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Successful Project Manager skills: Negotiation Sharing, Scope Leak and Over budget

I worked for a military organization, but not usually with top level generals. I have a good experience from one general who always asked for preparing the meetings.

He was asking all people to tell their opinion, so that he knew every possibility and was able to make a conclusion. This worked opposite, too, when he asked to share if any interests from vendor could be used.

We had a project which used budget almost completely in definition and planning phases. The target was to find benefit for vendor and customer. We prepared smaller discount, but at the end reached 50 % discount for certain work already done. It was beneficial for both organizations.

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Successful Project Manager skills: Negotiation Tools

If you really want to spend time and prepare for difficult negotiations, you can use cost-benefit analysis.  It will take into account a lot of factors for different options and offer great value for programs or projects. But the negative things is that it will take a lot of time to prepare.

Starting point is usually to plan an agenda and list participants.  Once you know participants you can make search and collect information, especially new people who weren’t in your linear responsibility chart.

You can use SWOT analysis or other tool to evaluate different options from your own point of view. Don’t forget to think from customer point of view ever. They may have difficulties if project is delayed or over budget, help to get good outcomes.

Reading all the contract papers may not always help, because in a crisis or more difficult case there will be feelings involved.  To make a situation more relaxed, you can meet in other location than where you usually have meetings. It can make starting point better. Also if there’s something to expect, for example dinner, people are more willing to compromise.

 

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How data comes to strategies?

Most common data is coming from facts, trends and statistics around organizations.  Consulting companies can help in collecting, some information is available for free as well.  It’s important to use internal and external sources together. This will make your analysis better and more successful.

 

Depends on organization and people how much different data is available and what’s the invested time in analyzing. Sometimes you need to react fast. It’s possible to use for example big data systems (trends), financial data (facts), market or other environmental aspects (statistics). They will help to make selected strategy to work better in the situation.  Note that reason to change strategies can arise from legislation as well.

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Successful Project Manager skills: Negotiation

You need to plan what each and every meeting or negotiation is made up for. Also think what kind of questions or outcomes is possible to come up. This way you’re prepared. If there are more than one person involved, plan the roles and make sure people keep their roles during the tough situation.

It’s not always needed to plan so much, but at least go through by discussion with other involved people the status and situation.  Think about value and benefits for each participant: how they might think about different options and how they can communicate results forward. Try to offer good outcome and help later communication to others in any organization, especially your customers.

Successful project managers keep calm in all situations. This means you have an ability to be informative and without passion tell about things.

To be better project manager, enroll today to my course Strategic Project Management!