Episode 17 — Negotiation Tips From Ellen Smith

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER ● ELLEN SMITH NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our every other week chance to meet and talk about the things that matter most to you as a professional project manager.  What does it take to get started in the field?  To get certified?  And how do you survive? I’m your host, Nick Walker.  And with me are our resident experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  They’ve experienced the challenges, they’ve tasted the victories of project management, and they want to share their experience with you. And, guys, we are fortunate once again to have a special guest in the studio today.  Ellen Smith is an attorney with Holt Ney in Atlanta.  She deals with commercial real estate, wireless telecommunications, and land use; and her clients range from single individual member limited liability companies to nonprofit hospitals to Fortune 500 companies.  Varied in her talents, for sure.  Ellen, thanks so much for being with us on Manage This. ELLEN SMITH:  Thanks for having me. NICK WALKER:  We are so looking forward to talking with you about our topic today, and that is negotiation.  But before we get there, Andy and Bill, let’s talk a little bit about the need for negotiation when it comes to project management.  Andy? ANDY CROWE:  And Nick, I want to back up.  You said we’ve “tasted the victories of project management”? NICK WALKER:  That’s my impression. ANDY CROWE:  Bill, is that your experience of your work in project management? BILL YATES:  What I conjure up is more of a bitterness, you know, like the most bitter coffee. ANDY CROWE:  Thinking the bitter dregs? BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  That coffee that’s been sitting there all day. NICK WALKER:  So it’s more the agony of defeat than the thrill of victory. BILL YATES:  Maybe. ANDY CROWE:  You know, it’s one of those – you remember the old saying that you have to have a strong stomach to see how the sausage is made? NICK WALKER:  Yes, yes. ANDY CROWE:  And when you go back and sometimes see how a project gets done, and see what it takes to get there, you’d better have a strong stomach and a strong sense of yourself.  But no, I’m excited about this topic because it’s this whole idea of negotiation.  And the project manager is in such a difficult position.  And this is what nobody really stops to think about.  So you’ve got the organization.  You’ve got this whole group of stakeholders.  You’ve got senior management.  And you’ve got sponsors, users, customers, all of these people. And the way I think about it is sort of picture them in an inverted pyramid.  So that’s on the top side of the pyramid, this triangle pointing down, with the tip pointing down.  And then below you, you’ve got the team.  And that can include a lot of different people.  It can include virtual relationships.  It can include dedicated straight-line reporting relationships.  And the PM is stuck in the middle between those two points.  So there’s a... BILL YATES:  Two very sharp points. ANDY CROWE:  They can get very sharp. BILL YATES:  Yes, very pointy. ANDY CROWE:  And so there’s this idea that the project manager is constantly negotiating everything, all day every day.  That’s really a lot of the job, at the heart of the job.  You could call the person a “project negotiator” as opposed to a project manager.  I mean, there are people who just tick off boxes and say yes, complete, check, check.  And we think about those as maybe a coordinator. BILL YATES:  Right. ANDY CROWE:  But in this case a project manager has to go back in the kitchen and make the sausage.  And it is tricky, and sometimes it’s very ugly, and it’s a lot of work. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  There are third parties that they’re having to rely on to provide valuable deliverables for this project.  So they’ve got contracts, perhaps, with third parties.  They’re having to negotiate internally to get the resources they need to get it done.  They’re having to negotiate with the team, to get those resources on the team.  And people have their own expectations; right?  I’ve got, “This is where I want to go in my career,” or “I don’t want to do this on this project.” ANDY CROWE:  Yeah.  Not just expectations, but their own agenda. BILL YATES:  Yeah, absolutely. NICK WALKER:  So, Ellen, that’s why we’re so glad you’re here.  Because we’re going to draw on your expertise.  Give us just a little overview of some of the situations that you have encountered that require the skill of negotiation. ELLEN SMITH:  Sure.  So commercial real estate; right?  You think it’s just dirt, but it’s not.  I mean, I’m working on a project now where the project team – there’s a project manager.  They’re managing the client, which is a Fortune 500 company which has its own expectations.  They had to negotiate their own contract with that client.  