I have worked with people in the past that have used a very agressive approach to their negoations with others. This approach created some hard feelings from pretty much anyone they encountered and while their deals were somewhat better financially the technique damaged the relationships with other parties to the point it was difficult to continue to work with them. Sometimes it leads to situations where people will follow the letter of the agreement but little else. This is what Stephen Covey calls "maliciously obedient", doing exactly and only what you tell me to do, accepting no responsibility for the results. This is the 4^th in the series "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective PLM Adoption", a tribute to the late Stephen Covey. Covey's 4^th Habit from his book is "Think Win/Win". Obviously people like this are more Win/Lose and in the realm of PLM deployment they are not alone. Many feel the best way to handle PLM or any type of service engagement is to negotiate aggressively. This article will highlight the downside of this approach and discuss some ways that both PLM vendors and service providers and their customers benefit from a mutually beneficial approach and what that looks like.

Let's define the Win/Win scenario to ensure we all understand what it is we are trying to achieve. As you can imagine Covey writes quite a bit on this subject but the sentences that I think best capture Win/Win for the context of PLM deployment are these "Win/Win means that agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial and mutually satisfying. With a Win/Win solution all parties feel good about the decision and feel committed to the action plan." The problem with the Win/Lose approach for PLM is that both parties still need each other after the initial transaction. A successful PLM deployment requires both parties active participation at a high level in order to be successful. If the vendor is too aggressive then the customer will resent them and take it out on the vendor by being overly demanding and uncooperative during the deployment. If the client pushes the vendor to a point with product and services where they no longer reap the financial value they need then the quality of the deployment will suffer as the vendor tries to recoup their money by using lesser resources or providing fewer services, perhaps applying the "malicious obedience" I referenced earlier. Ironically, both of these reactions can turn a Win/Lose into a Lose/Lose rather quickly. I have seen both sides of this scenario play out in my years in the industry and it isn't pretty. I think the key words in Covey's quote are "committed to the action plan". The trick is how to accomplish this.

Covey writes about the five dimensions of Win/Win and while as one commenter pointed out last week most of Covey's principles are fairly obvious I think they are worth reviewing. I have found that most of the habits in Covey's book are common sense but I do not see them applied in the corporate arena or for that matter in personal interactions. Most of us know instinctively what to do but emotions, fears, and circumstances cause us to respond in a more reactive manner to issues as opposed to being intentional and deliberate. It requires taking the time to think things through and develop approaches. This is an area where Covey excelled. It wasn't that he was coming up with anything new; he just had a plan as to how to apply it. The plan around the Win/Win scenario involves these five dimensions; character, relationships, agreements, structure/systems, and process. I will review each of these areas and provide some examples of how these dimensions have factored into my own experience over the past 20 years of delivering software and services solutions to product development organizations.

Character is something Covey puts a lot of stock in throughout the book. Obviously, high character is a desirable trait in any business partner but how is it identified. Covey cites integrity, maturity, and an abundance mentality as being key indicators of the appropriate character for a Win/Win approach. I would think that integrity is fairly self-explanatory. If there is no trust in a relationship it becomes very difficult to work together. Maturity is a little more subtle. Covey defines it in his context as "the balance between courage and consideration". What he means by this is that to be mature you must be able to express one's own feelings and convictions with consideration for the thoughts and feelings of others. He refers to research done by Professor Hrand Saxenian at Harvard Business School which reinforces this definition. Covey emphasizes that maturity is synonymous with leadership in that the key role is to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from the activity. Abundance Mentality was a new terminology for me but I can certainly identify with it. Covey explains that some view life as a finite resource. They buy into the concept that there is only one pie and the more one person gets the less everyone else can have. This is called the "Scarcity Mentality" and it is built into to everyone's psyche. It is part of our fast brain response. It is why we want things that we perceive to be scarce and why we pay ridiculous prices for beanie babies or video games or concert tickets. Marketers exploit this natural tendency but in most cases it is an illusion. The Abundance Mentality recognizes that "there are unlimited possibilities for positive interactive growth and development creating Third Alternatives." To summarize in order to be able to execute a Win/Win strategy you must first have character which Covey defines as Integrity or honesty that instill trust, Maturity or the ability to balance consideration with forthright communication and possess "Abundance Mentality" which is the belief that there is infinite value to be created from mutual activities.

The second dimension Covey writes about is relationships. Covey uses the analogy of an "emotional bank account: to illustrate how a successful relationship works. If the balance is high then there is a high level of trust and this enables cooperation. If the balance is low then there is difficulty in being open with each other and it makes cooperation unlikely. Covey elaborates about the value of having a high balance, "We're both committed to try and understand each other's point of view deeply and to work together for the Third Alternative, the synergistic solution, that will be a better answer for both of us". He continues, "A relationship where bank accounts are high and both parties are committed to Win/Win is the ideal springboard for tremendous synergy. As an example recently we were in the middle of negotiating with a long time customer and another partner we work with frequently. While discussing the project it became apparent that the other partner was not going to add much to the engagement due to the nature of the project. Given the fact that the partner had originally brought us into the account we were obligated to continue to work with them. Because of our close relationship we were able to discuss the project candidly and come to an agreement in which they offered to allow us to work directly with the client. If we did not have mutual respect and trust that conversation could have easily gone another direction but because we did we were able to come up with an approach that allowed all parties to win. I think Covey really nails this point in the end with this quote, "An agreement means very little in letter without the character and relationship base to sustain it in spirit. So we need to approach Win/Win from a genuine desire to invest in the relationships that make it possible."

Next week we will wrap Win/Win up with a discussion around agreements, structure/systems and process. The foundation of "Think Win/Win" is really the character and relationships. As Covey says, "Without trust the best we can do is compromise; without trust we lack the credibility for open, mutual learning and communication and real creativity." In my next blog we will learn how companies can create environments, agreements and process that promote these types of engagements. As it turns out by concentrating on Win/Win relationships we were able to structure projects in a way that all parties could benefit. Recently, we worked with a small startup in Tennessee that wanted to invest in PLM as one of their early platforms. We worked with them to construct a project that allowed them to meet some fairly ambitious objectives for a startup. If you would like to learn about this example and some other best practices for PLM adoption register for our webinar Wednesday September 5^th at 1 PM Central time.