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October 27, 2009 at 9:32am
Over on her Ask a Manager blog, Alison Green today discussed those personality traits which force you into certain behaviors, resulting in career choices that are almost imperatives. It's an interesting thought – are there things that you MUST do to satisfy your own internal itch? But then I started thinking about how that would affect the world of negotiation and it ties back into a conversation thread that's been started many times: are certain people more predisposed to being better negotiators? And, on the flip side, are there people who shouldn't, under any circumstances, be the negotiator for your firm/organization/self?
Typical negotiation trainers (Karrass, for example) predicate their training materials on the belief that anyone can learn how to negotiate. Even my favorite professional negotiator, Herb Cohen promises in his book that "You, too, can negotiate anything!". But don't let the razzle-dazzle fool you. The honest truth is that while everyone can learn techniques to increase their negotiation skills, not everyone can be a good negotiator.
"Wait!" you yell at me – "YOU offer negotiation training, too. Aren't you just taking people's money like everyone else?" Woah. I'm not rendering judgment on the value of the service offered by negotiation trainers… lots of the material learned in these courses is excellent stuff. Heck, even bad negotiators can improve by learning my Five Fundamental Skills for Effective Negotiation. What I'm saying is that a prospective negotiator needs to be introspective enough to know whether they're a good negotiator (and sometimes, it's even case-specific).
So then, what makes someone NOT a good negotiator? Well, as I just said, it can sometimes be case-specific – I, for example, shouldn't negotiate the purchase of my own house or car… I'm too emotionally invested in the result. But more generically, bad negotiators are:
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ignorant (choosing to be without knowledge – would rather shoot from the hip)
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overly-emotional (it's one thing to be "disappointed" in a result… another to be "sad")
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hot-tempered (NEVER lose your cool – in fact, keeping cool when the other side is purposefully pushing your buttons is a great skill to have)
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impatient (negotiations can take a LOT of time and you have to be willing to wait things out)
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know-it-alls (the flip-side of ignorance is just as dangerous)
What am I saying, then, if you have these tendencies? Well – either alter your personality (which proves quite hard for the bulk of the population) or find someone else to do the negotiating. Remember that bullying someone (which is what a lot of these traits manifest as during a negotiation) won't get you what you desire and might leave you worse off than when you started.
Oh – you don't like the implication that everyone can't be a great negotiator? Blast me in the comments.
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October 16, 2009 at 9:32am
Yes/No. Yin/Yang. Right/Wrong. It seems as if there are a lot of ways to say that in many decisions, we have two basic potential responses (and many other shades of gray in between). Answering "Yes" almost always involves more work, more responsibility and more hassle. So why don't we choose "No" more often?
As human beings, there is research to suggest that we want to generally appease others at a very fundamental level. This isn't about conflict management, it's simply about survival and the power that comes with "the return of the favor." It's even got a political science term that sounds awfully legal: "social contract" – that the individual give up some flexibility of behavior in favor of the larger societal good. But realize that there is a quid pro quo here, we expect something in return.
It's important, however, to learn the power and value of saying "No."
At your individual level, "No" might mean that you have more time to devote to your already-full plate of things you've said "yes" to. At the societal level, "No" means that you are recognizing participatory limitations – that you believe that you have already contributed (or are contributing) to the "group" (however you would like to define it at that particular moment). Without realizing it, you actually do a form of "hedonistic calculus" to determine the effect of saying No and formulate defenses in the event you're challenged.
But it's not wrong to say No – and there are a lot of benefits to saying "No" with compassion and clarity.
While you may be refusing someone something that they want, and as I reminded someone the other day, you're no good to anyone (including yourself) if you're not able to do what you have already committed to do. Saying "No" is a defense mechanism and allows you the ability to regulate your workload. But, it's also a starting point (as pointed out by Jim Camp in "Start with No!") in that only if you say "No" do you have a place to begin a conversation.
Which means that from a negotiation perspective, "No" is a wonderful way to begin when asked for any settlement. Camp believes that it's the ONLY starting point – and he says on his website that starting with no is to "gain control of the deal." Whether you believe that's true (or even if you want control of the deal), he is right that without saying "No", there isn't a conversation or negotiation at all – saying "yes" is merely a statement of agreement.
