Negotiation Resources - Seminars, Trainers, Organizations
Part I
Seminars, Trainers and Organizations
© BridgeS E C
INTRODUCTION
The good news is that negotiation is a learnable skill. The bad news is that one cannot learn it merely from books and videos anymore than one can learn how to act, sing or be a keynote speaker only by reading about it or watching it. OJT – on the job training, i.e. actually negotiating, in conjunction with seminars and workshops (preferably with video feedback) is the way to learn. Articles and books are most useful as a refresher, as a catalyst to creative structuring of a deal – and to encourage proper follow-through thereafter.
Of course one can learn to negotiate just from experience, with no formal training or study of it at all – just as many entrepreneurs learn business, or countless emigrants have learned a new language. However accounting, management and legal training certainly help one to grow a company more efficiently, avoid pitfalls, just as instruction in grammar, diction and writing accelerate one’s learning of a foreign language. The combination of formal training and practical experience yields better results than the one at the exclusion of the other in just about any field of endeavor, including negotiation.
Seminars and training organizations are therefore the most important resources. There is considerable crossover between the two. The seminar presenters will customize their offerings to conduct them in-house. The training institutes will also hold open seminars. Hence the inclusion into the one or the other category is somewhat arbitrary. The accompanying bibliography on its separate subpage has brief comments on about 30 negotiation books, a list of another 20-odd books, followed by some short notes on Software and Videos. Under the heading “related” are also some works of fiction that are not only entertaining, but which also provide “food for negotiating thought.”
SEMINARS
Some of these negotiating seminars are expensive, 6.000€, $10,000 or more for five or six days. All of them are offered repeatedly. An interesting paradox is how seldom anyone tries to negotiate the price of the seminar or the accommodation. Given the fact that there are a number of excellent, similar offerings to choose from, one would think many participants, above all senior executives, would want to demonstrate their existing negotiation competence – and stewardship of their firm’s assets – with at the very least a nibble, even if only as a point of pride.
Surely an inappropriate response would be: “The price is fixed. We are not rug merchants at a bazaar here. Take it or leave it.” This is, after all, a negotiating seminar, one that presumably emphasizes creative structuring.
If the training organization absolutely refuses to negotiate, will not even consider practicing what is preached, what message does that send about the credibility of the seminar itself?
Yet the great majority of participants do not even try to negotiate the terms of their attendance at all. Strange. Seminars are a moving target. Instructors, programs and prices change frequently. If one does not constantly update the information, it rapidly becomes dated, as is the case here. The rationalization for presenting the admittedly out-of-date information is to give the reader a frame of reference. With it he can determine what programs were offered pre-2010, with what kind of instructors and at what prices. Then he can update that information through the websites provided below.
Are Harvard, Wharton and INSEAD still the “big three” of negotiation? Has another program improved enough to challenge their leadership? Conspicuous by their absence here are the myriad negotiating seminars offered by management training institutes and language schools (such as those focusing on “business English”). These seminars are a mixed bag, depending on the background of the trainer holding it on any given day.
Your trainer could be, for instance, a terrific English teacher. He would then certainly be competent to improve your negotiating rhetoric. However he may very well have never participated in a multi-party enterprise transaction, let alone led a negotiating team for it. Therefore he is unlikely to be very knowledgeable about creative structuring in terms of countertrading, hedging, experience curve effects, consolidating logistic costs, cross-marketing, reciprocal stock options, and the like.
For instance, when stock appreciation rights and options are on the table as part of the deal, how should they be valued? Expertise with the Black-Scholes model[1] (from research at M.I.T), which set the standard for options valuation upon its publication in 1973, is not required. But at least knowing what it looks like seems desirable. Most of the organizations below are elaborated upon in the NOTES. When not, then a short description, one or two sentences, appears below the website address.
Negotiating Seminars from America, examples
Organization Seminar Place Length Price (days) (past) Companies: Karrass Effective Negotiating I & II 85 cities 2 $1,235 www.karrass.co China Workshop 10 cities 1 $695 to $1102
Universities:
Harvard Strategic Negotiations Boston 6 $10,000 Changing the Game Boston 6 $10,000 Changing the Game, Europe London 6 7.175€ The Global Negotiator Boston 6 $10,000 Managing Negotiators & the Deal Process Boston 6 $11,00 http://www.exed.hbs.edu/category/negotiation.html#f1
Stanford Influence & Negotiations Strategy Program Stanford, CA 6 $11,000 www.gsb.stanford.edu/exed/programs.html Wharton Executive Negotiation Workshop - Philadelphia 6 $9,750 Bargaining for Advantage http://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/open-enrollment/negotiation-persuasion-programs/index.cfm
Negotiation Seminars from Europe, examples Organization Seminar Place Length Price (days) (past) Companies:
Scotwork Negotiating Skills 20+ countries 3 1.750€
(Verhandlungstechniken)
www.scotwork.com and www.scotwork.de
Universities:
INSEAD Negotiation Dynamics Fontainebleau 3 6.050€
Singapore
http://executive.education.insead.edu/negotiation_dynamics/
Judge Business Successful Negotiating Cambridge, UK 2 1.700€
School, Cambridge University
http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/execed/open/successfulnegotiation.html
The user friendly website gives a good description of the program and the faculty leader, Mark de Rond, an Oxford PhD who had negotiation training at the PON programs of Harvard.
London Business Negotiating and Influencing Skills London 5 5,600€
School Skills for Senior Managers
www.london.edu/programmes/executiveeducation/nism/programmedetails.html
The director of the program is Modan Pillutia, a professor of organizational behavior with an MBA from the U. of Illinois and a PhD from British Columbia. However the CVs and negotiating experience of the trainers are not readily available on the website.
