Negotiation Tactics

by Kristen DeLap

One of a product managers most used, but perhaps most underrated, skills is negotiation. Almost every conversation a product manager has can feel like a request that needs to be weighed and agreed upon in some fashion. While a product manager can (and should) say “no”, the way in which they get to the no, or verbalize the no, is all about negotiation. It is a key pillar of communication, and one that can affect speed, outcomes, and team morale.

Specific negotiations with a pessimistic developer, or an over-promising salesperson, or an impassioned stakeholder will be different. But there are core strategies that remain the same.

When we think about negotiations, we often think of them as positional - where each party stands in opposition and applies pressure in attempt to get the other to yield. This is most often seen in bargaining transactions, or when someone is talking about “holding a hard line.” However, the better approach is often principled negotiations, where all parties come together as a team to find the best outcome and maintain the relationship. The Department of Product wrote up an informative article that summarizes the findings of the Harvard Negotiation Project on principled negotiations well.

According to the study, there are 4 facets which make up principled negotiation:

  1. People - Try to separate the people from the problem, by focusing on the real issue, not who brought it up. Then be sure to bring in empathy for the multiple perspectives involved, participation from those people, and resist the temptation to get emotional.

  2. Interests - Understand the shared interests, which are common to all parties, and the divergent interests, where they disagree. Also keep in mind many interests can be traced back to security, wellbeing, sense of belonging, recognition, or control, and so try to address these root causes first.

  3. Options - Generating options for an outcome should be separate from deciding, and no option is a bad one when you are just at the brainstorming phase. Then compare and contrast within your list.

  4. Criteria - Attempt to use objective criteria wherever possible in your negotiation to move away from emotional influences. Search for criteria like fair market comparisons, professional standards, scientific judgement or raw data to analyze options.

A product manager even tackling one or two of these strategies in their daily interactions can rapidly move them toward more effective communication. Not every negotiation feels like intense conflict, it can simply be a question of priorities or slightly different goals. Negotiation isn’t inherently a good or bad thing, but getting to the best answer makes a difference for speed, morale, and outcomes. And, importantly, the best answer isn’t winning - it is a result that is good for all involved, takes the appropriate amount of time to get to, and preserves or even strengthens relationships.

STAND-UP EXERCISE

Give a prompt to product managers to ask them about a negotiation conversation they had this week / sprint / cycle. Examples might include - an executive wanted a new feature added to an MVP; do we prioritize working through this technical debt or getting started on this new initiative; the designer wants more time to iterate and the engineers just want to get going; our lead candidate just got another offer for $10K over our budget; do I really need to attend this meeting or can I send another team member…

What went right? What went wrong? Using investigation of the four facets of principled negotiation, where could they have dug in deeper? Be sure to share yourself, as negotiation is not a once-and-done skill, but a learning path for all of us.

A following stand-up could come back to this topic and ask if anyone was able to use these techniques to find a desired or beneficial outcome.

BONUS:
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a famous game theory problem that shows that single event negotiation is very different from multiple event negotiation. On any given product team, you’ll need to negotiate often, so it is best to stay focused on the long term relationship. Have your team play though this interactive game “The Evolution of Trust” to learn and enact the theory.

New Year Maxim

by Kristen DeLap

Calendar New Year is fraught with folks setting goals and resolutions. As we know, so many times this type of thing fails out of the gate - research says the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is about 80%. And a dichotomy is created in the workplace, as often times a fiscal calendar or fiscal quarter professional goal setting doesn’t correspond to the standard Gregorian calendar.

While my organization’s fiscal half falls this time of year, it isn’t a major time of resetting goals. However, these types of calendar milestones are places where people reassess and perhaps are motivated to shift behaviors. Because of that, I think it is important to address as a group. (Note, another good time for this is the start of a school year - while not everyone is a student, or has students, this type of cultural milestone exists in many places.)

Instead of setting resolutions, I ask my team to think about how they are feeling heading into the new calendar year. It’s a bit of taking stock of their energy level and their mentality - a general check-in. And then, steering clear of specific goals or things they want to change, I ask for a word or maxim as they look ahead. The time period of a coherent 12 months can also be hard conceptually, so a general forward outlook may be preferable to a specific time frame. The idea of choosing a “word of the year” has almost a cult following at this point, but even a less rigorous process can still yield thoughtful responses. Additionally, it allows us to see our teams and colleagues wishes and hopes (or struggles and roadblocks) a bit more clearly.

STAND-UP EXERCISE

Once the dust of the holidays settle, prepare a whiteboarding session with a “emotion wheel” or something similar. Ask folks to identify their current state. (I ask that they name two adjectives, as you can have someone who is excited AND anxious or enthusiastic AND confused - it is good to know both.) I leave this part anonymous, so that folks can be honest, but ask them to share their responses if they wish.

