Accurately assessing trust and compatibility is not easy. It is often one-sided: a buying company will evaluate a supplier’s trustworthiness without understanding the supplier’s perceptions of the buying company’s trustworthiness. That’s why professors Gerald Ledlow...
There are six relationship principles that drive the Getting to We mindset in both negotiating the relationship and in the subsequent operation of the partnership. These guiding principles tell the parties how to act within the relationship. In earlier posts I’ve...
Recently, a newer employee working in supply chain at a public utility asked me the following: “What is the difference between a Total Cost of Ownership and Total Supplier Spend? We need to cut costs next year and there is a line in the supplier’s scorecard for TCO...
Recently I received this email from a coaching client who is a contract administrator on the buy side. His concerns and my advice are applicable to sales-side contracting too. How do I intelligently bring the contractor’s exceptions (to our master agreement) to the...
Getting to We is a book about negotiating. It is not, however, a typical negotiation book when compared to the hundreds of other negotiation books. It is a book that opens the way to developing a new mindset and process for negotiating business relationships where...
It’s time for a new approach and mindset for contract negotiations, time to leave the old me-first, I-win-you-lose strategy far behind, replaced by highly collaborative partnerships. What if the agreement you negotiated was more than just a short-term,...
I’m not sure how many people are aware that our working world is about to experience a major shift. In the U.S. by 2025, 75% of the workforce will come from the Millennial generation. (The U.S. Department of Labor defines the Millennial generation as those born...
Social Norms To Do Business By Reciprocity obligates businesspeople to make fair and balanced exchanges. If one company accepts a business risk, the other must be prepared to do the same. If one company commits to invest time and money in an important project, the...
Getting to We is a new approach and mindset for agreement negotiations that leaves the typical I-win-you-lose strategy in the dust, because that way simply no longer works for the long term. And it never worked very well for the short term, either. But if you buy into...
We often hear stories of business relationships that appeared strong suddenly turning sour. These relationships may even have existed for some time. So what is going on? It is likely acts of opportunism. Here’s an example. A client of mine awarded a...