NOTES – U.S. BASED ORGANIZATIONS
Karrass is headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA and runs its European operations from Dorset, UK. After earning an Engineering degree from the University of Colorado and an MBA from Columbia University, Chester Karrass became a negotiator for the Hughes organization.[2] He then took a leave of absence from Hughes to earn a PhD at the University of Southern California, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on negotiation. He returned to the Hughes organization as a negotiating consultant.
In 1968 he launched his Effective Negotiating® seminars, which have been attended by well over 800,000 people. Karrass seminars are regularly advertised in the in-flight magazines of the major airlines. They are run in over 65 North American cities as well as in about 20 cities in Europe, Asia and Australia. Usually 15 to 60 people attend a seminar. The leaders are friendly and competent, and the seminars include brief videos of Karrass himself addressing key points. However (in contrast to the university offerings below), the CVs and negotiating backgrounds of the seminar leaders are not readily available.
The firm is now run by Gary Karrass (presumably the son of the founder) who has written four books in his own right, including Negotiating to Close. Apparently customer service needs some work, as the firm has not yet cleaned up a negative report on the lethal customer complaint website, www.ripoffreport.com. The irate customer seems a difficult type, but that happens, and one needs to respond quickly. If unable to negotiate an alternative (e.g. free attendance of a different seminar with another trainer), then a refund should be prompt. Then one avoids having statements such as the below, ghosting on the Internet since March 2000, ten whole years now, by a disgruntled customer:
. . .I wrote a letter to the firm’s President the next day, Mr. Gary Karrass. Ten days went by and no response. Another letter and again, no response. Three e-mails and no response. Finally a response via e-mail from the Operations Manager asking me to "refresh" her memory. I did with another e-mail and again, no response. After two phone calls I got a Mr. Clayman, V.P. who had no idea who I was, etc. Bottom line: He refused to give me a refund of any kind. He was arrogant telling me "we are Karrass". . . It took me two letters, four e-mails and two phone calls before I could get anyone to assist me. Obviously, Karass has no knowledge of customer service. . .
Nonetheless, these seminars are a sound beginning, if for no other reason than that so many other people have taken them. At least you will have some common ground. Furthermore, the seminar materials are excellent. They include not one, but three books by Chester Karrass, and also audio CDs. After a basic seminar, such as the ones offered by Karrass and Scotwork (among others), the next step is to move up to a “big ticket” university seminar.
Harvard Business School (HBS): The negotiating program is well explained in attractive brochures, promptly sent on request, which, surprisingly, is by no means a given with competitors. Harvard also offers some negotiating seminars in London. For a long time the program was run by Professor Max Bazerman, who has written a dozen books and over 150 articles.
Professor James Sebenius was the main co-trainer. He left Harvard for several years to join the Blackstone Group, a New York investment bank.* In the first three years of its existence and with fewer than 10 employees, the Blackstone Group closed over $12 billion worth of deals and (2011) has a $109 billion portfolio. James Sebenius has also written three negotiating books in his own right. He is responsible for having made negotiating a required course for Harvard MBA students.
Harvard has an alumnae network second to none. From the point of view of making contact with fellow decision makers, these seminars will probably provide better opportunities than anywhere else.
* The billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group, James Hamilton, who earned his Harvard MBA about the same time I was taking courses there, is not a relation!
Stanford Business School: The program was led by Professor Margaret A. Neale. Her CV and those of the other professors involved showed great academic strength, as would be expected. However they did not give much detail about their actual negotiating and deal-making experience, which they do, of course, have. Seminars are restricted to 30 participants. The negotiating exercises are videotaped and the videos analyzed after each session.
Wharton: The long-term director of the program was Professor Richard Shell, who has been at Wharton (University of Pennsylvania) since 1986. He has written the well-respected Bargaining for Advantage, Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People, 1999. He has made numerous presentations about the subject, including one at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Wharton mentions a requirement for fluent English. In order to make sure that people who are not native speakers get the full benefit from the program, Wharton offers the option or one or two weeks of intensive English immediately before the seminar week.
Wharton ran its seminars with a “Practice Professor”, i.e. someone not from academia. Stuart Diamond (Wharton MBA and Harvard Law School JD) was the co-trainer. He is the CEO of the Global Strategy Group, with extensive experience in Asia, Africa, North America and Europe, including Eastern Europe. He has founded several companies and also won a Pulitzer Prize as a journalist for the New York Times. He states:
"I'm always working on deals — M&As, financing acquisitions, startups, turnarounds... Participants are asked to bring in negotiation challenges they face, so they can work on them. In other words, they apply the tools as they learn them."
NOTES – EUROPEAN BASED ORGANIZATIONS
Scotwork: which was founded in 1976 in the UK holds negotiation seminars in 15 languages and at least 24 countries (2009), and regularly seeks licensees in additional countries. The seminars are well designed: twelve participants with two instructors over three days, with video replays. The ratio is about three to one between practical negotiating exercises and lectures.
Similar to Karrass, the CVs and negotiating experience of the seminar leaders are not readily available. Scotwork offers half-day workshops as a marketing tool for its full program at a modest price (less than 200€). In these its 8-step method is introduced, and a case study worked through. The case study was well done and interesting. The situation was such that both parties (unbeknownst to each other) were under tremendous pressure to close the deal, otherwise facing huge losses.
In the follow-up analysis both sides were satisfied that a fairly reasonable deal had been reached, although it could, of course, have been better. When asked, the lead trainer said that over the many years he had run this case study, about 50% of the groups in Germany deadlocked. Both sides left the table, their companies doomed, but their pride intact, “we showed them” -- a classic lose/lose outcome.
Assuming this surprising feedback were, in fact, accurate, and not a touch of advertising puffery, than businessmen in Germany need more work on their negotiating skills than one would expect. Furthermore, there was little emphasis, at least in this half-day workshop, on “win/win,” in contrast to the Karrass seminars.
Apparently over half of Scottwork´s seminars are held in-house. About four weeks before the scheduled seminar, the participants receive materials and “homework.”
INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France intends Negotiation Dynamics for executives who have at least eight to ten years of experience. Professor Ingemar Dierickx was the Director of the program. He has a law degree (Lic. Jur.) from the Rijksuniversiteit Ghent and three Harvard degrees, an LLM from the law school and an MBA (Baker Scholar) and PhD from the business school.
The lead trainer was Anil Gaba, who received his PhD in Decision Sciences at Duke University in 1989. He was nominated countless times for the best teacher award in the MBA program, winning it a remarkable seven times.
TRAINERS, U.S. - examples (active internationally)
The Negotiation Institute (www.negotiation.com), headquartered in New York City, precedes the Karrass organization by two years, having been founded in 1966 by Gerard I. Nierenberg, an attorney. He has written 22 books, including the bestselling The Art of Negotiating, 1968, revised as The New Art of Negotiating, 2009.
The company has 19 trainers, five of them women, and all with solid resumes (as of Jan. 2010). It offers a dozen in-house negotiating seminars from its classic Everybody Wins to the interesting Negotiating/Communicating When English is Not Your First Language. It also offers another twenty odd seminars in sales as well as presentation training. The website states the firm has trained over one million people.
Ed Brodow, Negotiation Boot Camp (www.brodow.com and www.negotiationbootcamp.com) has been one of the star negotiating trainers in the U.S. for some time now. His presentation skills reflect his being a professional actor. He has appeared in made-for-TV movies, a soap opera, and numerous commercials. He won the lead in a European film (Jackpot), and has appeared opposite Jessica Lange (Frances), Ron Howard (Fire on the Mountain), and Christopher Reeve (Love of Life), among other feature films. Besides negotiating film roles, he has over 20 years of practical experience as: a Marine Corps officer; an IBM computer salesman; a Litton Industries sales manager; a Singer Company corporate negotiator; and as president of Pulse Management Corporation, a New York sales consulting firm.[3]
At the bottom of the home page of his personal website (www.brodow.com) a negotiation speaker demo video is listed. The video includes two great stories about a satisfied meatball sandwich robber and a talking frog – both of which make significant negotiating points. He recently wrote Negotiating Boot Camp.
CMIIG: (www.cm.com) headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. with offices in Uruguay and Argentina originated from Harvard´s Program on Negotiation, PON. (PON, which has led to several spin-offs, is discussed below at Organizations.) In 1997 Conflict Management Inc. (CMI) and the Conflict Management Group (CMG) merged to form CMIIG.
The firm´s managing director, Dr. Julio Decaro, is a physician who earned his medical degree with honors from the University of the Republic of Uruguay in 1974. The CVs of the firm´s staff (16 - 18 people) are given on its website.
Common Outlook Consulting (www.commonoutlook.com) in Toronto, Canada also owes its origins to PON. Peter Hiddema founded the firm in 2000 after he had spent several years in the U.S. learning about negotiation. Interestingly his CV is not among the two dozen presented on the website.[4]
The firm offers a broad range of negotiation related services, including training, consulting, coaching, facilitation and mediation, and also keynote presentations. The firm emphasizes first learning about your business in order to be able to customize its programs, an attractive approach.
Align Consulting; LLC
Given the qualifications of the firm’s members, they are busy, and one needs to be persistent in order to receive a response.[5]
Covenor Conflict Management (www.convenor.com) has offices in Madison, Wisconsin and Washington D.C. The firm consists of five persons who share very strong legal credentials, most of them being professors at law schools; the Managing Partner is Chris Honeyman. The firm focuses on conflict resolution, and offers advanced negotiation training:
1) Negotiating Everything You Negotiate Now, Only Better 2) Negotiating With People Who Are Not Like You 3) Planning for a Specific, Important Negotiation
The website suggests downloading a pdf: Annotated Table of Contents in The Negotiator's Fieldbook for ideas about customized course modules. The book’s editors are the Convenor partners, who know all eighty of the contributing authors as colleagues.
TRAINERS, U.S. – examples (domestic)
The Latz Institute (www.expertnegotiator.com) headquartered in Arizona was founded by Mark E. Latz in 1998. He has provided training to law firms and Fortune 500 companies in 40 states. His website offers negotiating software (cf. “Software” at the end of this bibliography) and features an academic board of experts, professors with powerful negotiating credentials. He has also written Gain the Edge, Negotiating to Get What You Want, 2004.
TRAINERS, European examples
Business Negotiation Solutions (BNS) (www.negotiationeurope.com) headquartered in London with offices in New York was founded by Jan Potgieter, who began focusing on negotiation during his studies for an MBA. The firm has seven key trainers and the website offers some interesting content, including video clips at “resources.”
Egger, Philips und Partner AG (www.eggerphilips.ch) was founded in Zurich, Switzerland 1985. Fritz Philips Jr. studied law and economics in Holland and initiated the cooperation with the PON at Harvard (cf. Organizations below.) Ulrich Egger, the firm’s co-founder, studied languages and history at Bern University, Switzerland. They brought respectively 16 and 20 years experience in multinational corporations to the new venture.
The website gives paragraph CVs of eleven trainers, almost all of whom also pursue independent ventures, including Linda Netch of Align (discussed at “Trainers”). The firm’s methodology is “Das Harvard Konzept” – which is the German title of Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury who together also played a key role in the founding of PON.
Negotiate Ltd. (www.negotiate.co.uk/AboutUs/About Negotiate.htm) was founded in 1986 by Gavin Kennedy. He has written several excellent negotiation books, including The New Negotiating Edge. The firm also does some open two-day workshops (at a fee of 600 pounds). It has licensed trainers in the UK, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Australia, South Africa, USA and Spain.
Scotworks: www.scotwork.com and www.scotwork.de splits its business between open seminars and in-house training. This UK firm is discussed above at Seminars, European examples.
