Monday 20 September 2021

You get what you negotiate.




You get what you negotiate.


Is negotiation necessary? Does it make you happier? Consider the following:


You meet an old friend at a bar, and casually while catching up he lets you know that he plans to buy a new watch and wishes to sell his current one. Curious you examine his watch, and take a fancy to it. When asked what is the price, he says, “Let me know what YOU will pay for it”. And you hesitate, and mention and amount (it does not matter what is the amount). He says Ok, it’s yours and you exchange money for the watch and shortly later you both leave.


Are you happy?


I bet not. You think so for the moment. However, back home you tell your spouse about the incident and you narrate the event. Your spouse asks, ‘how much did your friend want?’. You have no idea. It was you who suggested a price and he readily agreed. You are now left in some doubt, if indeed the watch is worth the price you paid.


Is your friend Happy?


Similarly, your friend is asked by his spouse, “what was he prepared to pay?’ You state the price he offered and she enquires, “Could you have asked for a higher price?’. You never did. You let it go at the first price. You are left wondering if indeed you had got a good deal.


So both are unhappy right? Remember, when you negotiate, and effectively, both sides are happy.


We are always in a negotiation


Every moment, either with ourselves or with others, we are negotiating. It’s not necessary that we are aware of this, (it may be unconscious) yet the fact is that we are doing so all the time. Pause and think about your day, and the various negotiations that come up.


In managing our relationships with the other, we are unconsciously trying to maximize the principle of maximum interest for ourselves. Most of us, aim for, “ I win, You lose’. In this strategy you lose in the long term. You may win a couple of rounds but you damage the relationship forever. At all points, you need to ‘keep change for the other side, always’. Ensure a ‘win-win’.


In management training, if you and your opponent play a blind game of voting Yes and No, simply follow his lead. Simply follow the following rule: ‘Play out his last move in the subsequent move’. Doing so, will get you both to a collaborative strategy.


While negotiation, we always believe that one side is in opposition to the other (adversarial): that may not be the case at all. What you ‘demand’ or ‘make concessions on’ may not be of the same value as perceived by the other. Most effective negotiators never give away anything without making a demand themselves, following the golden rule of, ‘If you xxxxx (give me) , then I zzzzz’(trade you). 


Effective negotiators recognise each stage of negotiation and quickly move across the argument stage rather quickly, to the other steps. An argument just begets and argument and is pointless. Here is how most effective negotiators move through:


• Argument


• Signal


• Proposal


• Counter Proposal


• Bargaining


• Agreement


• Confirm Agreement


• Closure


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A Tale of Somebody, Nobody and Everybody




A Tale of Somebody, Nobody and Everybody


A man is struck down by a speeding car, he falls to the ground and smashes his head, the ground slowly gets covered with blood. For a while, Everybody watches, Nobody reacts, Somebody is supposed to do something. This is one scene. There could be multiple others.


We hear about them each day at work and at home and on all social occasions. ‘Somebody’, says one person ‘should do something about this’. ‘Nobody’ seems to be interested in just about anything that requires something to be done. While ‘Everybody’ is waiting forever for ‘Somebody’ to act all the time.


Wonder why Nobody has thought about this? says one person to another. Where is Everybody? Seems to me Nobody and Somebody have taken a solemn oath to stay away with non-acting, while all actions seem to be under the remit of ‘Somebody’.


How often each day, do you use these three references: Somebody, Nobody or Everybody. Who are they really? Do they really exist? Will these three ever act?


Fascinating but these three types of folks live with us ever present in our daily lives. The reality is that we are ourselves part of all three: we are Somebody, Everybody and Nobody. That’s you and me.


When Somebody fails to act, the YOU, that is part of Somebody fails to act. We are responsible for what happens in existence, and we owe it to ourselves to feel responsible to what happens to it and to feel responsible for what is happening or non-happening.  Nobody, is also YOU and I: we choose to stay inattentive to awareness of that which is around us. Yet, the YOU and I in Everybody is to hold responsibility for what happens.


Maybe we need to think beyond the ‘I’ that creates the separateness. We are all part of the universal body-mind: as the drop is part of the ocean. Then through this lens there can be no separation: everything is one, interdependent and inter related in mutual co-existence.


Stay aware: watch each time you use these three words. Become aware of the self-negation. Awaken to your own potency, when you declare: I am responsible!

