How does negotiation fit in?

In the decade that I spent studying leadership transitions and helping leaders to accelerate themselves into new roles, my views about what is really critical shifted considerably. Early on, I believed that new leaders gained leverage by putting in place the right strategies, structures, and systems. I approached transitions as an engineer would approach a challenging design problem, advising leaders to identify the right goals, develop a supporting strategy, align the architecture of the organization, and figure out what projects to pursue to secure early wins.

As my understanding of the realities confronting leaders in transition deepened, however, I came to believe that relationships – with bosses, peers, direct reports and external constituencies – are as great or greater sources of leverage. This realization elevated relationships, and the energy they can mobilize (or drain from you), to the forefront of my thinking about how to help leaders enter and gain momentum in challenging new roles.

This is not to say, of course, that strategies, structures, and systems are unimportant; usually they are critical. But if you hope to put in place the right strategies, structures, and systems, you must first secure victory on the relationship front. This means building credibility with influential players, gaining agreement on goals, and securing their commitment to devote their energies to helping you achieving those goals. Leverage through relationships is an essential foundation for effectiveness in a new leadership role. Put another way, I have come to believe that leaders negotiate their way to success in their new roles.

Your early work focused on the corporate world. Why tackle government?

I’ve studied organizational change and negotiation in both private and public sectors throughout my career. After I completed my PhD at the Harvard Business School, I spent six years on the faculty at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. I initiated studies about large-scale change efforts in our Federal Government. In fact, that is how I met my co-author for The First 90 Days in Government, Peter Daly. He was running a bureau in the Treasury Department and I was studying how he was implementing change there. While at the Kennedy School, I also studied great diplomats – James Baker, Shimon Peres, Richard Holbrooke, Robert Gallucci – that laid the foundation for my contributions to the field of negotiation.

My work on accelerating leadership transitions began in the private sector. The research for Right From the Start (HBSP 1999), which I co-authored with Dan Ciampa, began about the same time I moved to the Harvard Business School in the mid-1990s. But Peter Daly and I had remained friends, and writing a book on public sector transitions seemed like a natural extension of my work. The stakes in having our government function well are very high and I’m delighted to be able to make a contribution to helping public sector leaders transition more effectively into new roles.

Worst negotiation failure? How would your framework have stopped the calamity?

The worst negotiation failure I have observed in recent times happened during the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Max Bazerman and I wrote about elements of this in our recent book Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming and How to Avoid Them. In the lead-up to the war, the US government adopted what I thought was a very counterproductive approach to getting key European allies on board. I had studied George H. W. Bush and James Baker’s outstanding efforts to build support for the first Gulf War in 1991, so I was able to compare and contrast their approach with what the second Bush Administration tried to do. The instinct of the first Bush Administration was to seek support and build consensus and to pursue unilateral action as a last resort. The administration of George W. Bush, by contrast, basically told our allies, “We are going to invade Iraq whether you like it or not, so you might as well get on board.” As a result, they catalyzed the formation of an opposing coalition. I call this reactive coalition building, and it can easily happen in organizations when leaders use power clumsily. Leaders who are trying to make change happen in their organizations have to be careful not to stimulate unnecessary opposition.