Many of you who read our blog might be Manchester United fans. In fact, there’s a very good chance that this is the case, given the Club has a reported billion followers around the world.
The Club has been in the UK news a lot lately. Well, they’re always in the news, really. Lately, the news has been that results on and off the pitch continue to be mixed, with balancing the books off the pitch proving to be as challenging as adapting to the new manager’s style on the pitch.
Last week, as a means to change the narrative of doom and gloom around the Club, and instead provide some good news, the Club revealed ambitious plans for a new state-of-the-art stadium and the Club’s minority owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is a majority owner at INEOS, did a number of interviews to explain the situation with the finances. I watched the interviews because I followed two teams growing up – Manchester United and Aberdeen, both used to be managed by Sir Alex Ferguson.
It was an interview with ex-United player, now commentator, Gary Neville that caught my eye. It was clearly at times an uncomfortable interview for Sir Jim as he was challenged hard on a number of things, particularly to explain (and defend) the rationale behind a number of unpopular decisions to balance the books including, amongst others, reducing staff numbers, raising ticket prices, removing perks like free lunches and removing contributions to associations of former club players.
And it got me thinking about something we talk to participants about in our negotiation training programme every week, which is being clear on your objective but flexible with your strategy.
It’s clear that the objective is balancing the books at the Club and not spending beyond its means. As Sir Jim has claimed, without any changes the Club will run out of money by the end of this year. It’s also clear that the strategy is to make cuts, including a reported £40,000 a year to associations of former players.
However, as Gary Neville pointed out, cutting £40,000 a year from the budget isn’t the only way to make that particular saving (and nor is it a huge saving in the context of a reported debt of £700 million). Instead, he asked whether the Club had considered having some of the star players do a paid-for dinner and auction event to try to raise the required money from wealthy supporters, instead of cutting it completely and impacting former players, many of whom have played before the days of mega salaries. The answer was no, that hadn’t been considered, but that it was a good idea, which suggested to me there is no flexibility in the strategy.
Negotiators, when they do actually prepare for a negotiation, define their objective and strategy. However, strategies often become fixed (and sometimes more important than the objective) rather than be adapted or changed as the negotiation progresses, compromising achieving the objective, which at the end of the day, is the most important thing. It’s OK to be flexible on strategy, because usually there’s more than one way to achieve an objective. Too often, unfortunately, that point is forgotten when negotiating, and strategies continue to be used long past the point of them being effective.
Next time you’re negotiating, and your strategy isn’t working or is getting some resistance, try to think like Gary Neville did - how else might the objective still be achieved but in a different way.