Then ask them to add stickies for a maxim / word / wish as they look forward. Ideally sharing with the group provides insight and camaraderie.

Good Gift Giving is User Empathy

by Kristen DeLap

This is a major gift giving season, and there are countless gift guides being published by retailers and media outlets. These gift guides typically group folks into broad groups by demographic like “Top Gifts for Dads” or “Gifts for your Girlfriend”, or by interest-group like “Gifts for the Cook” or “Hostess Gifts”. However, this season, Vox published a slightly different take in an article How to become a truly excellent gift giver. I was struck by how many of their points are actually UX principles or practices.

The first lesson listed was to pay attention to the recipient, even writing a mini bio of the person. This of course is UX research at its core, creating a user profile to build a user journey. The article also introduces a three point framework to ask yourself when gift giving: “Can I introduce you to something you might not otherwise know about? Can I get you a nicer version of something than you would buy for yourself? Can I make you feel seen?” These roughly apply to user experiences when we convert them to: Can I introduce you to an experience you might not know about? Can I delight you by providing a better experience than you were expecting? Can I meet your needs, perhaps needs you might not even realize you have?

The more we pay attention to our users, the better the outcomes. This is true whether designing and building a digital ecommerce experience or finding a meaningful gift for a recipient. When doing the below exercise my team generated many themes that are applicable to both problems. Create a similar seasonally-themed learning activity with your team below.

Screenshot of Miro board with series of stickies describing user empathy.

STAND-UP EXERCISE

This exercise could be part of a larger end-of-year gathering, or trimmed to fit into a stand-up or two.

Each team member is asked to add to the virtual whiteboard an image of a gift that they were happy to receive. I asked the team to only use gifts that were a surprise, not something they’d asked for or added to a wish list, but the gift could be from any occasion. Due to size, my team then broke into breakout groups, to discuss their gifts and decide on one to present back to the larger gathering. The giftee told their story of why it was such a great gift to recieve and what it has meant to them.

Then as a team we discussed learnings or themes that emerged, especially ones that are relevant to user empathy and user understanding. Adding them to a visual whiteboard and grouping them helps facilitate discussion. How can we take these themes of gift-giving into our user research and our product team prioritization?

Screenshot of Miro board where participants added avatar of themselves and photo of a gift to a grid.

UI / UX Challenges

by Kristen DeLap

This time of year, many folks are online shopping. That provides even more chances to have great user experiences across the web, or unfortunately, terrible user experiences. Coming off of the Black Friday / Cyber Monday week, almost everyone can relate to a story about a webpage that wouldn’t load or crashed during checkout, and hopefully many can relate to those who had seamless experiences finding or buying the item they’ve had their eye on. Asking folks to be more mindful of their experiences can be a good learning opportunity for the team.

The breadth of experiences shared during this exercise was surprising. On the positive side: a cocktail app that was helping an amateur bartender expertly mix drinks using ingredients they already had available; a fashion website with a clever visual delineation of what colors of an item were on backorder and which were ready to ship; a banking app with clear information available and tasks easy to navigate. On the frustrating side: a clever new AI plus bird feeder that made you wait in line before even seeing the price/options; a metropolitan public school website that made both navigating data and a map of school impossible; a popular recipe website without robust search or filter options to actually find a suitable recipe; an e-commerce site with so many pop-ups it couldn’t be navigated.

Even if all team members aren’t designing or contributing to e-commerce pages, or a stand-alone shopping app, user experience principles and even features can be applied across many mediums. Perhaps a seamless experience with an address validation dropdown when inputting a billing address leads to ideas for auto-fill within an internal form. Even just the reminder of “does this work on mobile” continues to be a necessary question at every step. When my team shared their findings, one Chrome-using designer frustratingly noted that a website checkout only worked in Safari, and they only remembered to check that after the item was already sold out. A good reminder to us for our QA checks.

Occasionally, we could commiserate with some of the designers (“oof, that functionality is hard!”) but often we were already brainstorming how to apply these learnings to our products and platforms.

STAND-UP EXERCISE

Ask the team to be on the lookout for awesome or terrible digital UX/UI experiences they run into in their personal or professional lives. Perhaps while holiday shopping, or doing research, or just going throughout their day - be mindful of times of frustration or times of ease in a digital setting. Bring those examples to stand-up, being prepared to drop links and screenshots in the chat or sharing your screen if the experience can be duplicated. Discuss what could improve, or how we could bring the best of these experiences to our own products and platforms.