Quantum Negotiation

1 The WHO & WHY of Quantum Negotiation

Harvey was an experienced baby boomer executive for a global manufacturer entering an important M&A negotiation with a digital software company. He had planned extensively around WHAT his targets, limits, and issues were. He put these in context of what he believed Kip, a millennial negotiator for the digital software company, would want. Harvey had always prepared for the Plan B or BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) in every negotiation not only regarding himself but also his counterpart.

On the day of their last negotiation to tie up the agreement, Harvey “lost his cool” and became very angry with Kip. Harvey's manufacturing company wanted to keep Kip on as a partner to integrate digitization for their global products. After many discussions, none of the “extremely generous” offers motivated Kip to sign the agreement to turn over his software company for integration into the manufacturing one.

Harvey was taken off guard by this young “upstart” and was offended that his financial offers were not valued. He had gone to great lengths to give Kip an offer—raising the salary and increasing bonuses for hitting digitization milestones. He made it clear to Kip that he was outraged by Kip's idea to create “happiness committees” around the integration process—he had never heard of such a thing and wasn't about to let his company get distracted by such nonsense. He couldn't believe that Kip was not at all motivated by an impressive ...