ORGANIZATIONS
Harvard Program on Negotiation, PON (www.pon.harvard.edu) Bruce Patton co-founded the Harvard Negotiation Project with Roger Fisher and William Ury in 1979 (or 1983, sources differ) at Harvard Law School. The three are the authors of the classic Getting to Yes, Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. PON was the first and remains the foremost interdisciplinary research center on negotiation in the world. It strives to connect research from numerous fields of study with an understanding of negotiation practice. At one point the PON consortium had seven members:
- Harvard Business School – Harvard Law School – Harvard University – John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) – Simmons College – The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
In 2010 it was composed of the key Harvard participants with M.I.T. and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
© Gyan Web Design (2009-2010)
VERWANDTE BÜCHER
! Bryan Burrough und John Helgar, Die Nabisco Story, Ein Unternehmen wird geplündert, 1993 (amazon.de, ca. 30€), übersetzt von Barbarians at the Gate, the Fall of RJR Nabisco, 1991. Bryan Burrough hat die Ereignisse um Nabisco, damals die größte Firmenübernahme in der amerikanischen Geschichte, aktuell im Wall Street Journal berichtet – spannender Lesestoff über durchtriebene Winkeladvokaten, gewiefte Vorstandsmitglieder, wuchtige/wühlerische Aufsichtsratskonferenzen und allerlei Machenschaften. Es ist auch ein Hollywood-Film, vgl. Videos.
! Frederick Forsyth, Der Unterhändler, Piper (Taschenbuch), 2009 (amazon.de 10€), übersetzt von The Negotiator, 1990. Die Geschichte handelt von einer Verschwörung gegen den Präsidenten der Vereigneten Staaten und ist nicht nur ein kurzweiliger Thriller sondern auch eine gute Darstellung von Verhandlungstechniken.
!!! Robert Greene, Power, Die 48 Gesetzte der Macht, dtv 2001, übersetzt von The 48 Laws of Power, 1998. Obwohl kein Verhandlungsbuch als solches, reich an relevanten, provozierenden Fallstudien -- von chinesischen Herrschern vor 1000 Jahren bis hin zu modernen Unternehmern -- und sehr als Hintergrund zu empfehlen.
!! Henry Kissinger, Memoiren in drei Bände: (1) 1968 - 70, (2)1970 – 72, (3) 1972 – 74, C. Bertelsmann, übersetzt von White House Years 1968-1972 (pub. 1979) und (zum Teil) vonYears of Upheaval 1973-1977 (pub. 1982). Henry Kissinger, eins der wichtigsten Staatsmänner des 20. Jahrhunderts und mit Abstand der bedeutendste U.S.-Außenminister, hat ein duzend Bücher geschrieben. Die Memoiren schließen Beschreibungen der Verhandlungen über das Ende des Vietnamkrieges und über die Aufnahme der diplomatischen Beziehung zwischen den Staaten und China ein.
VERHANDLUNGSBÜCHER - AUF DEUTSCH
Kare Anderson, Wie Sie erreichen, was Sie wollen, (Der sichere Weg zum Verhandlungserfolg, 100 Techniken für eine gute und effektive Gesprächsführung) Heyne Campus Taschenbuch,1997, übersetzt von Getting What You Want (1993). Ihr Konzept "Dreiecks-Gespräch" sowie die anderen Vorschläge sind solide, jedoch mehr in die Richtung von was man in Verkaufsbüchern liest.
Michael C. und Mimi Donaldson, Erfolgreich Verhandeln für Dummies, Überzeugen ohne Frust, Thomson Pub. 1998, übersetzt von Negotiating for Dummies,
1997. Das Buch gehört zur berühmten "Dummies" Folge (Gesamtauflage: 50 Millionen). Michael Donaldson ist ein ehemaliger Marine Corps Offizier (wie der Star-Trainer Ed Brodow auch) und ein Rechtsanwalt mit dem Hauptgebiet "Entertainment". Seine Frau Mimi, die Co-Autorin, ist eine Unternehmensberaterin und auch ein Trainer für Fortune 500 Firmen. Das vorletzte Kapitel ist gut und ungewöhnlich: "Zehn Videos, aus denen Sie viel lernen können.” Einige davon werden zum Schluß in dieser Bibliographie angegeben.
! Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton, und Ulrich Egger, Das Harvard-Konzept, Der Klassiker der Verhandlungstechnik von Campus Verlag (Taschenbuch), 2009 (amazon.de 25€, auch als Hörbuch (Audio CD) 30€, übersetzt von Getting to Yes, Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, 1981. Obwohl veraltet, das Buch ist
trotzdem als Ausgangspunkt zu empfehlen.
Franz Goossens, Konferenz- und Verhandlungnstechniken Wilhelm Heyne Taschenbuch, 1981, eins von 28 Geschäftsbüchern, die Dr. Goossens geschrieben hat, um sein Seminargeschäft zu untermauern. Es wurde 1989 in die spanische Sprache übersetzt: Técnicas de discusión y negociación, NH Hoteles.
Wilfred Hartig, Modernes Verhandeln (Grundlagen - Leitlinien-Fallbeispiele) Sauer Verlag, 1995. Das letzte Drittel des Buches gibt eine interessante Zusammenfassung der Verhandlungsgeschichte ab. Jemand, der über sieben Seiten einem Hamilton widmet, wird von mir schonend behandelt. Jedoch was wir hier haben ist eigentlich eine Habilitationsschrift, leider mit Behördendeutsch behaftet: Polysemie, Kinesik, Proxemik, Mimognomik, Phonognomik, usw.
Robert Mayer, Der Verhandlungskünstler (Wie Sie clever, kompetent und überzeugend jede private und geschäftliche Situation meistern) Wirtschaftsverlag Überrünter 1998, übersetzt von Power Plays, 1996. Mayer ist ein Rechtsanwalt in Kalifornien. Die letzten 115 Seiten des unterhaltsamen Buches stellen Vorschläge für verschiedene Verhandlungen vor: den Erwerb eines Franchisinggeschäfts, Kauf eines Hauses, Durchsetzung einer Scheidung, usw.
