When Cooler Heads Should Prevail

I am, without a doubt, the kind of Procurement professional who knows a little bit about playing hardball.

I can issue it. I can take it. I can handle it.

With all of that said, my approach when the pot gets to boiling is distinctively in the style of the Western cultures of the world. Ok, I’ll even admit, very American.

Meaning I know how to cowboy up, guns blazing, go at things aggressively.

However, working my genuinely truly global job I’m learning a lot more about negotiation styles around the world. Things vary pretty widely.

I work very hard to know how to do business within the various cultures and over the last three years I have even had notable success in this area. I have been complimented for my style, for learning the mores, for making business happen in other countries.

The trouble is that when the pot does get boiling I tend to leap back to the style that got me here. The cellular memory of what I know. Meaning: shoot first ask questions later.

It’s when the going gets tough that I have to try harder than ever to be aware, be conscious, be thoughtful. Of course that’s when it’s the hardest to be all three.

I currently have an issue that has escalated with a supplier in Japan. This issue came up as a surprise to my team and escalated rather quickly from their side.

Let me be candid, the supplier is flat wrong and they are trying this interesting tactic to get more business from The Company.

And I won’t be having any of that.

Normally I’d write a note to the supplier telling them that not only will we not be adding business, we now consider the relationship to be “in peril” and remind them that at the end of this next year of business they won’t be invited back.

I would say it about that bluntly, too.

However, this is not how one succeeds in business in Japan. What this supplier is doing is pretty much straight out of my decades old international business textbooks.

They are coming in unreasonable, making demands, shooting for the stars. Then we will say no. Then we will meet and work out terms. Both sides will make concessions. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle and eventually we will come to a joint agreement.

All sides can shake hands and speak in rhapsodic phrases of the value of working together as a team. We will all be kind and respectful and quiet.

I can do this. I really can.

But first I have to get some Yosemite Sam style anger based hooting and hollering out of my system. Maybe I’ll go out behind the building and get that out before the next conference call then come back calm, poised and ready to get this thing done.

Or maybe not.

I’m still a work in progress.

Image found on Movingetc.tv