Sunday 5 September 2021

What's with Reading...?



What's with Reading...? 

Just yesterday I shared a post:

“Interesting... I share a video and 800+ view and several likes (20) in a few hours.I share an article ( takes a few hours to write) and it gets 50 views at best, similar likes. What is this saying about us? Are we on a fast lane? Are we consumers for ‘2-3 liners’?”

And ….in less than 24 hours, many likes, and comments, than say articles I have posted here.

The world is surely changing: Analogous to the cricket from a 5 day test match, to a one day, to the new T20 format, games evolve. And I guess so has books, giving way to articles, to short summaries, to 2-3 liners.

I guess, I am old school. I recall the thick Thomas Hardy ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ and the Character of Gabriel Oak, the eternal patient lover on the side line, the fascinating books of Ayn Rand and over the years the 1000 plus books I have read. Back then, I recall now with immense nostalgia my own HG Wells ‘time travel machine’ that could take me forward or back ward in time – said simply, Books.

The modern bookstore is giving way to e-copies ‘quick airport reads’ – slim editions. Most content today are PDF files of Summaries of Books or Articles. We are saying less in each short burst, but saying ever so much in the multiple bursts of articles. I often wonder, what is this trend all about? Do you have an insight?

Again, back then, in my teens, leisure time was spent with basic toys, board games and TV watching (when it finally arrived) was a group activity. The radio was primarily for news or music from Ceylon. Interactions were fewer and travel ever more sparse.  The newspaper was our primary connects with the world outside.

Books were my favourite companion then, and a lifelong companion now. Curled with a book, I am transported to new worlds, events, time, and characters, culture. In the 1:1 silent connect, the book and I, my imaginative mind, simulated by books conjured up sounds, pictures, living people, introduced me to new lands. But most of all, I discovered the power of ‘ideas’. New thoughts, bold thoughts, strange thoughts.

Reading connected me to the living: I could see a little deeper, connect more, experience more, and understand more. Books symbolised the magic of ‘rubbing the Aladdin’s lamp’ and make wishes come true.These days, I have started to write as well, to express and relate with the world around me.

To each age, its new propellant for personal growth. Times must change, old order giving way to new, as Tennyson says, lest one idea corrupts the world.

For me, give me a great book, some time for self, and that’s my Nirvana. 

We Die Twice!


We Die Twice!

Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Professor, who died earlier this year wrote a memorable article, “How will you measure your life?’ he argued that “many of us might default to measuring out lives by summary statistics, such as number of people presided over, number of awards, or dollars accumulated in a bank, and so on, the only metrics that will truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I have been able to help, one by one, to become better people”. These, he says, are the metrics that matter in measuring one’s life.

We die twice.

Once organically, the second in memory.

Once, when the breath (prana) leaves our body (in fact interestingly it is said, the last thing before death is when the sound dies from our ears) and we die once more, when the last person who knows our name dies too.  

Few of us will have the fortune to embed our name over centuries, unlike Socrates or a Jesus. Even most loved celebrities live in our hearts for a while, but soon get forgotten: a cohort say that would remember Marilyn Munroe would soon pass on and then to oblivion.

Some would be remembered for long. Elton John, says Goodbye to England’s Rose, Lady Diana:

And it seems to me you lived your life, Like a candle in the wind

Never fading with the sunset,When the rain set in

And your footsteps will always fall here, Along England's greenest hills

Your candles burned out long before,Your legend ever will

Your footsteps will always fall here, Along England's greenest hills

Your candle burned out long before your legend ever will. 


Blessed are We

I would hold myself blessed if I:

  • Lived my personal purpose and had the opportunity to potentialize my ‘best self’ at work or within society, and contributed to adding good.
  • To have found a partner, who loved you and you loved back dearly.
  • A meaningful job that allowing you an opportunity to earn your livelihood.
  • A faith, that offered a high purpose to life.

Our moment on this earth is short-lived. If we viewed ‘everything we do’ from the realisation that there is no beginning, no end: then all acts would fall into perspective. In the end what is left of us is a tombstone, a marked grave, a picture in a frame, to whom friends, relatives and kith return, till memory holds true. Then with passage of time, no one returns, and the inscription merely records our name: date born, date died.

To dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return, says the bible.

What would you like to be remembered for?