Thursday, July 12, 2007

Family Business Negotiations

The latest Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge newsletter shows a new article entitled Five Steps to Better Family Negotiations. Worth reading by anyone with a family-run business or representing one. The steps are:

  1. Analyze the negotiation space
  2. Don't try to beat the other side
  3. Understand the other party's interests, constraints, and perspective
  4. Avoid single-issue negotiations: identify and negotiate multiple issues simultaneously
  5. Negotiate over interests, not positions
Frankly, these steps ought to have a place in most negotiations.