PRE-mortems: Stress test your strategy
A quick word first
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The last, critical step preparing to negotiate
Say your team has worked hard preparing your strategy for an upcoming negotiation. You’ve done lots of things right, including:
Ranking your priorities (and estimating those of your counterparts);
Weighing possible tradeoffs (how much of one item you might give up in return for getting more of something else);
Setting a provisional baseline (a package that is minimally acceptable—though it may change depending on how the negotiation unfolds);
Setting a stretch goal, as well (something you can aim for if everything goes right).
You’ve done all that and more. Now it’s time to confirm the plan, so you ask your colleagues, “Can anybody foresee a problem with this approach?”
Stop right there!
Gary Klein, author of The Power of Intuition, says that’s the wrong question. You may get one or two suggested tweaks, but it’s often a skimpy list.
Yes, now you have a plan, or it may be that the plan has you. You may be smitten with your own logic. Having mapped backward from point Z—your goal—to your starting point A, you may persuade yourself that there is but one true way that things can go.
Klein’s research shows that slightly rephrasing the question conjures up a fuller picture of what could go amiss. Test your strategy by asking this instead:
“Flash forward. It’s two weeks from today and the negotiation is under way. Now imagine there’s been a major setback. What is it?”
That subtle re-framing will expand people’s vision, yours included. The focus will shift from whether something bad might happen to assuming that trouble will occur. Klein calls doing this a “pre-mortem.” It’s spotting risk in advance, before any damage has been done.
There’s no need to be paranoid. Put aside being hit by a meteor just as you’re about to sign the deal. But consider things that are unlikely yet still could happen.
The goal of the exercise isn’t to identify each and every way a deal might go wrong. That’s neither possible nor necessary. Rather, it’s meant to foster an attitude of watchfulness, so you’ll be quicker to see that the process is going awry. If you’re alert, you may be able to get things back on track. If not, you’ll have fashioned a workable Plan B.
Housekeeping
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