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Negotiation

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Negotiation

The Game Has Changed

Princeton UP,

15 min read
8 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

The one-size-fits-all negotiation tactics that worked in the past won’t suffice in today’s shifting business landscape. 

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Analytical
  • Applicable
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

As political, economic, financial, and technological upheaval sweeps the world, negotiators can no longer afford to work with a generic, one-size-fits-all set of deal-making tools. Today, forging new partnerships and agreements requires deft processing of ever-evolving contextual information — including economic, political, and technological shifts — that may affect negotiations. Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman’s treatise on the new art of negotiation outlines the strategies you need in your modern bargaining toolkit to create value while preserving long-term relationships.

Summary

Negotiating in today’s world requires understanding new contexts and norms.

If you’re using the same old negotiation strategies today that were popular decades ago, it’s time to update your toolbox. While many of the longstanding principles of negotiation remain valid today, the contexts in which modern business people operate have changed — and will continue to do so. Today, effective negotiation requires cultivating the ability to glean insights about stakeholder expectations from contextual information. For example, you must understand the cultural norms of those you’re negotiating with and the types of negotiation styles they view as appropriate. Too, you should never underestimate how economic, political, cultural, relational, behavioral, and technological changes can reshape negotiating norms.

For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, companies forged new trade partnerships and moved negotiations into the digital space using technologies like Zoom. The shift to virtual deal-making opened up new considerations, such as the “channel richness” of the negotiations — that is, the volume of “verbal and nonverbal communication” that everyone involved in a conversation...

About the Author

Max H. Bazerman is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He has written several books including Better, Not Perfect and Complicit.

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