11.07.07

International Negotiating - Step 1 -Ethnic and Corporate cultures

Posted in Negotiating at 4:52 am by Administrator

Negotiating is a strategic game like chess and international negotiating is three dimensional chess. As with all negotiations, the best results are win-win outcomes. Your job as the negotiator is to figure out what motivates your counterpart and craft a strategy that helps him/her to achieve his/her goals. The challenge is what is a successful outcome in one culture may not be considered so in another.

Let’s first of all talk about culture. There are two levels to consider. First of all, there is what you think of as the traditonal ethnic culture — Japanese, German, Mexican etc. Note that I talk about specific countries — if you approach it as an area - Asian, European or Latin American - you’re going to miss important differences and make some major mistakes. You may even have to be more specific - I would approach a Catalan differently than a Madrileño.

There are also corporate cultures. I was talking to a German manager who worked in Germany in integrating HP and Compaq. I asked him about the German and US business styles and he told me that was an easy issue to deal with. The real challenge for him was melding the corporate cultures. HP was used to integrative teams and open work spaces. Compaq worked in individual spaces and interacted less with co-workers.

Step one in the negotiating process is to understand the motivations as understood in the cultural contect of your counterpart. That means understand both ethnic and corporate cultures. I’ll talk next about some questions to ask to help you understand the cultures

Permalink