Over at Patrick Mayfield’s ever-useful Lessons Of A Learning Leader, he’s got some thoughts on winning over difficult stakeholders. His argument, and it’s one I agree with, is that one of the main competences of managing stakeholders is effective influencing and negotiation skills.
One of his steps is “Seek win-win or ‘no deal’” – finding out the stakeholder’s “what’s in it for me” position. That’s something that often gets overlooked – although it’s relatively easy to focus on their business objectives, there’s often another underlying dimension of personal goals which influences their approach to the negotiation.
This is particularly the case in change situations where the outcome is going to result in an alteration of their working practices – whether it’s a positive or negative change. There seems to an instinctive human reaction to seek out stability and routine, and one of the challenges of the project manager is to overcome that inertia. So an attempt to understand the personal motivations of a difficult stakeholder can sometimes provide the key to finding a way around their objections.
Patrick’s other point about negotiation is about being clear what your fallback position is – the BATNA, or Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. While this is a vital thing to consider, I tend to think that this is a rather black-and-white approach. While it may be that there is a clear-cut win/lose situation, more often it’s painted in shades of grey. In this situation a useful mnemonic is BMW – or the Best, Medium, or Worst outcome you can hope for from a situation.
If negotiation is the process of exploring the optimum solution for all parties, then thinking in terms of a Medium – or compromise – solution is often helpful. It recognises the fact that both parties can get a positive result without necessarily having it all their way. And knowing what is your worst-case acceptable scenario (or BATNA) can help to crystalise whether this is an issue which is a vital showstopper that brooks no compromise, or perhaps a relatively unimportant negotiating point which can be sacrificed for gains elsewhere.
BATNA is not all bad. For the novice it is a reality chech as to whether or not to engaged in a negotiation. For those who are experienced, it is their bottom line. If you go into any negotiation without knowing your BATNA you may lose your shirt.
I completely agree. further more when you hear those pathetic speaches about making contributions because your part of the team, it is time to find another job.
People don’t work for an organization just because they are needed, they work there because they have common goals that will be mutually fulfilled by being part of that team.
Tim,
Thanks for these comments on my blog. Actually, BATNA means knowing what are your ‘non-negotiables’ and if you fix on vlues-based non-negotiables, the chances are that there is quite an area of negotiable space between you and the other party. This probably covers the range you describe as BMW.
P.S. Excellent looking site that matches the content.
Thanks for the compliments! The formal definition of BATNA that I came across was “the lower bound for negotiation, above which a settlement would be acceptable and below which a settlement would be rejected”.
But the theory also points out, quite rightly in my view, that BATNA is just one dimension – there are a whole series of other, potentially deeper interests that need to be considered if you’re trying to analyse someone’s negotiating position. And it’s important to establish the relevant importance, to avoid trading off something important for you against something unimportant for them.
It seems there are different approches towards understanding what “engaging stakeholders” means. In the area of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) it is widely considered as a process of finding common agreement and it is not aimed at only getting what you (company or an NGO or another stakeholder) wants in the process. Thus, if one considers engagement with stakeholders as a process where one wants to learn from other part, there is no point in finding one’s BATNA – because the process is different, it is not a negotiations just to get what you want, it is a learning process for parts involved. It is even impossible to have BATNA because if you have one, you would not engage in stakeholder dialogue but negotiate deals.