Saying "No", however, doesn't have to be done in a mean spirited manner and doesn't have to be used with force. Rather, the manner in which you say "No" can convey almost any conceivable emotion and can even foster a reciprocal compassion for your need/desire to say "No." For example, I was asked the other day to complete…
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October 14, 2009 at 1:45pm
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "energy consumption by servers and data centers in the United States is expected to nearly double in the next five years to more than 100 billion kWh."
This is the first in a series of blog posts that will be exploring the topic of developing, managing, and sustaining a resource efficient enterprise data center and the related infrastructure around us. We will be exploring the responsible consumption of resources that make up the IT environment for the enterprise, examining the popular notions of the "Green" data center and going beyond the mainstream in tackling topics that have an important impact on IT related resource consumption.
We have a responsibility to be good stewards of the resources contributing to our consumption of information technology. As global citizens we are on a collision course that is unsustainable, given the rapid consumption of energy across the planet as underdeveloped countries advance their economies and developed nations continue to grow and increase their use of automation and other energy consuming conveniences. Our planet's uses of energy through non-renewable fossil fuels will likely outpace our ability to find new sources if we don't reduce and improve the efficiency of our consumption first. In the most recent U.S. Energy Information Administration International Energy Outlook report in 2009, total world consumption of marketed energy is projected to increase by 44 percent from 2006 to 2030. The largest projected increase in energy demand is for the non-OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development; developing countries) economies (http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html).
An unfortunate and vitally important consequence of this energy consumption is our output of Carbon Dioxide emissions. Scientifically regarded as a contributor to climate change, total CO2 emissions—as calculated with all projected full measures of CO2 emission reduction programs underway or planned—are projected to increase by 17 percent from 2010 to 2020 (http://www.state.gov/g/oes/rls/rpts/car/90324.htm).
We clearly still have our work cut out for us.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "energy consumption by servers and data centers in the United States is expected to nearly double in the next five years to more than 100 billion kWh, costing about $7.4 billion annually". Similar energy cost increases are expected in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. (http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/downloads/EPA_Datacenter_Report_Congress_Final1.pdf).
However with data centers, and the other information infrastructure we have in businesses and the homes to support our information and communication needs around the world, it is still a drop in the bucket compared with overall energy consumption. What we do have is the capability to turn the information technology into solutions for energy savings.
We see this today with smart grid technology applied by the utility companies to manage home energy usage and provide bi-directional communication between the home appliances and the energy company to manage energy usage wisely and efficiently. Applied to the data center, smart energy technology can be timed with the business cycles to reduce energy consumption on resources that don't have to run…
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October 13, 2009 at 9:32am
I have a single vacancy in my client list that I'm looking to fill.
My clients are typically organizations that fall into one of three obvious categories:
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small organizations who need a contract negotiator for individual large deals;
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medium-sized organizations seeking to create a contract management team; and,
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large organizations who can benefit from strategic advice to bolster their internal staff resources.
So, if you or your organization have been considering contract renegotiation strategies or mitigation work based on risk management assessments, now might be a perfect opportunity to take advantage of the current economic situation. Additionally, I can provide a VMO-in-a-box (the creation of all things necessary for the implementation of a vendor management office) or simply act as a sounding board to make sure that you're extracting all of the value possible from each deal.
Contact me today if you'd like to use my knowledge to your advantage.
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October 11, 2009 at 9:32am
These are the discussions that happened around the web this week – maybe you already read about them, maybe you need to again. Come join the party on twitter (follow me here and you'll participate in the conversation live.)
I also realized that many of you might have no idea what you're seeing below. Sorry. These are "tweets", 140 maximum character messages sent via Twitter. Within the Twitterverse individual users follow others and have followers (think of it like overlapping Venn diagram circles). To read a tweet, you have to wade through a bit of jargon used to make the most of the 140 character limitation. "RT" for example, is shorthand for "Re-tweet" and the @____ is the username of some other individual on Twitter. Combined together, then, "RT @_____" means that someone else wrote a tweet that I found important and I now want to forward along to my followers. The URL's are then also shortened by shortening services like bit.ly to make the most of the character limitation, too. Lastly, you might see "hash" identifiers "#______" which are ways to tag tweets of a particular flavor for easy searching later and "<" which means that I am commenting on what came before it.
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