Negotiation

Deliver The Punchline First

May 12, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Deliver The Punchline First = Get to the Point

When Sergey Brin and Larry Page set about to secure early funding for Google, they initiated a presentation at Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s premier venture capital firms, with the logline “Google organizes the world’s information and makes it universally accessible.”

Most busy executives don’t want to sit through a 50-slide presentation. They don’t have the patience to wait for the punchline.

Begin with the conclusion and then go through the rest of your slide deck: your proposals, theses, assumptions, your line of thinking, and the arguments, pro and con.

Meaning, Then Details

Cognitive psychologists have argued that the brain pays more attention to the core of an idea than to its details.

According to the University of Washington molecular biologist John Medina, the human brain craves meaning before details. In Brain Rules (2014,) Medina notes, “Normally, if we don’t know the gist–the meaning–of information, we are unlikely to pay attention to its details. The brain selects meaning-laden information for further processing and leaves the rest alone.”

When listeners comprehend the overarching idea of a pitch, they’ll find it easier to synthesize and digest the information.

Begin Your Next Executive Presentation with the Final Summary Slide First

Most executives have limited willpower and suffer “decision fatigue.” Don’t overload them with less-important details before asking them to decide in your favor. Your “executive summary” slide may be the only one that will get full attention. So make it perfect!

Practice, practice, practice. Few people, if any, have the rhetorical ability to make a persuasive 15-second speech about their significant ideas. The best speakers are the best because they rehearse and get feedback.
Less is more. After getting prized facetime with executives, many talented young professionals produce large slide decks to dazzle the executives with their intelligence and ingenuity. Don’t.
Simplify your “executive summary” message. Perceptive executives tend to be somewhat skeptical of things that ought to be simple but have become too complicated.
Meaning, then detail. The brain processes meaning before detail, and the brain likes hierarchy. Start with the general idea and then present information in a structured, hierarchical approach. Make sure that each detail you communicate traces back to the core concept of your presentation.

Idea for Impact: Get to the Point

Tell busy people what they need to know upfront. Communicate like a newsperson: What’s the number one thing your audience needs to know? Say that first. Then build out from there, keeping the most essential particulars up top.

There’s another smart—if devious—benefit of putting the cart before the horse: delivering your “punchline” first can hook your audience with a compelling proposal first, and then cash in on the confirmation bias to sway them to your case.

Spy thriller novelist Graeme Shimmin offers this excellent guide to writing a killer punchline, logline, or elevator speech.

What Most People Get Wrong About Focus

May 5, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In Choose Wonder Over Worry (2018) self-help author Amber Rae recalls novelist Elizabeth Gilbert’s interaction with a wise older lady who was helping Gilbert with her struggles as a writer:

Lady: “What are you willing to give up in order to have the life you keep saying you want?”

Gilbert: “You’re right—I need to start saying no to things I don’t want to do.”

Lady: “No, it’s much harder than that. You need to learn to start saying no to things you _do_ want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life, and you don’t have time and energy for everything.”

This anecdote is such a powerful illustration of how saying ‘no’ is so much easier when you’re clear about your priorities.

Saying 'no' is so much easier when you're clear about your priorities That’s what focus really is—saying ‘no’ to things you’d like to do so that you can free up your time to focus on the pursuits that truly matter—even tasks you have to do, even if they don’t energize and excite you.

Idea for Impact: Setting boundaries isn’t always easy, but it’s essential to establish an overall sense of well-being. Every ‘no’ is a ‘yes’ to something else.

Don’t find any excuse to say ‘yes’ to what shouldn’t be done.
Don’t find any reason to say ‘no’ to what should be done.

