Timing is Critical in your Negotiation Tactics
Imagine this scenario…
You are Eugene – the CEO of a holding company comprising a number of family businesses. One of these families is the Bright family. They have made it very clear that they are not happy with all the agreements between the families. Some Bright family members want to break away and become a separate family business again. Others want to stay as they are.
David Bright, the Head of the Bright family, has come to meet you making some pretty aspirational demands for change. Of course now is not the time for you to make concessions. At this stage Bright has no best alternative other than to negotiate with you (and regardless of what happens he needs to go back to the rest of the family and seek their opinion). So you would make this a very long meeting to show you take it seriously. Then you would make some very minor concessions and a few vague promises to show some flexibility and give Bright something to take back. Why would you make any major concessions at this stage? The Bright family may well decide to stay in the company, so you have everything you want with very little given.
The other outcome is that the Bright family decide to leave the company. Now they do have a best alternative. Now they do have power. If you want them to stay in the company you may have to make some major concessions (and remember only last year you made major concessions to keep a much smaller family in the company). If Bright leave, other families may leave also. The more families that leave (and the ones that leave will always be the strongest) the more your personal power base is diminished.
Now apply this negotiation process to the negotiations between the EU and the UK. Put the politics and economics (the content) to one side for a moment and just consider the negotiation process.
Cameron may have had too higher expectations if he thought Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, was going to make any major moves during the March negotiations. Just from a negotiation process perspective, that would not have been a time when it would have been in Tusk’s best interests to make major concessions. Later on in the year, if Tusk is negotiating again to keep the UK in, or to negotiate the UK’s re-entry into the EU, then he may be more compelled to make major concessions.