My business in Calgary is finished.  In Seattle for a few hours, then onto Tokyo and then Beijing.  Running on 2 hours sleep.   Lots of work when I get back – need to perspective from lots of people on the work I did – so hopefully I did good enough to meet various needs.  If all goes well, RedStores.com will officially gain life and I will be focused on getting the ‘flywheel’ (Good to Great) going faster.

One of the great inputs I received over last few days is the principal of alignment.   You can actually have your adversaries help you, if the goals are aligned correctly.   So, my thoughts are that common alignment is actually a very good guiding principal.

In these last few days I had a chance to watch a very interesting process – one that I have not been in before – and I learned quite a lot from it.    In more specifics:

1. Reaching a common understanding is key to negotiations
2. Once common understanding is reached, exploring options helps everyone understand what is important to everyone
3. Once the ‘needs’ of everyone are on the table – a solution can be tailored that gives everyone a win.
4. If the ‘needs’ are hidden, they need to be discovered – so that a solution can be tailored.   Finding ‘hidden’ needs takes time – BUT – important to find them and understand them so that a win/win can be setup.
5. Its possible to setup win/win – but in adversarial situations 100% readiness to accept a loose/loose has be ‘truly’ accepted.  Not just as posturing BUT true acceptance of accepting a loose/loose.
6. A long term relationship is better off with a loose/loose than win/loose.   Win/Loose leads to loose/loose if the transaction is long term.

I also learned that that the shot gun approach (I actually don’t know where the word comes from – needs research) is a very good way to asset a fairness of a deal.   The shotgun approach means that whatever deal is on the table is available to either party at the table.

So, for example, if there was an apple – and one party was trying to sell that apple to the other party for $10, the fairness of the deal would be assessed, if the other party would be willing to buy that apple for $10 themselves.   The bias could come in, where the specific ‘needs’ of each party at that moment are different, however, in principal, if one party wants to sell an apple to anther party for $10, the other party should be able to take same apple for $10 as well.   Its very basic economics, but, nevertheless, I think its a really good gauge of the fairness of the deal and sincerity of the parties.