Yesterday we announced prematurely the cessation of combat operations in the Winklevoss v. 
Zuckerberg saga/soap opera/high grossing movie plot. It seems that even though the twins had decided to forgo their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, they are pressing the attack in an existing suit in Boston. Thank you, whatever deity is responsible for providing material for blog posts. Our faith in you is renewed.
This blog has been in sort of a TMZish mode regarding the unfolding drama of the Winklevoss twins
vs. Zuckerberg. See here, here and here. Apparently the era of easy blog posts is coming to an end as the twins have announced through a filing that they will not pursue an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Our friend, Judith Leeson, the proprietor of a blog called Law Degree, has gone to the trouble of searching, reviewing and recommending the top 10 free iPad apps and the top 10 paid iPad apps for attorneys. If you use an iPad in your practice or are considering it, you should look this list over. Thanks, Judith for bringing this to our attention.
A week or so ago, we began a series discussing the twelve things that we think are important
about negotiation. At that time we promised (threatened) that we would follow up on each of these in a more detailed manner. Well, that was no idle threat, my friends.
We should clarify things a little. For example, are the twelve things we listed all you need to know about this subject? Obviously, no. They may not even be the most important things. There are just things we have observed as being relevant to negotiations over the years. Also, the types of negotiations that are more suitable to these principles are complex business deals with a lot of moving parts. These principles are less appropriate to haggling over the price of a car or the settlement of a personal injury lawsuit. These usually involve just taking a position rather than negotiation and the one with the upper hand, either in bargaining position or by the application of the facts and law, usually do better in those situations.
So, with those limitations in mind, in this post we are going to address the first two items in our list, viz:
1. Approach each negotiation as a mutual problem solving exercise.
2. Know the deal you want and how much leeway you have within acceptable parameters.
The approach of treating each negotiation as a mutual problem solving exercise could be described as just trying to get a "win-win" arrangement but that would be somewhat limiting. Each party to the negotiation has a problem they would like to solve. For example, the outsourcing vendor has a service it would like to offer, a number of employees it would like to engage and a revenue number it needs to hit to keep its investors happy and make its sales people adequate commissions. The potential customer has a function it believes would be better done by someone else at a lower price. The customer wants to have a predictable burn rate for such function and wants to trim its staff and avoid having to make a large capital expenditure for equipment.
The people at the Harvard Negotiation Project believe this best reached by being truthful about your own interests, brainstorming with the other party to broaden options and look for ways to make mutual gains. Therefore, if you focus on interests and not positions, you may discover that there are ways to satisfy both parties' needs. Nobody can (or should) get everything they want in a negotiation, but a successful result would be to get an acceptable arrangement in which each side's interests are addressed in a manner that allows them to further their individual and joint business needs.
The second issue is probably glaringly obvious. You should know where you want to go in order to get there. You must be honest with yourself and with the other party to the negotiation in order to really address what you want and need out of the deal at hand. For that reason, the Harvard Negotiation Project recommends that you decide before hand what your best alternative to a negotiated agreement is. They refer to this as a "BATNA" (clever acronym). This merely means that you must determine what will happen if you don't do the deal and if the last and best offer by the other side is not superior to your BATNA, you must be prepared to reject the deal. This overlaps with the principle that we will discuss later on about never being unable to walk away. If you can live with the results of walking away better that you can with the proposed arrangement, you should beat a hasty exit.
Our newest and best friend Rachael Davis, proprietor of 
Dr. IT, PhD, has graciously included us in her list of Top 50 Up and Coming Blogs. We appreciate that and applaud Ms. Davis' perception and taste.
OMG! It's already World IPv6 Day and you forgot to buy gifts. What are you doing to celebrate? Who has the day off?
Our partner, Luke Stanfield, was quoted in the most recent issue of the Austin Business Journal. 
In an article written by Christopher Calnan, the activities of The University of Texas Investment Management Co. ("UTIMCO") in investing in Intellectual Ventures Management LLC ("Intellectual Ventures") were called into question.
Intellectual Ventures is referred to as a patent troll or a hedge fund that defends valuable intellectual property, depending on the person doing the assessment. The article cited above mentions that Intellectual Ventures has acquired rights to more than 30,000 patents and its principal business is licensing such patents and litigating the alleged infringement of such patents.
The article questions whether this is something in which the University of Texas should be investing. Some say such firms do not foster innovation and in fact, divert the resources of the targeted companies. This was Luke's focus when he was quoted in the article as saying: "If companies are forced to spend money on lawsuits instead of research and development, it can stifle innovation". Sounds right to me.
Every business person has been subjected to some type of negotiation advice. Many of us, 
like me, have taken negotiation courses. Some of us, like me, have learned negotiation lessons the hard way.
I am going to list twelve general principles of negotiation practice in this post and expand on each of them in subsequent posts. In this, I will not take the approach of suggesting that you keep the room freezing, that you make your opponent face bright windows or that you raise your chair slightly higher than the other participants. These, like many of such ilk, are bush league suggestions and really don't address real negotiation issues.
So, with that premise, here are twelve things you absolutely need to understand to be an effective negotiator:
Now, these are not necessarily in order of importance, they overlap in many aspects and the list is not exhaustive. However, in the next few posts, we will explore each of these in greater detail and along the way, I'll tell a few war stories. I would also appreciate hearing some of your pointers and stories of successful and not-so-successful negotiations. I am still learning.
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