Wolfgang Salewski, Die Kunst des Verhandelns, Wiley-VCH Verlag, 2008. Der Verfasser hat achtbare Erfahrung, unter anderem Verhandeln mit Terroristen. Der Schwerpunkt des Buches liegt auf menschlicher Wahrnehmung und Kommunikation (was der erste Teil ausmacht), obwohl Teil 2 Verhandlungen in der Praxis behandelt. Leider kommen abenteuerliche Erlebnisse kaum zur Geltung, werden nur nebenbei erwähnt, vielleicht weil der Autor darüber in zwei früheren Werken Geiselnahme und erpresserischer Menschenraub, 1976 und Die neue Gewalt, 1978 geschrieben hat. Als Anhang erscheint sehr nutzvolle „Leitfaden für erfolgreiche Verhandlungen“ mit an die 30 Fragen, die gestellt werden sollten. In der Bibliographie erscheinen nur ein paar Verhandlungsbücher, dagegen etwa 30 über Kommunikation, Wahrnehmung, usw.
Wolf Ruede-Wissman, Satanische Verhandlungskunst ... und wie man sich dagegen wehrt, Gondrom 1993. Der Verfasser ist ein deutscher Rechtsanwalt, der sich hier vorwiegend mit der Rhetorik beschäftigt.
RELATED BOOKS
! Bryan Burrough and John Helgar, Barbarians at the Gate, the Fall of RJR Nabisco, 1991, (amazon.com, ca. $20). Bryan Burrough covered the Nabisco acquisition, up to then the largest in U.S. history, for the Wall St. Journal. The book reads like a thriller, describing the machinations of opposing board members and the shenanigans of various shysters and pettifoggers. It is also a Hollywood film, cf. Videos.
! Frederick Forsyth, The Negotiator, 1990, (paperback, amazon.com, $8). The story is about a conspiracy directed against the President of the U.S. Besides being an entertaining thriller, the book gives a good description of negotiating techniques.
!!! Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power, 1998, paperback (amazon.com $12). Although not a negotiating book as such, it is full of provocative case studies about power, from Chinese rulers a millennium ago to modern entrepreneurs, strongly recommended as background reading.
!!! Charles Hampden-Turner, Fons Trompenaars, Building Cross-Cultural Competence, How to create wealth from conflicting values, Wiley, 2000 (Amazon.com $35). These are the authorities on the role of culture in business. For anyone who negotiates internationally, the book provides crucial background information.
* Walter Isaacson, Kissinger, a Biography, Simon & Schuster, 1992 – a successful attempt at an objective biography.
!! Henry Kissinger, White House Years 1968-1972 (pub. 1979); Years of Upheaval 1973-1977 (pub. 1982); Diplomacy (pub. 1995). Henry Kissinger, one of the most important statesmen of the 20th century and by far the most important U.S. Secretary of State, has written a dozen books. The first two above include descriptions of international negotiations – to end the Vietnam war and to re-establish relations with China. The third is a review of the history of diplomacy, beginning with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War.
!! Harvey Mackay, Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive, William Morrow & Co.,1988 (also available as a paperback, amazon.com $12). The first part of Chapter II of this bestseller business classic is about a botched attempt by four Iranians, successful real estate developers in Canada, to negotiate a $1.5 billion development in the U.S., which would have created 40,000 jobs. Chapter III, "Harvey MacKay’s Short Course on Negotiation" (pp. 89-113) presents thirteen lessons well worth heeding.
NEGOTIATING BOOKS - IN ENGLISH
The first section consists of about 30 books which have been read, some diligently, some merely skimmed in a couple hours in a library. These are briefly annotated. The second section consists of another 20-odd books not read, but which have been recommended by acquaintances or referred to favorably in other publications.
I. Annotated Bibliography
Karl and Steve Albrecht, Added Value Negotiating, Irwin Books 1993, translated into Spanish as: Cómo Negociar con Exito, Grancia 1994. The content is fairly standard.
Max H. Bazermann, Margaret A. Neale, Cognition and Rationality in Negotiation, Free Press 1991, ISBN 0-02-922525-9. This is an academic book, focusing on the negotiator’s decision-making process. It is in part based upon, and extends, Howard Raffia’s The Art and Science of Negotiation, q.v.
Ed Brodow, Negotiating Boot Camp, How to Resolve Conflict, Satisfy Customers, and Make Better Deals, 2006 (amazon.com, $14). Brodow is one of the premier negotiating trainers in the U.S. (and also an actor with Hollywood film credits). He has written an entertaining book with good content.
Bert R. Brown, Jeffrey Z. Rubin, The Social Psychology of Bargaining and Negotiation, Academic Press, 1975. This academic book gives a good treatment of time limits (with an interesting Korean example) and of the role of differences in background, including one’s sex. It cites 20 studies that demonstrate that men behave more cooperatively than women, and 27 studies that demonstrate that women behave more cooperatively than men -- ample evidence to support anyone’s conclusion of preference!
Peter J. Carnevale, Dean G. Pruitt, Negotiation in Social Conflict, Open U. Press, 1993. This academic book has some good brief comments about refocusing questions to construct win-win agreements.
David Churchman, Negotiation, Process, Tactics, Theory, University Press of America. This solid book has good brief explanations of Boulwarism,* Linkage, Pareto Optimal Frontier, Reverse Auction, and Sibylline Books.** In a prolegomenon about negotiation theory it has an excellent treatment of the dual concern model. The bibliography is extensive, listing some 240 works on negotiation.
* A Boulwarism is a “take it or leave it” offer or counter-offer that is not meant to be negotiated. The term stems from Lemuel Boulware, a former vice president of General Electric (GE). He became (in)famous for telling the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) at the onset of negotiations that GE had already evaluated the needs of the workers. Consequently he was making GE´s "first, last and best offer" on the table immediately.
