Hi, my name is Deepak Malhotra and I'm a professor of negotiation at Harvard Business School. I'm also the author of Negotiating the Impossible and the co-author of Negotiation Genius. In this series of videos, I'm talking about the topic of negotiation and in each short video, I talk about one key insight, a principle or a tactic that you could start using immediately to get better outcomes for yourself in your negotiations, your deals, and your disputes. In this video, I want to talk about three stages of negotiating process. Now, in a previous negotiation video, I talked about the importance of negotiating process before you dive into substance.
If substance is everything that goes into the deal, the deal terms, the offers and the counter offers we make, if that's the substance of the negotiation, the process is everything that gets us from wherever we are today to the end goal, to the finish line. Now, when we talk about negotiating process, I think of negotiations at three different levels. You want to do the bare minimum, in every negotiation, but you want to try and move up the ladder and try to achieve all three of these as you negotiate process. At the lowest level, what we're trying to do as negotiators is get clarity on process. So you want to make sure that early on in the conversation, early on in the negotiation, there's a discussion about how are we going to navigate this negotiation together.
You might ask questions like, how long does it take an organization like yours to do a deal like this? What are some things that might make things go smoothly, and what are some factors that might arise that might slow things down. Who are all the parties that need to be involved for this deal to be successful? That's getting clarity on process. One step above that is commitment.
You don't simply want clarity on how people are thinking about the process, what their plans are, etc. To the extent possible, you want some level of commitment. You want some assurance that the process is actually going to be What you don't want is to start going down this path with the other party, and all of a sudden things start changing.
And things start changing in a way that are actually disadvantageous to you. Depending on the kind of leverage you have, you might be able to get stronger or weaker forms of commitment. Even an assurance is some form of commitment.
A promise is a commitment. A handshake is a commitment. But then there's also commitment that can be written down on a piece of paper.
There can be contractual commitment. To the extent that you're worried that the process will not be followed, As stipulated, you might want to try to get some level of commitment. At the highest level of negotiating process, above clarity and above commitment, is when you have the opportunity to change the process itself.
If they're reporting to you that this deal is going to take six months, but three months would be better for you or nine months would be better for you, negotiating the process itself and trying to get it to change in the direction you want it to be is even more advantageous than simply getting clarity or commitment. Or they might be thinking that the process is going to involve a certain set of people, but you want to make sure others are involved. Or that some people that they want involved are not involved. That would, again, be you negotiating process and trying to get a change in the process that's been set by them or that's been set by default.
When you step back and you think of the negotiation process as an important and integral part of what your job is as a negotiator, then you can break it down into these three levels. In every negotiation, I want to get... to the extent possible, clarity on what the process is.
What am I getting into? To the extent possible, you want to get commitment. How do we make sure the rules of the game don't change halfway through the game? And finally, if I don't like the rules of the game, can I change them?
And the more leverage you have, the more opportunities you have to actually get changes to the process. Good luck.