A Short Course on: How to Find the Right Relationship

March 28, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Know yourself—what you want and what you don’t want. Having clear goals can help save you from being caught up in the moment and disregarding what it is you really want and need.
Have good boundaries—they’re how you should take care of your needs. Identify what’s healthy and what crosses that line.
Appreciate your value, and expect respect. Faults become thick when respect wears away. Assess concord in how you both approach openness, sincerity, and conflict resolution.
Get out there and meet a wide range of people. Be persistent in your search for the right relationship. Give people a fair chance. No one can be perfect. So, think about how you’ll work around their imperfections.
Don’t put people in a box, especially when there isn’t actually a box that characterizes who they are. Let yourself and the other person be who you each are. Don’t deny their individuality; be open to being surprised.

How to Mediate in a Dispute

October 11, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In mediation, the parties in disagreement work out a mutually acceptable solution with the help of a neutral, third party mediator.

If you’ve been called to serve as a go-between in a dispute, here’s what you can do to help promote mutual understanding and resolution:

Set ground rules. Agree on how much time you’ll give to the mediation meeting. Keep the meeting close-ended. If there’re more than two parties, each with different views of a dispute, engage more than one mediator.
Have each party prepare a brief summary of their positions before the mediation and send them to you, and, ideally, to each other. The brief can explain positions, rationale, and motivation. The brief can also contain each party’s summary understanding of the opposing party’s arguments and counterarguments.
Insist that the each party have a clear understanding of their underlying intentions. What’s their best understanding of the basic objectives? What do they want to achieve? What’s rigid? What’s flexible? What are they willing to bargain?
At the start of the mediation meeting, remind each party that mediation is a voluntary process. Your role is to help the parties reach an agreement, not to reach an agreement for them. Say, “Nothing lasting will happen unless each of you participates in the solution. Any agreement you’re able to reach must be your own.”
Announce that your intention is to foster the interaction by helping each party understand one another’s perspectives and expectations. Encourage them to consider a wide range of solutions and to shun false dilemmas (“either-or” approach.) Push them to understand the other party’s underlying interests, not just their stated positions.
Outline how they’ll work together during the process. Get them to agree that they’ll deal with matters in a non-confrontational way and be open-minded about what the other wants.
Let each party make a preliminary presentation without interruption from the other parties. Then, encourage each party to respond directly to the other’s opening statements.
If the communications break down completely, restart the mediation process by separating the parties and talking to each party separately. Go between the two rooms to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each position and to exchange offers. Continue the interchange until you’ve helped define an agreeable compromise.
When you’re talking to each party separately during a break down in the discussions, help each party hear the views of the other and identify areas of common ground for a resolution. After independent caucuses, if possible, bring the parties back together to negotiate directly.
Don’t stop each party from venting their frustrations, but try to keep them under control. If there’s rambling, gently pull the conversation back. Refocus on what needs to be achieved. Encourage them to remain open to persuasion.
Even with a well thought-out approach, some disagreements turn ugly. Re-focus the dialogue on the future. Remind the parties that they can’t fight over something that’s already happened, but they can set a course for going forward.
If the parties come to a resolution, draft the terms of a binding agreement and have both parties review it and sign it. Make sure the parties own the resolution, because they’re the ones who’ll live with the consequences.
If the parties don’t reach an agreement, help them decide whether it’d be helpful to meet again later, use a different mediator, or try other ways to resolve the issues.

These books are most helpful in negotiations, either when you’re the mediator or one of the parties in conflict: Roger Fisher et al’s Getting to Yes (1991, 2011; my summary) and Kerry Patterson et al’s Crucial Conversations (2011.)

If You Can’t “Think on the Spot,” Buy Yourself Time

September 30, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The secret of “thinking on the spot” is to be prepared. Occasionally, though, when you’re put on the spot, the unanticipated questions and requests for your time and money can leave you feeling tongue-tied and wanting to head for the door.

To put your best response forward and prevent getting forced into some commitment that you might regret later, see if you can buy yourself some time.

When someone says something that you don’t agree with, and you can’t speak up at that moment, you can declare that you need to get educated on the subject before chatting about it further. Bonus: Conversations are often easier when you think through the nuances and get prepared to assert your positions.
When someone asks you to do something that you aren’t sure you want to do, buy yourself time by saying you must check on something or consult somebody before making a commitment. Bonus: Taking time before you say no can soften the news of your rejection.

