI’s Behaviour Change Stairway Model

What you’re looking at is a series of steps that lead a negotiator into the mind of the terrorist, such that the negotiator can drive specific behaviours.

It begins with active listening. This isn’t just regular listening. This is shaping a conversation to elicit as much relevant information as possible. I’ll talk more about this technique in a future post. For now, suffice it to say that the negotiator needs information to be able to move to the next step.

Those who know me know how much I pound on the need for empathy in a project management setting. Well, here’s a perfect reason why. As the negotiator acquires information–especially emotional information–about the terrorist’s state of mind, a connection develops between the two. The goal here is for the negotiator to put himself (or herself) in the terrorist’s shoes. That’s why the active listening is so important–the negotiator shapes the conversation with a very specific end in mind. He wants to inform this connection as much as possible.

Because it leads to the next step: rapport. Here the dynamic between the negotiator and terrorist begins to change. Instead of the terrorist doing all the talking, the negotiator is now able to try to relate to the terrorist. The end here is to create the beginnings of a relationship where the two are on equal, mutually respectful ground.

That ground is fertile soil. It’s here that the negotiator can begin to wield some influence over the terrorist. It’s very slow and methodical, but if the negotiator does their job right, he or she can begin to turn the mind of the terrorist towards the desired goal. It all leads to a specific behaviour that the negotiator wants to elicit.

And it couldn’t happen without the right steps.

If you’d like to learn more about the Behaviour Change Stairway Model, here’s a couple handy links with some great information.

I don’t see much by way of its application in a management context but quite honestly? This stuff is gold!

Negotiation is Never About You! Part 2

Geoff Crane — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:56:03 +0000

This post picks up from my previous one on negotiations, and adds some more of my thoughts on the actual process.

The Communicator Is Responsible for Transmission

I cannot stress this enough. If you are trying to send a message to someone, and you don’t take the time to ensure the message has been relayed they way you intended, then the fault of the misunderstanding is yours. It’s tempting to say, “well they heard wrong”, or “they’re just being sensitive”. You might want to blame the receiver. But the communicator and only the communicator can know whether or not a message has been successfully transmitted.

Remember: the message receiver may take action based on his or her understanding of your message. Those actions could be very dangerous to you if their understanding is incorrect. How do you make sure you’ve sent a message accurately?

1) Take it Slow. Many of us have a tendency to barrel through facts and race to the end. The reason we do this is so that we can get to the part that’s important to us (i.e., “gimme my money”). Walk through facts slowly, and take breaks to ask if there are any questions.

2) Pay Attention. Is the receiver receptive to you? Is he or she speaking in curt, clipped tones suggesting they’re not really listening? Is your only feedback, “yeah, uh-huh, yep, sure” or are you getting real questions? Does your receiver seem interested in what you have to say? If the conversation seems to be entirely you speaking and not listening, that’s a sign that something’s wrong. An ideal negotiation is dynamic.

3) Play the Message Back. Okay, you’ve said your piece, now make sure they understand what you said. Ask them to repeat back what they heard. So many people skip this step, feeling it’s unnecessary. But if you don’t do this, how else will you know they’ve understood you?

Power Plays an Important Role

If you have power over the person you’re negotiating with outside of your actual discussion, you may influence your listener’s position in unintentional ways. You could be the person’s boss, priest, father or mother. You could be legally controlling their interests. You could be someone much higher up in your organization than they are. If any of these are true, your message receiver may enter the discussion thinking that these are not negotiations. They may instead feel you are telling them what to do. That could kill your message very quickly.

You could choose to feel that your receiver is silly if that’s how they come to the table, but such an attitude may derail negotiations before they begin. If you genuinely want your counter-party to walk away from the table satisfied, be sensitive to any power you wield. Take steps to open dialogue with their feelings in mind.

You Have No Control, Only Influence

Remember that once your negotiations are finished, your counter-party will walk away. Once that happens, you have exactly zero control over what they do next. They are free-willed, independent people, no matter what your relationship. Their subsequent actions will likely be influenced over what you had to say during your talk. What influence did you exert? Was it positive and constructive? Or was it negative and divisive?

