Think Win-Win

The new president came to the software company president and said, “I am uncomfortable with these software conversions. My people are unhappy, and I have a mess on my hands.”
The computer company was already in financial trouble at the time. It had every legal right to enforce its contract. But the software company president responded: “We have a contract. But we understand you’re not happy about it. We’ll return your contract and your deposit, and if you’re ever looking for a software solution in the future, come back and see us.” He walked away from an $84,000 contract. It might look like financial suicide, but he figured he didn’t want to create an unhappy customer, and his attention to principle would pay off somehow.
Three months later, the new president called back. He was ready to put in a new software system. They signed a contract for $240,000. If a deal hurts them, it will hurt you.

Using the paradigm of Win/Win requires three traits:

• Integrity – We define integrity as the value we place on ourselves: We need to be self-aware, possessed of an independent will. We make and keep meaningful promises and
commitments to our selves and others.

• Maturity – This is the balance between courage and consideration. Simply put, you must have enough empathy and goodwill to work for a win for your counterpart, and enough courage to make a win for yourself.

• Abundance Mentality – You must know and believe that there is plenty out there for everybody. Many people don’t: They think that to succeed themselves, others must fail. They harbor secret hopes that other people must suffer misfortune – not terrible misfortune, but acceptable misfortune that Will keep them in their place. The Abundance Mentality recognizes that possibilities for growth and success are potentially limitless, and sees in others the opportunity to complement its own strengths.

• Win/win is a powerful management tool. Drucker recommends using the “manager’s letter” to define the performance agreement between boss and employee. Alter a thorough discussion of expectations, guidelines, and resources, the employee writes a letter to the manager summarizing the discussion and setting the date for the following review.
• With the agreement in place, the employee can manage himself within the framework of the agreement. The manager becomes like the pace car at an auto race: He gets things going and gets out of the way. His job from then on is to remove the oil spills, when the boss becomes the first assistant to each subordinate, he increases his span of control. Entire levels of administration can be eliminated, and he can double or triple his managerial leverage. I once consulted for a company that wanted me to train their retail people in human relations: They said the employees on the selling floor were rude. I went to their stores, and indeed, the sales help were rude. I wondered why. “Look, we’re on top of the problem,” the company president said. “The department heads are out there setting a great example: Their job is two- thirds selling and one-third management.
• They’re outselling everyone. Just train the sales help to sell, too.” But I went back to the store for more data. It turned out that managers (who got sales commissions) were sending the sales help into the back to take care of cleaning and inventory, stepping behind the cash register and “creaming” every sale, except during the store’s most frantic periods. That’s why they were outselling their employees. We replaced that win/lose compensation system with win/win: We changed the rules so that managers only made money when the sales staff made money. The sales clerk’s attitude problem disappeared overnight.