Buy yourself more time and speak up later on your own terms. Even if you end up disagreeing with your interlocutor or declining her request, she’ll feel appreciated knowing you’ve given her opinion or request some thought.

Idea for Impact: Buying time—and sometimes stalling—is your prerogative. It shows consideration for others—and for yourself. It’s is a way of respecting your own wants and needs.

Commitment, Not Compliance

July 12, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

For some managers, fear is a dirty little secret … they use it when they are either unwilling or unable to persuade employees to work together to achieve goals.

Stop Leading Through Fear---Gain Commitment, Not Compliance Fear gets results but it does so at a cost. Fear is saps enthusiasm and stifles constructive deliberation.

Step back and work with your employee to determine performance objectives, goals, and priorities. Then, let your employee translate those objectives into tasks and determine how best to perform the task.
Don’t interfere excessively or micromanage. Don’t insist that there’s only “one best way” to do the job. Trust employees to make the right choices to reach the end result.
Don’t be a pushover, either. Be tough where you must be, kind where you can be. Managers can be strong without instilling fear. Be steadfast and unrelenting in your quest for getting results.
Let the employee customize the job to reflect her strengths and weaknesses to the extent possible, without compromising the core contributions expected of her role. Allowing the maximum possible use of your employees’ motivated abilities to achieve targeted results will not only use strengths to the maximum, but also drives intrinsic job satisfaction.
Take the time to get to know each employee’s unique set of talents. Try to dole out the available work to best match your employees’ talents.
Share the glory. Giving others a chance to claim credit is an easy, and effective, way to get results. As Dale Carnegie wrote masterful self-help manual How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936,) be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.” Learn to overlook small mistakes, but address problems before they escalate.

Idea for Impact: There is potentially no more powerful motivator than the intrinsic satisfaction that an employee could gain from autonomy under structure, and from using one’s motivated talents. Find ways to entice commitment from your employees. Don’t force compliance by virtue of authority.

More from Less // Book Summary of Richard Koch’s ’80/20 Principle’

May 10, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Vilfredo Pareto, Italian Sociologist - The 80-20 Principle The Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) recorded a “maldistribution” between causes and effects in economic statistics. It’s an observable fact that a minority of reasons—nominally around 20%—tends to produce a majority—80%—of the results.

Most Effects Come from Relatively Few Causes

More than a century later, the Romanian-American quality control pioneer Joseph Juran (1904–2008) embraced Pareto’s notion and demonstrated that 80% of all manufacturing quality defects are caused by 20% of reasons. Juran urged managers to identify and address the “vital few” or the “critical few “—the small fraction of elements that account for this disproportionally large fraction of the effect.

This Pareto Law, 80/20 Rule of Thumb, Zipf’s Principle of Least Effort, Juran’s Law of the Vital Few, 80-20 Thinking—call it what you want—permeates every aspect of business and life. Now that you know about it, you’ll start seeing it everywhere.

80/20 Principle - More from Less A fifth of your customers accounts for four-fifths of your sales. 20% of your employees are responsible for the majority of your firm’s productivity. 20% of your stocks will be responsible for 80% of your future gains. You tend to favor 20% of your clothes and wear them 80% of the time. You spend 80% of your socializing time with 20% of your friends. 20% of the decisions you’ve made during your life have shaped 80% of your current life. 80 percent of the wealth tends to be concentrated with 20 percent of the families.

The Pareto principle is a state of nature (the way things happen) and a process (a way of thinking about problems.) The 20% are the sources of the most significant potential impact.

The Remarkable Variance of Contributors and Effects

Richard Koch’s 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less (1999) elaborates on using this seminal prioritization principle. “The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually leads to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards. … The winners in any field have … found ways to make 20% of effort yield 80% of results.”

