Negotiation
Performance Psychology
Influencing, Negotiating- people and dinosaurs
June 23, 2011
I am involved in an organisation, a not for profit business, which is run by professional volunteers. It has been very successful up to three years ago when for all of us the world changed. Jim O’Neill, Head of Asset Management at Goldman Sachs – said this week at a conference I attended. “The world has changed for ever since September 2008 and most people in management and leadership positions in the western world have not woken up to this fact. Yet they are making decisions based on the old ways of doing things.” In this organisation I keep hearing statements like “The board agreed” – when I ask when - it was before the economic world changed and the people on the board then have now left
We are surrounded by old ways of doing things, people who say it worked OK 5 years so don’t fix it – the flexible mice are still here from 10000 years ago – but what happened to the Dinosaurs?
The membership committee of this organisation, until last week when we got a new dynamic chairperson, took 2 months to approve an application and five separate people looked at it and asked different questions. While this is going on the bank account is hemorraging cash at a rate of £750 a month. This was even when the candidates had proven credentials. No wonder people gave up trying to join.
What can we as leaders do about the many situations like this that we face. We have to lead by example, we have to talk, influence and negotiate with people in positions of power quietly – not in groups or committees. Roosevelt called it fireside chats, Churchill called it corridor meetings – I call it a cup of coffee in Starbucks. Make sure you avoid “megaphone emails” where everybody is copied in by someone who is trying to influence a situation in a negative way. A good way of doing this is call a face to face meeting, a skype call. Never send emails addressed to everyone on a board, it is much more difficult for the negatrons to reply as they do not have a reply to all button. Send them individually. Don’t be a dinosaur.
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