So far, I have learned that negotiations are not
always a walk in the park, and it is not for the faint-hearted.
In Luna Pen, I learned how difficult it is to
negotiate with another party especially when you are miles apart and not
negotiating physically, belong to different cultures, have a wide age gap,
different organizational positions, and of different genders. Culture plays
significant role in the entire negotiation process, and therefore on the
outcome itself. It is not enough that you know what your BATNA or WATNA is. It
is equally important to know how you play it from the beginning to end. Both
your strategy and tactic will be observed, countered, and worse, may be even
used against you. Knowing who the other side of the table is and WHAT he
represents is vital.
Multi-party negotiation is nth times messier
and more complicated than a bilateral negotiation. Its complexity rises
exponentially as the number of parties involved increases. Each one of them
brings their own position and interests and they can kill you with a thousand
and one combinations of options available to them. If you are to enter or manage
a multilateral negotiation, you have to be prepared to deal with each
negotiator’s real positions and interests, not to mention their idiosyncrasies.
Finding out who is aligned with whom, who is at odds with whom, who is the
naysayer and who is out there to kill whatever deal is hammered out is more
challenging than it appears to be. Those who seem to be on the same page as you
all throughout may turn out to be the guy who will sell you out in the end.
Coordination is crucial in multi-party negotiations
because of the numerous layers of opinions and interests on the table. The
first challenge at hand is finding a common time and place to negotiate. The
timing and venue of multilateral negotiations could have significant
implications to many especially when building alliances or coalitions is the
name of the game. Also, establishing the process including the necessary
protocols is a huge challenge. It may take months or even years to develop an
acceptable framework of negotiation alone because it can make or break the
entire negotiation process. A negotiation cannot successfully proceed without a
tangible, clear and concrete framework.
It is not enough that you know who you are
negotiating with because “what is important may be invisible to the eye”. A more
thorough stakeholder analysis is a must to learn the interests, views and
positions of the other parties. A link analysis may also be useful to determine
the polarities of the parties involved. Sometimes it is not always the official
but the personal and human touch that spells the success of a negotiation
(remember the story of how Manila became the ADB’s HQ? Sensing is critical
because the best technical solutions may not always be politically acceptable.
On the other hand, political solutions may not always work out so learn how to
crunch the numbers especially during crunch time.
It is always desired that you walk out of a
negotiation with a genuine smile. You may not have achieved your optimum goal
but you shouldn’t miss the opportunity of brokering new relationships and
strengthening existing ones.