Koch explains ad nauseam that most of us work much too hard and produce much less in relation to what could be produced. If trying harder hasn’t worked, perhaps it’s time to try less.

Invest your time and effort more wisely. Don’t address the less significant elements. “Most things always appear more important than the few things that are actually more important.” Examine what you do of low value. In other words, eliminate or reduce the 80% of efforts that produce less-significant results.
Know when to stop. Once you’ve solved the 20% of the issue to deliver 80% of the impact, any further effort can only achieve diminishing returns.

Idea for Impact: In most areas of human activity, just 20% of things will be worthwhile.

Recommendation: Speed-read Richard Koch’s 80/20 Principle. It’s an excellent reminder that not all effort is equal, so it pays to focus on what matters most.

Embrace the “80-20” frame of mind in everything you do—at work and home. Unless you want to spend every waking hour working, it’s essential to learn how to focus your efforts on the most promising, impactful aspects of what needs to be done.

Realize that few things really matter in life, but they count a tremendous amount. These vital things may be challenging to discover and realize, but once you find these things that really matter, they give you immense power—the power that gives you more from less. Spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy making sure these decisions are made well, and you put yourself in the best position you can in the process.
If you want to improve your effectiveness at anything, focus only on what matters most. Be extraordinarily selective—spend time resourcefully on the few essentials that matter the most and little or no time on the massive trivia that engulfs most of your time.

This Hack Will Help You Think Opportunity Costs: Goals and Anti-Goals

March 29, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Goals and Anti-Goals---Opportunity Cost Making decisions is all about opportunity costs. For instance, every time you spend money to get something, you should ask yourself what else, perhaps of better value, you could get with that money—now or later.

The problem is, when forced to choose between something immediate and concrete and something else that’s comparatively abstract and distant, the opportunity cost could lack clarity.

Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely proposes the notion of “anti-goals” to help examine the trade-offs you’re forced to make. Ariely encourages pairing goals such that if you satisfy one, you’ll impede the other. For example, when choosing to spend $100 on an evening out today, you can consider a tangible anti-goal—say, saving for the family’s summer vacation—that’ll be held back.

Idea for Impact: Thinking about what you want to avoid—the anti-goal—is a potent tool. It allows you to focus on things that really matter.

Negotiating Without Giving In // Summary of Roger Fisher’s ‘Getting to Yes’

February 1, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement Without Giving In (1981) by Roger Fisher et al. is a best-selling manual used in everything from marriage counseling to international negotiations.

Citing examples of all sorts of conflicts, the authors build the case that there’s a far greater chance of agreeable resolutions when parties aren’t bogged down in intractable positions. The tome helps highlight how the commerce of relationships is rarely ever simple and hardly ever so fair.

Behind opposed positions lie shared and compatible interests, as well as conflicting ones. We tend to assume that because the other side’s positions are opposed to ours, their interests must also be opposed. If we have an interest in defending ourselves, then they must want to attack us. If we have an interest in minimizing the rent, then their interest must be to maximize it. In many negotiations, however, a close examination of the underlying interests will reveal the existence of many more interests that are shared or compatible than ones that are opposed.

The book has its roots in the Harvard Negotiation Project. This interdisciplinary consortium started when Harvard realized that students from such faculties as law and business were ill-equipped to tackle conflicts effectively.

Negotiation Need Not Be a Zero-Sum Game

Getting to Yes: The Best Little Book on Win-Win Negotiations At its core, Getting to Yes focuses on what the authors call “principled negotiation”—it’s emphasizing what’s essential to you and why. In contrast, “position negotiation” is merely making demands and offering concessions until a compromise is reached. When you clarify why something is important to you and heed why things are essential to the other party, myriad solutions in your interests and theirs present themselves.

In traditional position-versus-position bargaining, the other must lose if you have to win and vice versa. With principled negotiation, you cultivate a supportive approach, “work side by side, and attack the problem, not each other.” Rather than stake out unwavering positions, you explore all possible “options for mutual gain” and present the other side with “yesable” propositions.

