The Staticus team continued its growth and development, and started its shift from partnerships to SMARTnerships, with a training session with negotiation expert Keld Jensen. This training kicked off an ongoing collaboration with Keld that will lead to the creation of a corporate negotiation strategy for Staticus.
Keld is an international authority on negotiation strategy, and author of the world’s most-awarded negotiation strategy. He joined us at our HQ in Vilnius to lead an intensive and rewarding negotiation training session with members of our sales, project management and senior management teams.
We invited Keld in order to learn from a true authority in their field and to give impetus to our efforts to remain committed to the long term in an unsettled business context, as Staticus CEO Ausra Vankeviciute explains. “The environment is getting brutal everywhere,” says Ausra. “And we don’t want to be brutal. We want to be smart, and stay committed to the long term. This requires us to think not only about actions but about our mindset. We want to get smarter in the way we develop and execute our long-term strategies, including how we negotiate and work with our partners. So, we turned to Keld, author of the world’s most awarded negotiation strategy, to inspire and instruct us. And it was a great decision.”
The training program covered key aspects of Keld’s concept of NegoEconomics. Central to this is a focus on creating additional value (or asymmetric value as Keld puts it) through cooperative deal-making. In this way, all parties get more from a deal rather than haggling over their percentage of a smaller amount.
And this approach resonated with Ausra. “What I noticed is that prior to this session, we were communicating about partnership a lot without fully understanding what we wanted to build,” Ausra comments. “Keld’s training helped us focus on Smartnership – an upgraded type of partnership. In this relationship, you broaden what is possible. We learned that in negotiations with our partners, we should not just focus on price, but instead build trust.”
As Keld commented, “A focus on trust is very important here. Ultimately, you can say that if trust goes up, transaction costs go down and profit increases. Creating trust has a positive effect on all partners. And I saw that the Staticus team has a strong urge to collaborate and generate value for both parties.”
The ultimate goal for Staticus, inspired by Keld’s session, is to bring a collaborative approach to every business partnership. “We are learning,” Ausra points out. “And we have to teach others and share our view on collaboration and the ways in which we can all reach better results. Take sustainability for example. Sustainability is about much more than just CO2. It’s about having sustainable partnerships based on different values, and that isn’t possible without collaboration. We have to be open and transparent, and Keld’s approach to negotiation really facilitates that.”
“Our goal in these turbulent times is to bring success for all parties concerned. And Keld’s training was a very useful tool in helping us achieve this.”
