7 diagnostic questions

7 diagnostic questions

1. Parties: Who will participate in the negotiation?

   • It is essential to identify tha active and potential parties to the negotiation and see if it will benefit or suffer from the participation of others.
     • Map the parties: A map of the key participants and linked sets of negotiation. Take into account not just already-involved participants but also those who can intervene.
     • Assess the negotiation representatives: they serve as a bridge between external negotiation and internal decision making.
     • Analyze internal decision making: analysis of the parties should aim at understanding and trying to influence your counterparts´internal decision-making processes.
     • Identify winning and blocking coalitions: Winning coalitions can impose new conditions on others; blocking coalitions can protect the status quo.

2. Interests: What goals are you and others pursuing?

   • Look beyond positions: negotiators typically begin to stake out positions. Positions are essentially demands, ofteh backed up by som mix of rationales, principles, commitments, and threats.
     • They may have a combination of the following kinds of interests:
       • Conflicting interests
       • Shared interests
       • Complementary interests
   • Factor in process interests: including process-related interests. Key types of process interests include:
     • Enhancing relationships
     • Preserving reputation
     • Demostrating competence
     • Remaining consistent
     • Minimizing transaction costs
     • Achieving side effects
   • Assess representatives´Interests
   • Predict coalitional alignments: predicting how parties will line up on particular issues tells you whom to approach to build coalitions preemptively. By approaching parties in a particular order, you can powerfully influence coalition formation.

3. Alternatives: What will you do if you do not reach agreement?

   • Build your BATNA: the alternate scenario is called best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA). A good BATNA is one source of power in negotiation: the better your BATNA is, the better your agreements are likely to be.
   • Asses your counterparts´BATNAs: It is easy to forget that the other side also has to be convinced that a deal is beneficial- that it yields more value than their own independent BATNA.
   • Define your walkaway position: In other words the minimum value to get to enter the agreement. It helps protect against the pitfalls of getting so commited to your demands that you refuse deals that ate better than your walkaway.
   • Explore the effect of coalitions on BATNAs: If your alternatives to submitting to others´demands look unappealing, you can often improve your BATNAs by joining a coalition. Similarly, changes in coalitional alignments can change BATNAs or even cause coalitional BATNAs to vanish.

4. Agreements: Are there potential agreements that would be acceptable to all sides?

   • If potental agreements exist that would benefit both you and your counterpart more than your resoective walkaway values, a zone of possible agreement (ZOPA) exists.
   • Assess who knows what: each side knows a lot about its own interests, BATNAs, walkaways, and resources but much less about its counterparts´. When this is the case, negotiators can selectively withhold and dole out information in order to shape each other´s perspective.
   • Assess the type of negotiation:
     • Integrative negotiations: The potential of the parties´interests to be integrated in ways that create joint value or enlarge the pie.
     • Distributive negotiation: fixed pie to be divided among the parties.
   • Seek more efficient agreements: assesments of outcomes in integrative negotiations are about equity as well as efficiency. Perceptions of equity often have a powerful impact on negotiators´behavior.

5. Linkages: are your current negotiations linked to other negotiations?

   • Identify sequential linkages: onw way that negotiations get linked is sequentially in time. Relationships established in prior negotiations can influence current ones, and current negotiations can be affected by the prospect of future ones.
   • Reengineer the linked system: skilled negotiators advance their interests by creating favorable linkages and neutralizing unfavorable linkages.
   • Identify concurrent linkages: simultaneous sets if negotiation can also affect each other´s outcomes. Types:
     • Sequential linkage
     • Competitive linkage
     • Reciprocal linkage

6. Action forcing events: will time-related costs or events force action?

   • Use linkages to force action
   • Build momentum: negotiators build momentum by shaping their counterparts´perceptions of time related costs and by setting up action forcing events.
   • Consider the impact of time: action forcing events, such as deadlines, can also force some or all of the parties to make hard choices, such as whether to accept a deal or break off negotiations. It often is an option to do nothing, and , as we have noted, patient negotiatiors have an advantage over their less patient counterparts.

7. Issues: What agenda of issues will be negotiated?

   • Identify the full set of issues: They may seem obvious, but it is important to probe beneath the surface.
   • Think about issue sequencing: decision about whether to proceed sequentially or to work on package deals can have a decisive impact on the evolution and outcome of the process.