Collaboration

The process that two or more parties take to maximize common goals.

Negotiation

The process that two or more parties take to maximize personal gain while minimizing personal losses.

Collaboration amplifies Negotiation

Improving negotiations results in additive gains.

Improving collaboration results in multiplicative gains.

Examples

BigCorp

Any integration comes with extensive Service Level Agreements and specifically detailed functionality, costs and timelines.

There are no risks left in the legalese; but also no growth (because growth requires change, and change is verboten). And anyone involved in the real details know the picture painted by these specifications show no resemblence to reality.

SmallCorp

SmallCorp hates lawyers and contracts. Some of their partnerships have become extremely one-sided, sucking the life out of SmallCorp.

They struggle to convince some of their potential clientele of their capabilities without any concrete promises, but they continue to believe that they should only collaborate with their partners and never negotiate anything.

SilverCorp

SilverCorp starts relationships with a few clear requirements. And only specifying maximums and minimums to protect one another from unacceptable situations.

After their foundation is set, SilverCorp will change anything else and rework whatever they can to help achieve the goals as new things are learned during their partnership.

Take-aways

Having too much negotiation wastes time on unimportant and antagonizing details.

Having no negotiation allows exploitation and ambigous, toxic relationships.

So:

1. Keep negotiation brief and high-level; list only the drop-dead absolute dealbreakers
2. Bend head over heels on any other issue to make the relationship successful