MBA textbook

I have already reflected on the Ridgecrest School Dispute Negotiation Simulation in my blog earlier. There were also couple of posts on the importance of preparation for negotiation: Negotiation Preparation – Do the Numbers and  Cover Your Butt – Prepare Your BATNA. This is the last post with my thoughts on the importance of preparation for negotiation. May be I am paying so much attention to it because before I took the class on Conflict Management and Negotiations I was, like probably most people, confident that I can figure it out at the spur of the moment during the actual negotiation just based on my natural abilities. The course has taught me that there is no substitution for a thorough prep work. And the more complex is the issue at the negotiation table the more time and effort should be put before you even get to that table.

The Ridgecrest School Dispute Negotiation simulation was in a way a pinnacle of our practical exercises: involving two groups of negotiators, each with multiple participants, extremely opposite objectives for each group, some tedious budgetary calculations and re-calculations.

One of the interesting observations about this negotiation was actually from a “glitch”. In the beginning of our preparation for this negotiation our group did not know about the hard data, including the budget, as the background information for the simulation. Therefore when we had our first discussion based only on the description of our group’s objectives it was very easy for us to set our preliminary initial offer. In the essence, we were going to demand from the Board of Education the maximum and we were not going to make any substantial concessions. Of course, we expected that in the process of negotiation we might split the difference with the Board, based on what their initial requirements were.

In the absence of real data it was very easy to speculate and be tough in our expectations. However, shortly after our first discussion we learned about the data available for the case in the textbook. It was amazing for me how quickly our perspective, at least my personal, changed. In general, it is easy to speculate about abstract objectives without real constraints. But once the reality sets in, you start realizing that it is not as easy as it seemed to be.

In our case, after learning about the budgetary constraints, we took on a labor-intensive task of crafting the new budget given those constraints. We still had intention of modifying those constraints if we could, but mostly we were trying hard to reconcile the needs and wants under the existing budget framework. (By the way, the Ridgecrest School Dispute case was, just like most of other cases we worked on in the Negotiations class from Negotiation: Readings, Exercises, and Cases by Lewicki, et al – probably the best textbook on Negotiations out there.)

This reminded about the real life situations. Specifically, the elections. The candidates, especially the newcomers to the office, have high inspiration and promise the sky and the moon during the elections. Most of those promises, of course, are calculated populism in order to manipulate and win the voters – Swing Vote immediately comes to mind. But some of them might as well be the naïve perception that they can do everything and change the world once they get into the office.

But once they get the office, they learn about all very real constraints and limitations and then they find themselves re-arranging the same old budget items, instead of changing the world altogether, as they had been inspired. Lesson: it is good to have the facts at your disposal in advance, which will allow you to work with reality instead of building castles in the air.

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