“We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.”
Daniel Kahneman
This blog takes a moment to discuss an important aspect of negotiations that we often forget. It’s what Harvey Mackay called the “blinding glimpse of the obvious” — something we all see as evident but often forget in the hurried and harried world we live in.
We forget to slow down, open our minds, and listen to others, particularly others on our team. Earlier in my career, I was the Chief Negotiator for the advertising industry across the table from the Screen Actors Guild (S.A.G.) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (A.F.T.R.A.) negotiating the union collective bargaining agreement that covered the production of television and radio commercials. Readers may be surprised to learn that the $3 billion-plus SAG-AFTRA commercial contracts are the largest in the entertainment industry. Bigger than television programming or motion pictures. Negotiations occurred every three years and went on for weeks.
One of the realities of a drawn-out labor negotiation is the significant downtime between formal negotiating sessions. It can be hours or even a full day. It’s when you consider proposals each side is making, strategize how you might trade each side’s proposals to achieve your goals, and prepare arguments you’ll use to persuade the other side to make concessions. It’s also time when you stare at walls, eat too many pretzels, and learn more about one another than you generally need (or perhaps want) to know. But the luxury of all the downtime is the hours you spend debating a point and listening to what everyone has to say within your team. Through the frustration of seemingly never-ending discussions, great ideas emerge. There is no question that the proposals and arguments we made to the union were far better because of all the otherwise dull time we filled with debate and, at times, pretty rough arguing. We did a better job of listening because we were all stuck together in a room with nothing else to do but talk. The result is that we honed our ideas and learned a lot from one another. Were it not for the downtime, it’s a blinding glimpse of the obvious we would have missed.
Downtime is not a luxury in most negotiations or our everyday lives. But that does not have to be the rule.
We all need to STOP now and then and take time to listen to others. That’s true not only in our services to clients but also in our business planning. Doing it all alone may be faster, but it can be a recipe for failure. You may be sacrificing success only to save the client a small amount of money on legal fees. While I recognize clients pay lawyers for their work hours, they value lawyers for the results they bring. We should expect no less from ourselves regarding our business and career planning. Think about that next time you’re planning strategies and tactics in the loneliness of your office.
