The word “negotiate” has acquired a mystique, implying that it is a discrete activity relating to business deals, the freeing of hostages, or settlements of disputes between nations. At the other extreme, the word conjures up images of haggling over a rug or a brass pot in a bazaar or flea market. But the reality is that we all, typically, negotiate in some shape or form every day of our lives. A brother and sister may negotiate for the front seat in the car on the way to school; colleagues at work negotiate over everything from how best to market a product to the timing of meetings.

Whenever you want something that requires the cooperation or agreement of another person, you are engaged in a negotiation. Too often, we are guided by our gut instincts and our experience of negotiation as children in the playground or as tourists in a street market. Too often, we look on negotiation as a competitive sport where the sole objective is to win – an attitude that is reinforced by advertisements we read for negotiation training that promise victory in gladiatorial contests with our opponents.
Such an approach may produce satisfying results some of the time, but defeated opponents may not want to deal with you in the future and you may have missed opportunities that a more cooperative approach could present. There are a few home truths that too many people ignore when they embark on a negotiation.

•    First, we should always put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and try to think about what he or she is looking to get out of the negotiation. This requires us to ask questions and find out as much as possible about our negotiation partner’s interests.

•    Secondly, we should examine more closely precisely what our own interests are and not limit ourselves to the most obvious headline objective. The more issues that can be brought into play that are potential areas for negotiation for both parties, the more opportunity there is for mutually beneficial trading.

•    A third point to remember is that obtaining our share of a “fixed-pie” is not always the limit of what we can achieve. It won’t always be possible but we should always look for opportunities to expand the pie and create value in a negotiation so that both parties have the opportunity to walk away from the table with a sense of satisfaction that they have achieved more from the negotiation than they would have by following a different course of action.

•    Above all, good negotiators have a heightened sense of self-awareness. They recognize the biases that we all possess and that too often trap us into making bad decisions as the negotiation progresses. Greater self-awareness can make us better persuaders and more sensitive to manipulative efforts to influence us employed by those with whom we are negotiating.

Tim Cullen is an Associate Fellow at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, where he is Director of the Oxford Programme on Negotiation

Note:

Tim Cullen, Director of the Oxford Program on Negotiation, will be holding a two-day training session titled “Negotiation to the Top.” March 23rd thru the 24th at the UCF Downtown Executive Development Center (36 West Pine Street Orlando 32801).

For more information, contact: thughes@bus.ucf.edu

Google Voice offers much promise. It’s just not quite ready for prime time.

You’ve probably already heard of Google Voice, but you might not be aware of what it is. Read more

The financial case for solar in commercial real estate: being green can make you green.

You’ve likely heard the buzz around solar energy. There’s talk about “renewable energy,” the “green economy” and ways to reduce your “carbon footprint.”

This might all sound very good to you. Or, you might be the skeptical type who cares only about the “green” in dollar bills. Regardless, given the slowdown in commercial real estate, being green can also mean making green. That’s because commercial property owners will find that solar systems provide an opportunity for both clean energy and increased profits. Read more

Funding in challenging times typically makes for high-stakes drama, but particularly for companies in the promising life sciences industry.

Buoyed by the potential of a medical city at Lake Nona, the future of the region’s life sciences industry appears bright. Indeed, the growing demands for healthcare, as well as innovative therapies and technologies, mean that the long-term prospects for the life sciences sector are alive and well. Read more

Yes, sometimes in customer service, the customer is to blame.

I have a newfound appreciation for the people on the other end of the customer support phone lines at all those companies about which we have complained during the past decade. And we all complain — loudly at times — about the long wait times, the endless stream of prompts before we get to the live person, about reaching the wrong person who can’t help us and even about the thick accents that we have trouble understanding.

In the past, I have done customer support — both setting up small operations that take occasional calls, and even being a customer support rep myself. But that pales next to working in a company that does product support on a large scale. And lately, because my company has grown so fast, it has become one of them. (As all my friends say, “But that’s a good problem.”)

When you get hundreds of calls a week, you see patterns. Unfortunately, some of the patterns make people look less smart than I’ve always given them credit for.

Management of usernames and passwords comes to mind as the most common place for average people to show below-average intelligence. We all have them for our bank accounts, voice mailboxes and various other accounts. Some people, though, are just not smart enough to write them down. We encountered one guy who called us six times within a couple weeks because he kept forgetting his password. He, of course, didn’t think he forgot it. He blamed the system.

If you use a system only occasionally, you might forget it, and that’s fine. Most Web services have a way for you to instantaneously reset your password and receive it by e-mail. The link is usually right next to the login fields or perhaps on the page that indicates you didn’t login correctly. In most cases, it’s easy to find. It will say “Forgot password?” or “Having trouble logging in?” or something similar. All you need to do to get your password by e-mail is to click the link and then enter your username, screen name or e-mail address, so the system operator can make sure you are the right person. Then it sends you an e-mail with a new password or your existing password.

The process takes only seconds. Yet, there are people who call customer support instead and then complain because it takes too long. If you want it instantly, use the instant method.

There are lots of reasons for users to go brain dead. But the one that I find most interesting is that they’re in a rush, and they panic, because they didn’t give themselves enough time to learn how to use the system to do their tasks. The result is that they often try to offload some portion of their task to the customer support reps, most often expecting a tutorial on the spot.

No wonder so many companies hide their phone numbers and use lots of phone prompts before allowing the user to reach a real human.

