A632.4.5.RB - Deception in Negotiations

Being deceived and lied to in negotiating is more common than we may think. I’m certain that there are thousands of negotiations that take place on a daily basis that involve complete strangers who have one thing in common: to get the best deal possible. There are several ways in which to help from becoming a victim of deception while negotiating. They include setting goals carefully, assessing underlying uncertainty, paying attention to norms, and preparing carefully.

                                           

Research shows that difficult yet realistic goals trigger aggressive and sometimes unethical behavior while negotiating. It’s better to enter the process with goals that are reasonable and attainable without being too demanding as this could facilitate a more ethical negotiation process. Uncertainty leads to communicating information in a self-serving way. When negotiating, use facts and real information, ask direct questions, and ask specifics. This eliminates ambiguity and forces the negotiation process to be less deceptive.

Norms and self-perceptions lead to a dishonest and unfair negotiation process. Create an atmosphere that eliminates any cultural uncertainties and one that will spur ethical behavior. Lastly, prepare carefully by asking open-ended and specific questions, preparing responses to questions, asking unexpected questions, and following-up with questions that can help weed-out the lies.

A few months back when my wife and I were purchasing a used car, the salesman had explained that the batter had been replaced the previous year. It was February when we were car shopping, but I never thought anything of it. He had used the same response when being asked about other items on the car, and I questioned him by wanting to see the maintenance records. The services were completed last year, but it was in March the previous year, so nearly a year before this. He was right in stating it was done last year, but failed to elaborate that the car had either been sitting in their lot that long or that the service was done almost a year ago.

My son wanted me to take him to the to store last week, so I made an agreement with him and told him that as long as he helped clean the garage with me I would take him. He happily accepted because normally the garage is an easy clean-up job. This time, the garage was tore apart from various projects, but I did not disclose this to him. He was disappointed when he found out about the state the garage was in and that he already agreed to help. Being that this was my son, I wouldn’t have went much farther than hiding a few facts from him. I don’t do it very often, but I do it from time to time. I would say that overall I am an honest person, but depending on how serious the negotiation process is and who the other party is, I may hide more than I think. Just as the text states, aggressive goals can lead to this, and I think it has in the past for me.

A632.3.4.RB - Reflections on Decision-Making

The three ways to avoid frame blindness are conducting a frame audit, identifying and changing inadequate frames, and mastering techniques for re-framing. Conducting a frame audit revolves around viewing the frames of others and understanding what’s important to them. Once this is determined, it will be easier to understand how and why they make the decisions that they do. Our organization had a mandatory exercise for each operational department called Connections. Managers from the same department got together and shared personal stories, values, and life experiences with one another. This exercise was meant to help these departments connect on a different level and help understand what drives the decision-making process of each person, based on their values, past experience, etc. It not only helped build relationships but opened the eyes of each individual participating. This helped me understand my own framing process and the process of others.

Identifying inadequate frames in my organization and personal life meant that I had to evaluate myself and seek feedback from others. One of exercises I did at work, with the help of my manager, was to seek feedback from my co-workers about my strengths, opportunities, decision-making process, and personality and use it to become a better leader. When getting this feedback, it’s hard to come to the realization that some of the frames were not needed, some were unbalanced, and some needed adjusting. I had assumptions about processes and other co-workers that were preventing me from establishing better relationships. The way I was measuring success and productivity in departments was different than what the organization was looking for.

Mastering techniques for re-framing is enjoyable. Last year when I started with Target I had been placed in a role to manage 30 team members in an environment that was foreign to me. I had good relationships but felt that I should know their jobs and what they deal with on a daily basis to better understand their decision-making process, essentially, using multiple frames. I chose to job shadow each and every one of them in different functions to learn their job, identify obstacles, and help them through them productively. At the end of the 4-week process, I even challenged some of them to a productivity race to see who could earn the highest productivity in a set amount of time. This helped tremendously with viewing other people’s frames and walking through the decision-making process with them.

One of the biggest benefits of this exercise was being able to see how deep decision-making processes go in organizations. Values, experiences, and personality all contribute to the decision-making process, and if you are disconnected from others than it’s hard to view their frames and understand them. I think that the biggest factor that has helped me is establishing relationships with those who I work with and interact with often. These relationships help understand the thought process of one another, and allow some understanding of values and experiences that contribute to decisions-making. This exercise has helped me realize that I fall into frame blindness more than I think, mainly due to the assumptions that I have. It’s so easy to make assumptions about other people and processes at work, based on what you may or may not know. I feel that it will help me with asking more open-ended questions to individuals to reduce assumptions and allow a better understanding of their thought processes.

A632.2.3.RB - How to Make Choosing Easier

I was very surprised to hear from Sheena that not only do we have so many choices for almost every product, food, and service imaginable, but we have a harder time making decisions when faced with all of these choices. She describes in detail that buyers feel more confident and feel comfortable when given fewer choices. Cutting and concretization resonate the most with me and seem to be more apparent in my personal and professional lives.

I am the type of leader that needs to see results, feel results, and put my hands on decisions that I make. I also agree with the less is more mentality that so many consumers prove to be real and alive. If I were to cut more in my own decision-making in my personal life, it would require some discipline, only because my body is conditioned to having so many choices. This would entail grocery shopping at smaller stores with less variety, shopping for clothes and other amenities at smaller, less famous retailers who do offer so many options. I think in general this goes for everything in our lives because this is what our country is known for. The same goes for work, only at work I am given a few select choices for decisions, but they have huge implications depending on if I were right or wrong. This goes back to the expedient decision-makers that were described in the book. The smaller the choice pool, the faster it may be to make a decision, especially the right one. The larger the choice pool the harder the decision is, resulting in reflective decision-making.

For concretization, I feel that it would be easier for me to make a decision if I could visualize that decision and the repercussions of it before the decision was actually made. Just the other day I failed to make a decision at work because I felt like I did not have enough information to make a sound decision. I couldn't visualize the outcome, nor could I visualize the implications of this decision due to limited information. If there were more of the necessary information and less of the inferior information, it may be easier to make decisions. 

A632.1.4.RB - Multistage Decision-Making

I somewhat agree with the dynamic programming method explained in the book. There are some industries and fields where this type of decision making is commonplace, and there are some that feel lost just looking at the equations involved with it. My decision making style is different, and even though I enjoy using data and calculating risk, I like to have some variability and flexibility in my decisions when dealing with multistage decision-making. I feel that too many variables play a part in decisions and very few things stay constant. It appears that dynamic programming counts on the future to be constant predictable, when in my industry and workplace it’s ever-changing.

                                        

I think that this method forces people to look at the decision-making process differently and tap into other areas that may not get as much consideration when planning. I think there are a lot of managers out there that use a form of this equation, they may just call it something different or use it in another manner or application. I feel that it wouldn't quite help me in my decision-making process because of the emphasis that I place on flexibility and using experience and intuition as drivers.

Dynamic programming would have more of an impact on business decisions than personal decisions. The values we place on certain things and events cannot be taken into consideration when using this tool. I feel like the long-term effects on planning are good in a business sense, as they take probability and risk into account, and the answers to questions could be simplified as long as these numbers are accurate. Again, this process looks interesting but does not suit my personal style. I take decisions one step at a time in my personal life, and use other calculations and considerations when planning at work.