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Published on 2024-07-28 23:50:00 | words: 1510
Rationale
In previous articles within this series summarized points about multi-party negotiations.
Also in business, despite what some consider, often there are more potential providers of the same product or service, and the old joke "don't say cat if is not in the sack" holds true.
That's why, in business as well as in political activities, having a "roadmap" is a useful exercise.
Anyway, if you are using a roadmap for a negotiation, actually you do not need just one- but at least three.
The one based on external constraints (e.g. compliance deadline, forthcoming enforcement of regulations as happened in 2018 with GDPR-see what I wrote back then in a mini-book) and "structural" elements.
E.g. if you are selling Xmas cakes, you have probably a "pipeline" of events- cannot overnegotiate with potential suppliers until November just to get an optimal price.
The one related to your own intent, meaning not just what you aim to achieve with this negotiation, but also how this negotiation will impact on others and your own "market" positioning.
As an example, when I was delivering management consulting projects and services, I had a standing agreement with my partners so that, whenever embedding my services in their offers, the rate was at least my standard rate (I gave between a 25% and 30% discount), the only exception being when I had some project activities for Italian Government entities- where I accepted a much lower rate (I hold an Italian passport, but then discovered that in Italy often this concept of "common" does not exist- and overcharging the State is more uncommon).
Sometimes, to get a contract signed from a "prize" customer, suppliers kill their own market positioning: it makes sense as a temporary measure and under specific conditions, but taken it lightly generates long-term consequences (yes, the "long tail" is not just positive).
Last but not least... the third one: the one representing the target party own potential roadmap.
This is of course an oversimplified outline: even when those three are enough, there is a "dynamic" element, as interactions between those three dimensions require adjustments.
And I skipped my usual discussion about empathy, Weltanschauung, avoiding projection bias, and, of course, the "Devil's Advocate" role.
In most cases, actually there are significantly more than three layers.
Anyway, it is still common in business and political negotiations to hear each side discuss as if there were just one negotiation roadmap.
It might well be true that, in the end, a convergence on a shared roadmap (for both the negotiation and the ensuing activities) is achieved.
Still, the truth is that a continuous monitoring is needed for evolutions.
Italians centuries ago were providers of diplomats to other countries, as we were used to have continuous negotiations (and battles)- for centuries.
A side-effect is that, as I said to my foreign colleagues decades ago, they should consider that no negotiation is ever final in Italy- signing off an agreement is just a starting point in a string of continuous adjustments.
The interesting part is that, in our current times, the EU is gradually evolving from the original approach based on the rule of (shared) law (the so-called "acquis"), to the routine "Monnet moment" (jumping forward and caring about negotiations and democracy later), to a continuous string of initiatives and associated negotiations.
Something that sounds eerily familiar to any Italian we has been involved in either business or political negotiations.
Time to switch to the commentary part of this article.
Commentary
I must confess: as I had prepared this series of articles in March 2024, I had prepared also roadmap.
Being for a publication, called it with the Italian name I learned as a kid for TV and radio programming, "palinsesto"- which in turns derives from the history of writing.
The roadmap included of course highlighting the key decision points- from the elections, to its immediate aftermath, and of course to all the other "key dates" expected.
It is curious how back then the selection of the President of the European Commission was listed in some articles as expected in mid-September, following a "roadmap" from the elections to the first working day of the full new European Commission.
Instead, of course we had already the selection for key roles just before the vacations.
Anyway, by confirming the incumbent, this vacation period will keep being a bartering time- to decide the composition of the Commission.
I disagree with the choice, for the reasons that I have shared in previous articles.
And, frankly, since I started this article series, it was mildly entertaining, whenever met foreigners in Turin, to be challenged on this or that point.
Still, I do not change my ideas unless there is information that make that change advisable- so, I agree to disagree.
For now, I heard a lot of talking, and a lot of backbiting, but the actual choices made (not just in terms of people, but also in terms of actions) will show if the next Commission is up to tasks and choices that await the European Union.
Or if will prefer to just keep launching initiative upon initiative, with a gusto for spending that sets aside the "frugality" that Northern Europe is supposedly lecturing Southern Europeans with.
I am not so confident that this repeated string of initiatives with a somewhat confused connecting rationale is really an improvement on the old "Monnet" jump-forward approach.
At least, that approach was usually focused: the 2019-2024 term instead showed a piling up.
There were objective reasons to do so (COVID, a couple of wars and the energy crisis, rethinking supply chain), but there is an inherent weakness.
Curious that just today I had at last time to answer to a PMI survey about what I think about the "standard for portfolio" (probably a new version is being considered)- so, while prepared this article as a structure earlier this week, re-reading those 140 pages today (I do not answer a survey about a document within re-reading the document, just in case there are some nuances worth sharing).
Yes, I had not yet written that in this article: we need a systemic approach- and portfolio (in my concept, which is similar to the multi-layered concept of roadmaps in negotiations) is a systemic thinking approach.
Piling up initiatives makes transparency more difficult to achieve, unless there is a clear and strong neutral oversight- that we still lack within the European Union.
Moreover, many of those initiatives assume an "organizational model" (including mix of skills and "human capital" as well as financial resources and market development) that is still not there within the European Union.
Also, as I already said 20 years ago when preparing a new service for local authorities and "informally polling" them (aim: help them have a seamless communication and access to EU-initiated activities), a key issue is "putting feet on the ground".
Which applies not just to the military- also to building the capabilities of local authorities to be a little bit more than the local bottleneck that receives more and more compliance (or potential) from a distant centres (mediated by regional and national authorities that sometimes look like "enforcement agencies"- so much for "subsidiarity").
As I wrote here and there, names are not really that much relevant, at least not as much as the shared objectives.
And a piling up of initiatives (and more to come, including reforms) does not replace what is still elusive within the European Union: a shared industrial (and development, and foreign) policy, and a development across of the whole of the European Union of capabilities to implement it, as well as to ensure that any citizen anywhere has access to the same "features" of the European Union.
So, let's see if the next European Commission will increase its cognitive dissonance and distance from citizens' needs and prefer yet another batch of "paradigm shift" initiatives, or instead seize the chance of having potentially five more years to make the architecture of both the European Union and the initiatives already promoted (and those that will no doubt be forthcoming) more "structural" and more "sustainable".
Stay tuned!