Perhaps we can all identify with one or more of these behaviors. I know I have at times been quick to pick up the phone to ask for help. But now I know a little better. The person supporting you by phone is a lot like the cashier at the supermarket check-out. As soon as one shopper is through, another one is ready to go. The support personnel want to deal with people who at least try, not with those who turn off their brains before picking up the phone.

It’s a challenge for them, and for you, to think first.

Editor’s note: David Radin is a national radio show host and business consultant. You can reach him at www.megabyteminute.com.

Local entrepreneur Bob Cannon hopes cardboard goes the way of the dinosaur.

People tend to put on their thinking caps during a recession. Take Jim Henson, for example. During troubling economic times, he invented his world-famous Muppet characters and subsequently launched an entertainment empire. Hewlett-Packard Development Co. also got its start during down times, growing from a $538,000 investment in a garage at the end of the Great Depression.

Most likely, history will repeat itself. We’ll see another Trader Joe’s or MTV get its start during the current tough economy. And there’s a chance that MoveGreen, a Casselberry-based company, just might be a contender.

MoveGreen (www.mymovegreen.com) sprang up last year, and its eco-friendly idea is proving to be popular in both commercial and residential markets.

“The beauty of it is that it’s a simple concept,” says Bob Cannon, co-founder of MoveGreen. “We rent reusable plastic bins as an alternative to the traditional disposable cardboard box and packing tape.”

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Trash Talking

Only about half the cardboard that Americans discard actually gets recycled, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And since the average American moves more than 16 times in a lifetime, all the bubble wrap, Styrofoam peanuts and boxes really add up.

Consider this: If the average person uses 50 cardboard boxes per move, in a lifetime each person runs through about 800 boxes on moves alone.

“When you reuse cardboard boxes, they can last for approximately four moves. However, many times they are discarded after only one move and end up in a landfill,” says Cannon. In comparison, the stronger, more durable plastic bins, or SmartPacks, that MoveGreen rents can be reused several hundred times. After that, they are recycled and made into new bins.

“It just made more sense to use a reusable, environmentally conscious product over the alternative,” says Greg Dalglish, who used MoveGreen products when he moved from Columbia, S.C., to Orlando in October. Better yet, he was pleasantly surprised that the price to rent SmartPacks, which come in large, extra-large and wardrobe sizes, was actually less than that of comparable cardboard boxes.

The cost to rent a MoveGreen box is $1.75 per week. The cost of a similar cardboard box is $3.50 or more.

Angela Shaw also used MoveGreen products recently to move delicate event decorations from the University of Central Florida’s main campus to SeaWorld Orlando. Not only were none of the items damaged en route, she was wowed by how easily the bins stacked on top of one another, like life-sized Legos. With the help of a dolly, she easily moved four SmartPacks at once. “In the past, we’ve used cardboard boxes that we’ve had to collect and store around the office,” she says. “Or, we’ve purchased oversized plastic bins that usually resulted in unmanageable weight loads.”

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Startup Smiles

The concept of renting reusable plastic bins is certainly not new. In the past, though, it’s been limited to Fortune 500 companies, moving from office to office, or supermarkets and pharmacies that need to move products.

Now that the residential market has picked up on it, the popularity will likely increase. Plus, the poor economy has actually worked in the startup’s favor. “We were able to get the business up and running without a huge investment of capital,” notes Cannon.

In fact, MoveGreen’s founders snatched up a 4,000-square-foot warehouse recently at a 50 percent discount. “Our trucks, all our expenditures were [obtained] at a discount,” Cannon adds. And look for more MoveGreen locations in the future, as the founders hope to franchise, starting with an Atlanta location, within six months.

Overall, MoveGreen founders say their goal is to reinvent the moving process.

“Twenty years down the road, who knows?” says Cannon. “Perhaps cardboard will be a thing of the past.”

‘The Greatest Night’ honors 12 area professionals for offering their hearts and providing hope in the battle against cystic fibrosis.

The annual celebration is known as “The Greatest Night.”

A grandiose moniker, for sure. Yet, to more than 30,000 children and adults in the United States, its importance cannot be overstated. That’s the number of people who suffer from cystic fibrosis, a chronic genetic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system. Through the Orlando Chapter of the nonprofit Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the annual Greatest Night event, held Nov. 12 at CityArts Factory in downtown Orlando, recognized a group of professionals who came together to raise research dollars in the fight against CF. Read more

Versatility and economics highlight the business case for greener commercial interiors.

Imagine, as a business owner, paying for leasehold improvements once but being able to repurpose them over the life of your company as space, technology and personnel needs change, by using above-floor modular assets.

Or, imagine purchasing case goods that integrate with systems furniture and are reconfigurable to adapt to new requirements.

What about discovering that these business decisions also enable you to provide a workplace that maximizes the performance and well-being of your personnel and is good for the environment?

Oh, and you can achieve these benefits without additional costs.

It’s not just a dream anymore. Read more

In this case, it’s simply a cell phone that is pleasantly reminiscent of talk days long gone.

The Jitterbug phone from Samsung is a cell phone like none I’ve ever used.

It’s the perfect no-frills phone, because you can make calls simply and quickly without the usual distractions of most cell phones. As a basic phone, it’s reminiscent of the old standard desk phone. So it’s great for the technically challenged and for those who want no more than a way to call friends and family. Read more

Forward thinkers at Burke Hogue Mills Inc. have designed what might be the most environmentally conscious architectural office building in Florida.

by Sarah Sekula

A lot has changed for Bob Burke since the 1960s, when he attended the University of Florida and rallied for the environment. One aspect, however, remains constant. Today, as principal and chief executive officer of Burke Hogue Mills Inc., he is still wearing his ecological sensitivity on his sleeve.

Read more

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