** <>Sibylline Books are not to be confused with the so-called Sibylline Oracles, twelve books of prophesies thought to be of Judaeo-Christian origin. The Sibylline Books were a collection of oracular utterances, purchased from a sibyl by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus. They were consulted at momentous crises through the history of the Republic and the Empire. Only fragments have survived, the rest being lost or deliberately destroyed.
“The story of the acquisition of the Sibylline Books by Tarquinius is one of the famous mythic elements of Roman history. The Cumaean Sibyl offered to Tarquinius nine books of these prophecies; and as the king declined to purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned three and offered the remaining six to Tarquinius at the same stiff price, which he again refused, whereupon she burned three more and repeated her offer. Tarquinius then relented and purchased the last three at the full original price and had them preserved in a vault beneath the Capitoline temple of Jupiter.” (Quoted from Wikipedia.)
! Herb Cohen, You Can Negotiate Anything, Lyle Stuart Inc. 1980 (paperback, amazon.com $8). This well written classic by a famous U.S. attorney covers power, time, information, and win-lose versus win-win styles. The anecdotes are amusing and relevant today.
Negotiate This, By Caring, But Not T-H-A-T Much, Warner Books, 2003. An entertaining follow-up with current anecdotes, but this book is not quite as solid its classic predecessor.
!!! Charles B. Craver, Effective Legal Negotiation and Settlement, 1986, last revised 2009. The author, a Professor of Law at George Washington University, has written a solid textbook used at over 60 American law schools. There is extensive treatment of negotiating techniques (29 of them!) and a welcome emphasis on the value of conducting negotiation post-mortems. Especially noteworthy is an Appendix with Negotiation Exercises. If one is dealing with attorneys in a negotiation, then the liklihood of their having used either this textbook or quite a similar one is high. Therefore examining it carefully as part of one´s preparation is advisable.
The Intelligent Negotiator, 2002. This book is not aimed specifically at attorneys. An important point is that one should adapt one’s negotiating style to the circumstances. Sometimes Competitive-Adversarial is appropriate, sometimes Cooperative-Problem Solving, and sometimes an innovative approach, a hybrid of the conventional win/lose and win/win. Stubborn reliance on a single negotiating style is, sooner or later, a prescription for disaster.
John G. Cross, The Economics of Bargaining Basic Books, 1969. The author is a PhD out of Princeton who gives a quantitative treatment of bargaining situations: game theory, the bargaining model of Zeuthen (1930), the Nash model, a static model of the choice of disagreement costs, etc. One needs a quantitative background and some familiarity with utility theory to understand this book.
! Roger Fisher, Bruce Patton, William Ury Getting to Yes, Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Penguin, 1983, (paperback, amazon.com $14). The book stems in part from the research at the Project on Negotiation, PON, a consortium of Harvard, M.I.T., Simons and Tufts. This classic in clear, precise English provides excellent guidance to strategy. It has been translated into 20 languages and sold over 5 million copies.
The publication of the German translation of this book as Das Harvard Konzept has made it the best-known U.S. negotiating book in Germany, although in the U.S. it has been superceded by more recent ones.
Dean Allen Foster, Bargaining Across Borders, How to negotiate business successfully anywhere in the world, McGraw-Hill, 1992. This book is stronger on the cultural aspects of international business than on negotiating theory and practice. However part two, "Americans at the International Negotiating Table" is worthwhile. Unfortunately the book devotes only three pages (172-175) to the specific differences between U.S. and German negotiating styles. The treatment of China is scattered throughout the book, albeit more extensive, taking up some 20 pages in all.
P.H. Gulliver, Disputes and Negotiations, a cross-cultural perspective, 1979. This book has an anthropological orientation. Two case studies are particularly appealing. The first takes place in Tanzania (one of the more interesting countries the reviewer has done business in) and the second is an industrial dispute in America. The common denominator to the cases was that dyadic* agreement was impossible, the status quo unbearable.
*dyadic: two persons in a sociologically significant relationship, e.g. husband and wife, teacher and pupil (Webster’s III) – or employer and employee.
Chester L. Karrass, The Negotiating Game, Irving Pirkins, 1970, revised 1992. This book is superseded by the "bible", cf. below.
Give & Take has less emphasis on win-win than the "bible.” Two noteworthy sections are "ten dumb mistakes" and a questionnaire with 61 items with a possible score range of -668 to +724. The questionnaire, adapted, is well suited as introductory material for a seminar.
!!! "In Business as in Life - You Don’t Get What You Deserve, You Get What You Negotiate", Stanford St. Press, 1996 (hardcover, amazon.com $6 – the best bargain among negotiating books). The back of the dust jacket refers to this book, legitimately, as "the bible of negotiation". It and The Negotiating Game are distributed to everyone (about 35,000 people a year) who attends one of the Karrass negotiating seminars. The company is discussed at “Seminars” above.
The 400-page book provides more thorough information than what is presented in the seminar. A detailed, well-organized treatment of hard nose win-lose tactics on the one hand is balanced by an attractive emphasis and imaginative treatment of win-win tactics on the other. If you only read one book about negotiating, than this is the one to read.
Gavin Kennedy, Everything is Negotiable, How to get the best deal every time, Random House, 1982, reprinted 2008. The author founded Negotiate Ltd. in 1986, discussed at Trainers, above. The book has an ingenious format. At the beginning of each chapter there is a self-assessment test. After reading the chapter, you come to an annotated version of the test, relating it to the chapter. The content is good.
Strategic Negotiation, 2007 (Amazon.com - $135) is aimed at senior managers and takes an organizational perspective.
!! The New Negotiating Edge, Gavin Kennedy Nicholas Berkley, 1998, paperback (Amazon.com $30). This book presents a simple, powerful trading strategy for negotiation -- vividly supported by a color analogy. The ideas are not really new, but the presentation of them is excellent.
