Negotiating Solutions® is based on three premises:
- The purpose of our behaviors is to achieve our objectives in a particular environment. We do things to get what we want and need for ourselves and for those we represent.
- Negotiation underlies most of our behaviors at work. Whenever we need to solve problems, craft solutions, and shape agreements with others over whom we don't have direct control, in a mixed-motive environment, we're negotiating. But we were taught to negotiate by people who came before us, who were taught by those who came before them, about how to be effective in an environment that presumably existed when these behaviors were first codified.
- Sometimes the environment changes so much that behaviors that were core to our success are actually working at cross-purposes to our own objectives. Now is such a time. To achieve our objectives, we must change the way we work with one another — cross-functionally, between employee groups and management, and in the marketplace with suppliers, customers, regulators, and partners.
And a fourth premise: If individual behavior change is hard, significant and lasting behavior change across an organization is mind-bogglingly difficult. We can improve behaviors within our current model through skills training. But when the model itself can no longer solve the problems we need to solve or realize the opportunities we want to realize, skills training can't change people's behaviors. We can learn how, but the different behaviors don't last; our model pulls us back into old, familiar behaviors.
So how is behavior change possible? When we realize that our behaviors flow out of deeply held and largely unexamined assumptions, which flow out of our behavioral paradigms - our invisible models for how to make the world work - the path becomes clear. To change behaviors (individual or organizational), we need to get to the invisible model that drives our assumptions and our behaviors and change it. This is where experiential education at the paradigm-shift level can be powerfully effective and efficient.
The Mattford Group's Negotiating Solutions® workshop is the only program in interest-based negotiation - designed for the aviation/aerospace industry - that takes most participants through to the paradigm-shift level. And the changes last. Years after attending, graduates demonstrate daily the usefulness of this alternative model as they create value with their counterparts while crafting far better solutions for their constituents.
To transfer the technology.
For your company to embed this program in your training curriculum for continued availability, so you can train hundreds to thousands of people at very low cost per person, and/or offer it to those in your network and industry (customers, suppliers, partners, etc.), consider licensing the program.
The workshop design itself allows for effective transfer. The design is operational rather than academic. It does not depend on subject matter experts, and it is scripted for ease of transfer and consistency. It can be facilitated by human resources people (who need to be knowledgeable in educational, group and psychological process) paired with respected and experienced functional managers, so long as this is a path that they themselves are on - however imperfectly - and so long as they have genuine and contactful presence in front of a group and mean well by their students.
The Mattford Group does require that the workshop be run in its entirety and residentially. For the first five years, we maintain design control. We work with you to identify your own content and process co-trainers, and we tailor with you a train-the-trainer sequence for them. We monitor your initial workshops and/or co-teach parts of them with you to confirm that delivery quality is ensured before your trainers are launched and fully on their own. Our program manager works with your program manager/administrators on materials and workshop administrative procedures and checklists. Should you wish, mini-negotiations specific to your business can be designed for an additional fee. And we remain available to you for advice and problem-solving relative to workshop delivery, or to share ideas about how to incorporate these concepts into your planning procedures, performance appraisals, hiring criteria, etc.
We encourage you to invite industry people from outside your company to attend your sessions, so you can build working relationships across company lines or underwrite your training costs.
Cost elements include a one-time non-exclusive technology transfer fee, an annual and renewable non-exclusive licensing fee, and a per student royalty, with a minimum annual royalty fee based on your training at least 70 students a year.
Should you want to learn more or discuss your specific interests and needs, please contact us at Mattford@aol.com or by calling 775-832-5300 (Pacific Coast time).