Q & A Table of Contents
Does High Tech Need Special Negotiation Technology?
From: George, Bangalore, India
Question: Have you had any experiences in negotiating in the Information Technology or related fields? If so, could you please let me know if there are any specific techniques that need to be followed specific to this industry. If you can give me some case studies or a reference to where I can find them, I would be much obliged.
Response: I have worked a great deal with Information Technology -- technology manufacturers, IT staffing organizations, IT consulting companies, etc. Negotiation in the IT world is still negotiation. IT people may be more sophisticated in some areas such as technological knowledge, but the same people may be less adept when it comes to 'people skills' such as communication or diplomacy.
The IT people with whom I have worked often face heavy stress, the conflicting claims of different 'tribes' within their companies or their company's client, or confusion between the long-term and short-term issues driving their negotiating approach.
In all of these ways, IT people resemble folks from other industries. Negotiating is a human activity. While a computer can only give 'yes' or 'no' answers, a good negotiator must have the capacity to be creative, to think 'out of the box'. This is true whether you are involved in high tech or delivering personal services.
Inasmuch as a growing proportion of the workforce changes jobs many times during their professional careers, like others, IT people need to understand that negotiation is a core competency that they need to translate from one situation to another. Thus, people who say high tech negotiations should be viewed as a separate species from negotiations in healthcare, banking, or manufacturing are heading in the wrong direction. Each negotiation and each negotiator has its or his/her own peculiar qualities that relate more to immediate circumstances or personal characteristics than to the business in which they are working. Understanding the negotiation process as a whole is far more practical than viewing each business sector as having peculiar characteristics that don't relate to others.
Everyone in IT, as well as other sectors, has to negotiate in business and also in their personal lives. If their negotiation skills work well in one place and poorly in another, things are out of balance and they will find the results are uneven and, perhaps, unsettling.
I have not seen any literature about IT negotiation (or negotiation in any other specific field) that stands out as particularly useful as compared to more generalized books or articles in the area of negotiation. Possibly the best article I've seen was in a publication called
Negotiation Journal about negotiating one's way on a bicycle through the traffic of Beijing. Reading it as a lesson in bicycle riding was somewhat useful, but its fundamental points applied to the general process of negotiation.
Good luck with this,
Steve
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