We don't often discuss topics of morality in business, and we think that's both a shame and a serious governance error. What are the characteristics of a "fair" business deal? Is there value in "holding the moral high ground" in a negotiation? What does "moral high ground" even mean, in the context of a large business transaction? Let's take a typical Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) contract renewal as a case study. For most EA customers, the proposed renewal order would consist almost entirely of Software Assurance (SA) coverage for the client’s existing licenses. New licenses are typically added during the annual True-Up process, and ...
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New CEO Leo Apotheker is already off to a questionable start as HP’s new CEO. He hasn’t even started his new job yet (he starts on November 1), but what does he plan to do on day one? Well, he’ll be starting his new career in the cross-hairs of Oracle’s lawyers, as a witness in a courtroom in Oracle’s corporate espionage trial against SAP as he’s been called as a witness. SAP doesn’t deny the wrongdoing of former subsidiary TomorrowNow, but is simply disputing the amount of the damages. Clearly, Oracle’s goal will be to find out how much Leo knew about this, and when he knew it in an attempt to discredit him as much as possible amid ...
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On September 30, HP announced its highly anticipated replacement of ousted CEO Mark Hurd with the appointment of former (fired) SAP CEO Leo Apotheker taking the helm, effective November 1, 2010. Once again, the HP board shocks many experts. The HP board has a long history of bungling many high profile situations, and unlike any other organization I can think of, the board has become notorious not only in the minds of many experts, but also in the minds of many normal professionals in the industry. Seemingly, the HP board missed the mark yet again. They had several good internal candidates including PC and consumer business leader Todd ...
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If HP was a coyote, it would seemingly chew off its three good legs, leaving its one bad leg still stuck in the trap. Leg 1 You may remember the Carly Fiorina fiasco? The embattled former leader of HP was fired by HP’s board after persisting disagreements about how to execute HP’s strategy could no longer be reconciled. It played out like a bad reality TV show until she was eventually voted off the island in disgrace. Her consolation prize? About a gazillion dollars in severance pay. Nice moves all around, board – NOT. Leg 2 Patricia Dunn was then named as Chairperson of the Board, and presided over a spying scandal, designed to drive out ...
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HP’s board has been widely criticized for the ousting of former CEO Mark Hurd. After initially publicizing accusations of sexual harassment, HP had to acknowledge that it actually found that Hurd did not violate the company’s policy on sexual harassment. In a Martha Stewart like moment, it then switched the crime from the actual crime itself, to lying about the investigation of the crime – with a focus on Hurd’s alleged fudging of some expense report information. The bottom line is that the board wanted Hurd out, and they didn’t want to take a stand on anything material, so they wussed out and picked on an administrative detail. In our book, ...
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Two weeks ago, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated and remanded the Autodesk case back to the District Court. The immediate reaction from the bulk of the people paying attention was one of dismay. The rest of the country might want to start paying attention soon. Autodesk licenses CAD software. They have a fairly restrictive license and a former licensee sold unused copies of their licenses to a buyer, who then attempted to sell them on eBay. After several DMCA takedown notices, the buyer eventually sought a permanent decision so that Autodesk would have no choice but to stop issuing the takedown notices via eBay. At the District Court ...
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For over 30 years, Oracle has been synonymous with Larry Ellison. To date, he hasn't yet named a successor, something that probably continually frustrates board chairman Jeff Henley to no end. Many would-be heirs to the thrown have been forced out by Ellison, or have left of their own accord after they have gotten sideways with Larry the Terrible. The two most recent co-presidents (Charles Phillips & Safra Catz) were widely regarded as executives with no real shot at replacing Ellison. Catz flat out doesn't want the job, and has publicly stated as much. She once said, "I don't know who would take over if something happened to Larry. I ...
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I love the show, Pawn Stars. Even if you've never watched it, you can likely tell by the name that it's a reality-based show based on a pawn shop, and the wheeling and dealing done between the shop's employees and its customers. As a professional negotiator, I've been riveted to many episodes simply to watch people's negotiation styles and techniques. The unfortunate truth, however, is that most people don't really have a style - they have the foundation for a single technique: anchoring. They walk into the store with an item they want to sell and a gut-feeling about the price they want. They play show-and-tell with the employees and then ...
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Fans of so-called cloud computing (or SaaS, if you like) will tout any number of positive benefits of using a network-based, non-locally-installed software program. And, to be fair, there are many: lowered (or no) installation costs, lowered support costs, instant scalability and right-sized usage, etcetera. They'll also usually talk about deployment speed, with virtually turnkey-like timing to go from nothing to everything. But almost never do the fans (or the service providers themselves) mention the downsides, especially the biggest one - death of the service. The logic is simple: no one wants to believe that the service will ever cease ...
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As a newsletter subscriber, you’ve no doubt read of NET(net)’s negotiated successes in our services engagements on behalf of our clients. You’ve most likely seen mention of our most attractive engagement method (pay for performance). And, if you’re even moderately skeptical, like I am, you’ve also no doubt wondered how we consistently achieve this success. The answer is simple: practice. We continuously practice our negotiation skills at home, at work, and at play. We also realized long ago that traditional negotiation methods simply didn’t yield the type of results we wanted. So we refined our abilities – focusing on the things that matter ...
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