But then they have to put together the project to get something built on a piece of property.  They had to negotiate to get the dirt bought.  They had to get all the equipment. And they have to go through right now the permitting process, so negotiating with government officials, which is miserable in and of itself. But they also have a team of experts; right?  They have their engineers.  They have their architects.  And they have to deal with lawyers on the outside.  They don’t just have to deal with the client’s lawyer.  They have to deal with the city’s lawyer. And they have to deal with the architect’s lawyer and the engineer’s lawyer and everyone else. BILL YATES:  Those dang lawyers. ELLEN SMITH:  And they really are stuck in the middle because at the end of the day they have to get that deliverable to their client.  But they have to keep everybody on the same page and make them happy.  And whether you call it a negotiation, whether you think about the start of your day as a negotiation, that really is what they’re doing from start to finish all day. NICK WALKER:  So obviously a project manager needs negotiating skills.  But that’s not necessarily something, perhaps, that most project managers are going to be trained in. BILL YATES:  Yeah, Nick, that’s a great point.  We, Andy and I, just – we’re constantly surprising ourselves as we look at those that we train and those that use our materials, and just how closely we can relate to them in that this is a skill that we had to learn on the job.  We didn’t really have training on negotiation in school.  You know, we may have learned some tools along the way.  But this is really an on-the-job kind of thing. So we are – we can definitely connect with our tribe in this area.  We may have a lot of technical expertise.  We may be great at coding, at testing.  Or we may be a strong engineer.  But suddenly I’ve moved into this position where I’ve got to manage and negotiate with those people on the team.  Plus, to Andy’s point, that pyramid above me that’s very sharp and pointy and right on the top of my head, I’ve got to negotiate the expectations of sponsors, of customers, of my senior management.  And I don’t have training in it. ANDY CROWE:  And Bill, I want to suggest for a minute that we almost need to think about it a little bit differently as project managers because traditionally we’re trained to think about negotiation as the art of getting the best deal for your organization or for your side.  And it’s the idea of engineering the best deal you can for your group that you’re representing.  And some people do approach it that way.  Project managers are going to get in trouble when they approach it that way. BILL YATES:  Right, that’s right.  If you burn bridges along the way, you’re going to be in big trouble. ANDY CROWE:  Right.  You don’t squeeze people down necessarily. BILL YATES:  No. ANDY CROWE:  I worked with a guy early in my career who was from Philadelphia.  And he was just a Philly guy who’s classic in every sense of the word.  And we love you listeners in Philadelphia.  But his idea was “I’m not winning if you’re not losing.”  And he really seemed to believe that.  That was his overarching goal for negotiating was to squeeze people to make sure everybody knew who won, and it was him, you know; and who lost, and that was you. BILL YATES:  Yeah.  Yeah, Ellen, one of the things that’s unique for us with negotiations is we have to live in the mess that we create. ELLEN SMITH:  For sure. BILL YATES:  So we, you know, as project managers, the things that we negotiate, whether we’re a part of scoping out a project on the front end or we’re in the middle of it, I mean, we don’t want to tick off our client.  We don’t want to tick off those that are on the team. ANDY CROWE:  Or the vendor. BILL YATES:  Yeah. ANDY CROWE:  Not just the client.  You don’t want to tick off anybody. BILL YATES:  Right.  You’ve got to... ANDY CROWE:  You want everybody to be able to live with the outcome. BILL YATES:  Right.  That’s right. NICK WALKER:  And it occurs to me this is probably not necessarily intuitive, either.  So, Ellen, returning to you, how do we... ELLEN SMITH:  Sure. NICK WALKER:  ...become master negotiators? ELLEN SMITH:  Well, and I’ll say this, too.  I think that that top end of the pyramid is probably the ones that have gone to Harvard Business School or some other business school.  They have their MBA.  And they did take classes on negotiation.  So as a project manager, some of the ones underneath, you’ve gone to school, you’ve had the technical expertise, whether you’re an engineer or what have you.  You can put together the things that client, customer, sponsor needs from a technical side.  They are using their negotiating skills against you, always.  It’s not because they can help themselves, it’s because that’s what they went to school for nine times out of 10.  Right?