Plan Ahead

To ensure you’re setting up negotiations in a way that puts your influence in the best possible light, it’s practical to plan it out ahead of time. Here are some things you can do before you arrive:

1. Think about their starting position. How will your receiver come to discussion? What’s their likely starting point? Will they be hostile? Receptive? Bored? Curious? What will it take to sway them to your line of thinking?

2. Anticipate objections. What might your receiver dislike about your message? How would you counter any arguments?

3. Remember you know more than they do. What parts of your discussion is your receiver likely to be unfamiliar with? Are you prepared to explain details in lay terms they can understand? Glossing over steps is a surefire way to make your receiver’s eyes glaze over. Be prepared with whatever information your counter-party might require.

4. Anticipate consequences. How would you like your receiver to behave after you’re done negotiations? How might they behave contrary to your wishes if they misunderstand something? How can you shape your words to prevent unwanted consequences during discussion?

5. Align yourself with your receiver. People are more receptive to discussion if they believe you’re already on their side. Take time to identify yourself with your receiver. Are they nervous? Calm them. Are they upset about something? Respond compassionately.

But wait, there’s more! No, I’m not done with negotiations just yet. There’s more to come in Part 3 coming soon!

Negotiation is Never About You! Part 1

Geoff Crane — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 23:55:45 +0000

Okay, so yesterday I got a bit snarky and went on a terrible rant about poor Prince Humphrey and the abysmal negotiation tactics that got him into trouble. Today I wanted to calm things down and talk about negotiation a little bit. I have some specific suggestions for new negotiators that might help smooth the waters.

Negotiation is something we all have to contend with. It’s a fundamental communication technique that usually involves some form of transaction between two or more people. Communication is very easily derailed, as you likely already know. Since negotiation relies on communication to be effective, transactions can very easily fall apart.

Forget About What You Want

The single biggest mistake I see people make, is that they keep their own needs foremost in the conversation. This is natural. If you want your best friend Sue Ellen to pay you $100 for a fabulous painting you just made, well, you’re going to be thinking about your $100, and why you should have it. But Sue Ellen doesn’t give a damn about your money, your wants or your needs. Sue Ellen cares about the worth of the painting and whether or not it’s a good buy. Just because she’s your best friend doesn’t mean she’s still not personally motivated.

If you want to get Sue Ellen’s $100, you need to look at the transaction entirely from her perspective. You need to give her everything she’ll need to happily part with her money. That means, from a communications perspective, the $100 you want is incidental to the conversation, and not the priority. Talk about HER. What does SHE get. Put it in HER TERMS.

Value Is Subjective

Words like “ripped-off” or “bargain” are opinion words. They often feel like fact words, but they’re not.

If I tried to sell you a clump-covered coffee bean that my neighbour’s cat pooed out into the litter box, you’d likely say “GROSS! I am NOT paying money for cat poo! Get that away from me!” But coffee made from beans found in civet cat faeces sells for $1000 per kilogram. So clearly it has value to someone.

This is one of the biggest challenges for people trying to communicate value. The seller usually knows the history or use of the object and sees its worth. The potential buyer often hasn’t a clue, but is justifiably loath to part with hard-earned money. To get the seller’s interest, you have to take the open position that price of the object is a bargain, and be able to explain why.

That sounds obvious, right? Well, many people assume what they feel is an identical position, but they’re mistaken. They take a closed, defensive stance and say, “the price of the object is not a rip-off”. How is that different? Because this attitude ends conversation. A communicator with this position doesn’t have to explain themselves, or extol any features of the object, or try to sell in any way. From a buyer’s perspective, it’s not very appealing. I’ve watched a lot of deals fall through because of this approach.

Also, the phrase “the price of the object is not a rip-off”, contains an implicit judgment: “If you think this is a rip-off, then there must be something wrong with you.”

That’s very unlikely to get someone to open up their wallet.

This post is going to get very long very quickly, so I’m going to end here for now. There’s lots more to negotiation than just these two points, though, so stay tuned! Part 2 is coming your way very soon!