Other books by Gavin Kennedy include: The Essential Negotiator, The Perfect Negotiation, Profitable Negotiation and Kennedy on Negotiation. In this last book (pub. 1997, amazon.com $120) Kennedy critiques some competing theories and models from authors such as John Nash, Walton and McKersie, Atkinson, Nierenberg, Rubin and Brown, Karrass, Gottschalk, and Fisher and Ury.
Roderick M. Kramer, David M. Messik, editors Negotiation as a Social Process: New Trends in Theory and Research, Sage Publications, 1995. One of the most interesting articles was "Fairness Versus Self-Interest, Asymmetric Moral Imperatives in Ultimatum Bargaining" by J. Keith Murnighan (author of Bargaining Games, q.v.) and Madan M. Pillutla. The book has an Appendix with brief biographies of the 27 contributors, a veritable "Who’s Who" of negotiation researchers -- unfortunately dated now.
Richard Ned Lebow, The Art of Bargaining John Hopkins 1996. The book stems from a five week negotiating course held at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. It offers an interesting criticism of the key concept, "principled bargaining" of Roger Fischer and Harold Ury´s classic, Getting to Yes.
Roy J. Lewick, Alexander Hiam, Karen Wise Olander, Think Before You Speak, A Complete Guide to Strategic Negotiation, Wiley, 1996. A strength of this book is the coverage of third party help in Chapter 11, including discussion of arbitration and mediation, two subjects conspicuous by their absence in many negotiating books. However this book has been superceded by the significantly better one below.
!! Roy J. Lewick, Alexander Hiam, The Fast Forward MBA in Negotiating and Deal Making, of the portable MBA series, Wiley, 1991, (paperback, amazon.com $5). This book is a rewritten, repackaged edition of Think Before You Speak. It covers most of what Karrass does in the bible, with better graphics and layout. Furthermore it is a tall, narrow paperback that fits nicely into your attaché case. Use Karrass and Kennedy to prepare at the office, and take the Fast Forward along with you to meetings.
Brad McRae, Negotiating and Influencing Skills, The Art of Creating and Claiming Value, Sage Publications, 1997. The author, a Canadian PhD in Psychology, explains his P.R.I.C.E (pinpoint, record, intervene, coach and evaluate) method used in his seminars, and gives some good sources, including an annotated bibliography of 13 books, in which he strongly recommends William Ury´s Getting Past No. .
! Mark H. McCormack, On Negotiating Dove, 1995 (paperback, amazon.com $6) McCormack is the attorney who founded IMB, the agency which has managed athletes such as Arnold Palmer, Jean-Claude Killy, Bjorn Borg, Alberto Tomba and Andre Agassi. At the time of writing, the agency had 2,000 employees. McCormack emphasizes practical examples out of his own business experience. The book is a good supplement to Karrass and Kennedy.
Don R. McCreary, Communication Strategies in Japanese-American Negotiations, University of Delaware PhD thesis, 1984. The author, whose wife is Japanese, emphasizes linguistic and cultural aspects.
J. Keith Murnighan, Bargaining Games. Chapter 6 gives an excellent description of "The Ultimatum Game".
Gerard I. Nierenberg, The Art of Negotiating, Psychological Strategies for Gaining Advantageous Bargains, Hawthorn Books, 1968, Library of Congress 68-307-20. Chapter V gives a good treatment of hidden assumptions. Chapter VI sets Abraham Maslow´s hierarchy of needs (from his classic Motivation and Personality, 1954) in a negotiating context. Chapter IX presents some interesting negotiating techniques. The author, an attorney, founded The Negotiating Institute in 1966, a training company discussed at Trainers above. The book has been revised as The New Art of Negotiating, How to Close Any Deal, 2009 (paperback, amazon.com $11).
Howard Raiffa, The Art and Science of Negotiation, Harvard U. Press, 1982. This book stems from a course on competitive decision making at Harvard Business School. It is not overly quantitative, although it does touch on statistics (game theory, decision trees). Three noteworthy negotiations which are treated are: 1) Panama Canal in 1974, 2) Carter, Anwar-el Sadat, and Menachem at Camp David (for which the latter two shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978) and 3) the 160 nation Law of the Sea Treaty.
Leo Reilly, How to Outnegotiate Anyone, Even a Car Dealer! Adams Media, 1994. Reilly is a California attorney and negotiating trainer, who has written a good short (130 pages) treatment, an interesting part of which is an excellent guide on how to buy a new car in the U.S.
Bernard A. Ramundo, Effective Negotiation: a Guide to Dialogue Management and Control, Quorum Books, 1992. There are good, brief comments about the role of "Mr. Inside" and "Mr. Outside", about concessions, bootstrapping issues, and packaging the deal.
Jeswald W. Salacuse, The Global Negotiator, Making, Managing, and Mending Deals Around the World in the Twenty-First Century, Macmillan, 2003. The author is a Professor of Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Harvard Program on Negotiations. He has lived abroad and has extensive international experience. A strength of the book is the attention it pays to managing the deal after it has been made.
Richard D. Shell, Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People, Viking Penguin, 1999. The author directs the negotiation program at Wharton. Among his publications is the well-known article with the provocative title "When Is It Legal to Lie in Negotiations?" in the Sloan Management Review. In this book he elaborates on his approach of Information-Based Bargaining, based on Six Foundations: 1) personal bargaining style, 2) goals and expectations, 3) authoritative standards and norms, 4) relationships, 5) the other party’s interests and 6) leverage.
Unannotated Bibliography
Although the resources below have not been read or viewed, their inclusion here is not random. They have been recommended by acquaintances or referred to favorably in other publications. Those marked with an asterisk (*) have been ordered and will be annotated over time.
25 Role Plays for Negotiation Skills by Ira Asherman and Sandy Asherman. Amherst, Mass., Human Resource Development Press, 1995.
