Seven wastes of negotiation: Difference between revisions

{{image|1968 Toyota Corolla 1100 Deluxe|jpg|A cross-border, multi-currency [[Toyota Corolla|Corolla]] yesterday.}}}}What do you get the [[legal eagle]] who has everything? A spirited comparison of [[ISDA negotiator|ISDA negotiation]] car manufacturing, of course.

Now it is well-known that the ISDA negotiation process works like a production line at British Leyland in 1978.  

The [[Toyota Production System]] (TPS)  was created by Toyota’s chief engineer [[Taiichi Ohno]] to eliminate [[waste]], called “muda.” [[Waste]] — as opposed to ''{{wasteprov|cost}}'', is the enemy on any production line: a process that is ''inherently necessary'' must add value, even if it is expensive<ref>If you can’t configure it so it costs less than the value it adds, consider why you are running the process ''at all'': you have a loser of a business.</ref> so you should be cool about paying a fair value for it.

Even though he was talking about a physical manufacturing line, Ohno-sensei’s categories of waste cross over pretty well to the contract [[negotiation]] process, a fact which seems to have escaped every [[management consultant]] who has ever ruminated on the issue. A lot of them have.  

Here is wisdom, taken directly from the Toyota site, which you might think explains the dissatisfaction of [[reg-tech]] and [[outsourcing]]:

:''Machines and robots do not think for themselves or evolve on their own. Rather, they evolve as we transfer our skills and craftsmanship to them. In other words, craftsmanship is achieved by learning the basic principles of manufacturing through manual work, then applying them on the factory floor to steadily make improvements. This cycle of improvement in both human skills and technologies is the essence of Toyota's [[jidoka]].<ref>Literally, “automation with a human touch”.</ref> ''Advancing [[jidoka]] in this way helps to reinforce both our manufacturing competitiveness and human resource development''.

Sure, you can sluice the [[waste]] out of your Augean stables — there’s nothing more satisfying than a spring clean — but the Toyota methodology is very clear that long term, things will revert to how they were unless your organisation commits, through its permanent staff, to a continual process of self-improvement. This is a skill — a disposition, that you won’t get from dropping a hundred grand on a six-sigma black belt for three months to fix everything for you.

The reasons for this are as obvious as they are routinely ignored: projects, priorities, processes and people change, and the [[path of least resistance]] is to layer a new process over an old one. That kind of short-termism is exactly the environment that created the baffling complexity, redundancy and waste in the first place: [[barnacles]] quickly accrete unless your people are permanently committed to process excellence. Train your staff to be constant gardeners, and you won’t need periodic visits from McKinsey to dig you out of holes.

Now you have people not only with detailed — ''unparalleled'' — [[Subject matter expert|expertise]] in the conduct of your [[Negotiation|contractual negotiations]], and they are as well-disposed to eliminating crushing [[tedium]] from their professional existences as you are, ''if only you’d let them'': your [[negotiator|negotiators]]. Instead of imposing a the fantastical schemes of some glib [[management consultant|management consultancy outfit]] on these poor people, how about offering them some tools to sort it out for themselves?