From the course: When Negotiation's about More than Money: How to Negotiate (Almost) Anything

Trade around the triangle

From the course: When Negotiation's about More than Money: How to Negotiate (Almost) Anything

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Trade around the triangle

- So once your boss has said what they want, and you've said what you think is possible. You have to somehow meet in the middle. Now it's possible the boss will immediately cave and go, 'Oh, okay, you can have those things.' But the chances are, there's going to be a bit of a haggle to get to some sort of an agreement. And as always rule number one is move in small steps. So if you say you want five people, don't suddenly say 'alright I'll do it for two', say, 'well I could do it with four and a half people maybe if I could have this.' So move in small amounts. Similarly with the timescale if you say, 'I need till April', don't go, 'Oh I probably could do it by January.' You know, say, 'well, I could do it by mid-March if I was given an extra person.' So move in small amounts because you're giving less away. And also you don't want your opening offer to look dishonest. So move in small steps. The next thing is trade and projects are absolutely made for trading because you've got what's known as the iron triangle which is cost, quality and time. It's called the iron triangle because it's rock solid. You can't have more of all three. You can't have more quality for a shorter time and less money. So in negotiating terms, what we're saying is if you want to raise the quality, then you're going to have to give me more money and more time. Or if you want me to do the job in less time than I think I need, then you'll have to give me more money or you'll have to have reduced quality. And if you want the job done for less money than I think I need then you'll have to accept reduced quality. So trade using the triangle. And while you're doing all the trading the key thing is the questioning and the listening. So you want to be asking your boss, what's important, what isn't, what's the key driver of the project? The key driver is the top one of cost, quality and time. There's always a top one. So we're trying to find out what is just not negotiable and what's a luxury. Which parts of the spec are only nice-to-haves? So for example, what happens if we run a bit late? Is it a total disaster or does it not matter too much? And what if we overspend? Does it not matter? Or is it a total disaster and in the specification all those little things, if you don't get that one is it a total disaster or does it not really matter too much? So we want to find this out by lots of questioning. And I think this is a relatively easy part of the negotiation because when you're buying and selling, often the other person won't tell you what's important and what isn't because that's part of the game. But with project management, everybody's logical everybody's putting their cards on the table and they will probably be completely honest about what you can let slip and what you can't.

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