American Bar Association Satellite Seminar on Negotiation — Can You Trust Your Instincts? Chicago, Illinois, American Bar Association, 1985.
* Bargaining with the Devil, When to Negotiate, When to Fight by Robert Mnookin, 2010 (amazon.com $18)
Curriculum for Negotiation and Conflict Management: Instructor’s Manual by Elaine M. Landry, Deborah M. Kolb, and Jeffrey Z. Rubin. Cambridge, Mass., Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, 1991.
* Gain the Edge: Negotiating to Get What You Want by Martin Latz, 2004 (amazon.com $11)
Getting Past No, Negotiating with Difficult People, by William Ury 1991 (superceded by his book The Power of No, 2007, cf. below.)
Getting Ready to Negotiate: The Getting to Yes Workbook by Roger Fisher and Danny Ertel, New York, Penguin Books, 1995.
How People Negotiate: Resolving Disputes in Different Cultures by Guy Olivier Fauer, 2003 (paperback, amazon.com $70)
I Win, You Win: The Essential Guide to Principled Negotiation by Carl Lyons. London: A & C Black, 2007.
The Little Book of Strategic Negotiation: Negotiating During Turbulent Times by Jayne Seminare Docherty, Intercourse, Pa., Good Books, 2005.
Negotiate to Close, How to Make More Successful Deals by Gary Karrass, 1987. This book is one of the few on negotiating written with salesmen specifically in mind.
Negotiating with Giants: Get What You Want against the Odds by Peter D. Johnston, Victoria, BC, Negotiation Press, 2008.
The Negotiation Handbook by Patrick J. Cleary, Armonk, N.Y., M.E. Sharpe, 2001.
The Negotiation Sourcebook edited by Ira Asherman and Sandy Asherman, Amherst, Mass., Human Resource Development Press, 2001.
Negotiation Theory and Practice edited by J. William Breslin and Jeffrey Z. Rubin. Cambridge, Mass., Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, 1993.
The Negotiator’s Fieldbook, The Desk Reference for the Experienced Negotiator by Andrea K. Schneider and Christopher Honeyman, 2006. Andrea Schneider is a Princeton grad who went on to Harvard Law School and has also studied law in Italy. She has taught at both Harvard and Stanford Law School and is a Professor at Marquette Law School Christopher Honeyman is the Managing Partner of Convenor Conflict Management, (www.convenor.com), in which Andrea Schneider also participates. The firm is discussed at “Trainers, U.S. – internationally active.” The Fieldbook is a 700 page collection of articles by
80 contributing authors on various aspects of negotiation.
On Teaching Negotiation by Bruce M. Patton, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Law School.1985.
* The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes by William Ury. New York, Bantam Books, 2007. (Also with an Audio CD from Random House, cf,. below for some comments on the book and audio.)
Reassessing Getting to Yes and Principled Negotiation by Bruce M. Patton. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Law School, 1985.
Rethinking Negotiation Teaching, Innovations for Context and Culture, by Christopher Honeyman, James Coben, and Giuseppe De Palo 2009. In 2008 some 50 leading negotiating scholars met in Rome as part of an on-going study. This book reflects that conference and associated work for it. Christopher Honeyman is the Managing Partner of Convenor, discussed at “Trainers, U.S. – internationally active.”
Secrets of Power Negotiation, Inside Secretes from a Master Negotiator by Roger Dawson, 2000.
Teaching Negotiation: Ideas and Innovations edited by Michael Wheeler. Cambridge, Mass., Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, 2000.
Videos, DVDs and CDs
Final Offer (video, 78 minutes)
Goes behind closed doors and shows the contract negotiation process in a contract dispute between the American and Canadian chapters of the huge and powerful United Auto Workers Union. (National Film Board of Canada, 1985)
Barbarians at the Gate (VHS, 107 minutes) is an HBO movie staring James Garner and based on the book of the same title by Bryan Burrough and John Helgar. James Garner plays F. Ross Johnson, CEO of RJR Nabisco. Johnson faced irate stockholders because of the company’s futile efforts to market a smokeless cigarette. Johnson decided to rid himself of the irritating stockholders by taking the company private, i.e. buying it. He found himself in contention for control of Nabisco with the takeover king Henry Kravis. Negotiations, offers and counter-offers for the prize represented a veritable orgy of greed and trickery.
High and Low (DVD, available at amazon.com; Deutsch – Zwischen Himmel und Hölle) with Toshiro Mifune, directed (black & white) by Kurosawa. An executive mortgages all he owns to gain control of the National Shoe Company. His son is kidnapped and the executive prepares to pay the ransom, and then realizes that it is not his son, but that of his chauffeur. The police negotiator on the one hand, the executive’s negotiations with all the stakeholders about whether to pay the ransom for the other child make for the dramatic tension.
The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes by William Ury. New York, Random House Audio CD, 2007, as a supplement to the book of the same title (cf. above). No is perhaps the single most powerful word in any language. We constantly find ourselves in situations where we need to use it. However No can also alienate and anger people. Therefore saying No in the right way is crucial. The book (of the same title, cf. above) and the audio program offer concrete advice and practical examples for saying No in almost any situation. A Positive No enables us to say Yes to our own needs and wants, values and priorities.
Software
Only two programs will be mentioned here, against which other software may be benchmarked. The first is from the Negotiating Institute (cf. Trainers, U.S. active internationally). At the website www.negotiation.com clicking on “Learning” on the horizontal bar on the right will bring you to “The Art of Negotiating Software.” However there is not a great deal of information presented about it.
The second benchmark is the software offered by The Latz Institute (cf. Trainers, U.S. – domestic). At the website www.expertnegotiator.com clicking on “The Software” on the horizontal bar at the far left brings you to extensive information about it. The program includes strategic planning tools and a best practices system. It is a web-based and a 30-day free trial is offered.