Separate the People from the Problem

To focus on underlying interests, the parties should try to get inside each other’s heads and consider the emotions involved—the desire for security or a fear of losing status, for example. “The ability to see the situation as the other side sees it, as difficult as that may be, is one of the most important skills a negotiator can possess.”

An illustrative anecdote cites President Nasser of Egypt being interviewed in 1970. His negotiating position was that Israel must pull its troops out “from every inch of Arab territory,” with no Arab obligation in return. The interviewer switches from positions to interests by prompting Nasser to consider what would happen to Prime Minister Golda Meir if she went on Israeli TV to reveal such a capitulation. Nasser bursts out laughing: “Oh, would she have trouble at home!” His compassion for Meir’s public perception transcends one of the most intractable geopolitical crises of our times.

Recommendation: The Best Little Book on Win-Win Negotiations

Must-read Getting to Yes (1981; reissued 2011.) It’ll change your general conception of negotiation by showing you how to benefit by seeing the world in terms of mutually beneficial transactions. This simple-but-practical guide to negotiations is full of useful tips on negotiating effectively without giving in or jeopardizing your relationship with the other party.

Any method of negotiation may be fairly judged by three criteria: It should produce a wise agreement if agreement is possible. It should be efficient. And it should improve or at least not damage the relationship between the parties.

Some of the book’s techniques seem naive, and the authors tend to oversimplify bargaining positions. Moreover, not all conflicts can be solved as discrete judgment-based conciliations without having one party benefit only at significant cost to the other. Nonetheless, Getting to Yes teaches helpful lessons on understanding oneself and others, compromising, and searching for “win-win-win” solutions.

Idea for Impact: To persuade, focus on fairness and mutual interest, not on insisting on bargaining positions and winning the contest of will.

You’ll Never Get a ‘Yes’ If You Never Ask

December 17, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It never does any harm to ask for what you want

During a Q&A at Vanderbilt University in 2013, lifelong Billy Joel fan and piano player Michael Pollack plucked up the courage and stood up to ask his childhood idol a question.

Pollack, an 18-year-old freshman at Vanderbilt, asked to accompany Joel in a performance of “New York State of Mind,” Pollack’s favorite song: “I was very fortunate to play with Richie Cannata [Joel’s saxophone player] many times in New York City, and I was wondering if I could play it with you.”

With just a hint of hesitation, Joel said, “Okay.”

Joel gave a remarkable vocal performance to accompany Pollack’s piano skills. The crowd applauded.

“Remember that name,” Joel told the excited audience. “Guy’s got chops.”

An online video of the performance quickly went viral.

Stop Overthinking Every Simple (and Not so Simple) Request

Pollack took a risk and traded the possibility of embarrassment and rejection for a lifetime of memories and a huge payoff.

Before long, Pollack signed publishing deals and began collaborating with other musicians. After graduating from Vanderbilt, he wrote dozens of songs for celebrity musicians. This year, he achieved his first U.S. Top 40 radio #1 with Maroon 5’s “Memories.”

Idea for Impact: All it Takes is a Simple Ask

Most folks know that the key to getting what they want is merely asking for it. But they’re too wimpish to speak up.

Take a chance. A little bit of courage can open doors for you. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Ask for what you want. You sometimes won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.

Try something today that has a small risk and a huge payoff.

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Negotiation

Meaning, Then Details

Begin Your Next Executive Presentation with the Final Summary Slide First

Idea for Impact: Get to the Point

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Most Effects Come from Relatively Few Causes

The Remarkable Variance of Contributors and Effects

Idea for Impact: In most areas of human activity, just 20% of things will be worthwhile.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Negotiation Need Not Be a Zero-Sum Game

Separate the People from the Problem

Recommendation: The Best Little Book on Win-Win Negotiations

Wondering what to read next?

It never does any harm to ask for what you want

Stop Overthinking Every Simple (and Not so Simple) Request

Idea for Impact: All it Takes is a Simple Ask

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