Innovative negotiation concept

I read an article by famed HBS professor Howard Raiffa on "Post-settlement Settlement". It was a truly innovative way of looking at achieving integrative negotiation (where participants in the negotiation process believe the negotiation will yield a pie bigger than the sum of its parts). The antithesis of integrative negotiation is distributive negotiation where participants view the negotiation process as a win-lose proposition, i.e. my win can only be had at your expense.

Raiffa theorizes (and backs it up with experiments) that in any negotiation, negotiators rarely reveal the true weights they place on different negotiation parameters. What ends up happening is that both parties end up in a settlement that is sub-optimal. This can be likened to the classic Prisoner's Dilemma problem of Game Theory. His solution: once a settlement has been reached, bring in an interlocutor. This person will go to each of the negotiation participants and offer to get them a better settlement in return for candid information on the true value of their weights on the negotiation parameters. Each can review the new settlement and reject it if unacceptable. Raiffa's argument is that this will invariably result in a better solution.

Although this sounds great in theory, I had some issues on how it will work from a practical perspective.

a) People will rarely share their true interests even to a reputed interlocutor. Hell, they might not even know what their true interests are!

b) It is quite difficult to isolate a negotiation into distinct line items and place weightages on each parameter. This in itself would require tremendous effort on the participants.

Overall though, it was a fascinating concept in negotiation theory. Go Raiffa!

Courtesy??

Courtesy...a thing of the past. Or, am I really getting older?
Too many incidents in the past few days to really ignore. Where do I start? In my office, where else.? You would expect that on a relative basis, educated folks would have better courtesy. I was sadly disappointed. At lunch, on a table that can seat 4, a fifth guy elbows his way between me and the guy on my left and plonks his plate on the table. There is no space for his chair, so he sits slightly behind me and pokes at his food bravely. I have some problems with this:

1. Why should he choose to sit there when there is obviously no space at the table.
2. If he decides to sit, isn't it basic courtesy (or am I asking for too much) to request me to move slightly... a polite "excuse me" would have sufficed.

Our hero's actions had the effect of me quickly downing my food and getting out of the damn place.

Second incident this morning: Girl at water cooler with 2 glasses. Fills up her glass. Expect her to move away. No chance. She stands at the cooler clutching at the nozzle while she drinks. All the while, yours truly is standing behind her, silently fuming.

Definitely a thing of the past, that uncommon trait called courtesy.

Loans...loans

Will the obsession with loans ever go away?
I just thought I'd finished up activities leading up to my education loan.
Now, a new worry - When I take time off from work, will my bank try to call in my home loan, since I will not be employed for a year?
This basically doesn't make sense, since I have enough cash to meet the monthly EMIs.
But since when have banks known to be sensible??
So, another loan to think about and screw my happiness?
Will I ever be free from loans?

Customer service

Why is customer service commonly uncommon?
We see this in numerous instances in our daily life, especially in India.

One example of this happened yesterday when I visited our cafeteria yesterday with a colleague.
One of the stalls, let's say Stall A, sells slightly overpriced food items, albeit tasty ones. There were 3 people to take care of the stall, but not one of them was actually behind the counter. This had the potential effect of customers walking to one of the other 3 stalls. As I was watching the 3 stall care-takers, a bunch of customers paused in front of the stall to study the menu on display. One of the 3 care-takers sauntered up and kept looking at the customers for a full minute without once engaging them in conversation. The customers decided to move on, having found nothing to their liking. The care-taker simply sauntered back to talk to his colleagues. The stall owner would have fumed to see such slackness.

How do we overcome this basic apathy in service workers?What should have been a sure-fire sale yesterday, turned to a no-sale. Further, the attitude of the care-taker ensured little possibility of repeat business from that bunch of customers.

Sad.

Consultancy

I'm getting into one of the top-tier B-Schools in India for an exec. MBA course.
Almost all of my prospective batch-mates have listed consulting as their top destination.
Yours truly has done the same.
On reflection though, I think we need to do some more research before we commit ourselves.
To this end, I've started reading up on consulting at wetfeet, an excellent resource on consulting.

I can reminisce back to my college days, when we madly chose Electronics and Communication, without the faintest clue as to why. I still don't have an answer to that :)

We're all supposed to be a lot more mature now, so some research is definitely in order. If someone asks me why I want to get into consulting, I need to be really well prepared to answer.

More on this later...

Finally!

Finally got over the mental block to start blogging. When everything else seems to be falling, I wanted to do that would symbolize a rising. What better example than a Phoenix? So, it begins...
Happy New Year 2009, hopefully a year that the Phoenix would be proud of.