Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 131 – arbitration processes and their outcomes 2

This is my 131st installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. In that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-129. And that has led me to the issues of third party mediated arbitrations, which I began addressing here in Part 130.

I discussed arbitration per se in Part 130, and why it is resorted to. And my goal for this posting is to focus on the negotiating side to arbitration and on better presenting cases to arbitrators. And to set the stage for that discussion, I note three basic assumptions that I would make here:

• Involved parties on both sides are willing to negotiate in an arbitrated context and even if they are not legally, contractually required to, and both sides will adhere to the resolution that comes from this (whether fully of their own free will or not.)
• The arbitrator in this can and will act as an honest broker.
• And both sides are given full opportunity to present their cases and to come to agreement on any points under contention where that is possible, limiting the scope of what would have to be imposed upon them through arbitrated decision.

With this noted as the context that I would discuss arbitrated negotiations in terms of, I begin with the obvious. If you are trying to reach a resolution that you would find favorable for yourself and for those who you represent, you have to negotiate with two fundamentally distinct parties: the people on the other side of the table who you are in contention with and the arbitrator who will ultimately make the determinative decisions there. What would be a best practices approach for navigating that dichotomy?

• Take the lead in negotiating with the people who you are contesting with in this, in making a genuine effort to find at least some common ground with them. This can both increase your chances of achieving a measure of what you want out of this process, and position you and your side in this as being reasonable and as being willing to come to a fair agreement. It positions you and the people who you represent as being the good guys there.
• And at the same time that you are negotiating with those who you seek an agreement resolution with, you are negotiating with the arbitrator too. I have just touched on that side of this overall process in the first of these bullet points, but to continue addressing this side of this process here, you increase your chances of getting more of what you want if you are seen as being willing to find a common ground compromise, even if the other side digs in and makes any more-directly negotiated agreement for at least some issues, impossible.

The best arbitrated resolutions are ones that both sides can come to see as being fair. Arbitrators being people, appreciate parties in disputes who seek fair and equitable resolutions. And they tend to be put off by parties in such disputes who take a going-for-blood, zero-sum approach there. That is just human nature and particularly where arbitrators seek to arrive at resolutions that are fair as well as binding.

I have offered this in general and even abstract terms, but in real world arbitrations, as is the case in real world negotiations in general, the devil is in the details. I am going to pose and address two scenarios that would take this at least somewhat out of the abstract, starting in the next installment to this series:

• A terms of service dispute where the level of details involved might leave room for compromise agreement on at least some of the issues involved, and
• A fees due dispute that might offer less wiggle room and opportunity for compromise.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 130 – arbitration processes and their outcomes 1

This is my 130th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. In that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-129. And that has led me to the issues of third party mediated arbitrations, which I begin addressing here.

More specifically, I concluded Part 129 by stating that I would turn here:

• To and address arbitration as a third party refereed negotiating process, noting that this will mean my adding to this series’ ongoing discussion of negotiating too, and certainly as I would discuss the give and take processes that would lead to third party provided arbitrated decisions.

I begin here by acknowledging what arbitration is, as a matter of more general use and application. It is a negotiating process in which opposing sides present their evidence, their explanations as to what that evidence means, and a case for achieving their desired outcome that they argue as being supported and justified by that, to a presumably disinterested and uninvolved third party adjudicator who then weighs what has been presented to them by both sides – and who then decides how their dispute is to be resolved.

Binding arbitration leads to resolutions that involved parties in dispute are legally bound to honor and to live up too. Failure to comply with such resolutions can lead to legal actions and the only generally applicable defense for failure to so comply, and certainly where such failure is systematic and intentional is if one of the parties there can prove that the arbitration process that they has agreed to and entered into was fundamentally flawed. As an example of the possibilities there, consider a situation where one of the parties in such an agreement finds irrefutable evidence that the other party to this process has bribed the supposedly uninvolved arbitrator there so as to secure a more favorable ruling for themselves.

Setting aside such irregularities, arbitration can represent a resolution path of last resort as competing parties fail and fail and fail to make any negotiated headway with each other on their own, and both are facing what to-them are unacceptable harm because of this. So they hold their breaths at least figuratively speaking, and seek out an impartial resolution to their dilemma that hopefully at least, both sides can live with – and with this ending their accruing of further loss that would add to what they already face from having struggled to resolve their issues on their own.

Arbitration can also be a path of first resort and particularly when a business or other organization imposes as an a priori requirement, that they will only enter into transactional agreements if those they would deal with there, agree up-front and in writing that they would accept binding arbitrated resolutions if any points of conflict or disagreement were to arise from this, and certainly where court of law action might be an alternative possibility. This can mean adding such binding agreements into new hire employment contracts, or into contracts signed with third party business-to-business providers. Sometimes these agreements are built into contracts and other documentation that would have to be signed off upon by clients or customers too. There are, of course, other contextual circumstances where arbitration might be so specified as the only conflict resolution approach possible there. But the goal in every such circumstance is simple: to keep any disagreements or challenges that do arise out of the courts and both to limit costs and to limit what might be contentious and reputationally damaging public exposure. Confidentiality clauses can be built into such agreements too.

All of these possibilities that I have explicitly noted or even just alluded to here in this posting, have at least two crucially important points of detail in common:

• They all involve the resolution of contentious issues that cannot simply be addressed and resolved by more normal negotiated means as I have discussed them up to here in this series.
• And those are issues that cannot and will not simply be walked away from and by either involved party.

And with that, I return to the issues of fairness, and I add of expertise and even of certification in arbitration and in who carries this out. As a matter of essential risk management effort, it is essential that arbitrators only be resorted to who are certified as being professionally trained and experienced in this, and who are demonstrably going to serve as neutral and uninvolved parties to the arbitrations that they oversee and manage. And as a due diligence matter, the best way to find such professionals is to bring one in from a reputable and well established organization that specializes in providing this service such as the American Arbitration Association.

I add here that this is only one such organization of many that can be reliably turned to here. There are arbitration organizations located in nations all over the world that offer quality professional help in such matters. And many offer specialized expertise in managing specific types of arbitration challenge that call for specific industry and other areas of specialized focus. That, obviously, can be crucially important where complex, specialized issues have to be resolved that call for expert understanding on the part of an arbitrator is they are to arrive at informed and meaningful decisions.

I will have more to say concerning arbitration per se in what follows. But that said, I am going to focus on the negotiating side to arbitration and on better presenting cases to arbitrators, beginning in the next installment to this series.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 129 – the business context 78

This is my 129th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-128.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general terms in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples of how they can and do take place. And that has meant my successively discussing each of a set of aspects to the issues and challenges raised by the first of these two subtopics points:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

To bring this initial orienting note up to date here, I have finished offering a response to the first of those topic points and I began transitioning from that to discuss Point 2 and its issues in Part 126, Part 127 and Part 128. I used those installments to offer a more general framework for how to more accurately identify and understand the specific contexts that negotiations might take place in. And I concluded Part 128 by stating that I would turn here to:

• More specifically address the precise wording of the above Point 2 where it refers to “networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there” as tools for enabling such productively directed, agreed to change.
• And I added that I am going to begin discussing them here, building from the above cited three part foundation that I have shared here.

I begin addressing all of that by noting that negotiations are simply goals-directed conversations that take place in contexts where agreement has to be reached in order to achieve desired goals. Effective negotiations are contextualized communications, and of a type that are by their very nature interactive and us-oriented, rather than one-directional and me-oriented.

• Effective negotiations of necessity mean deciphering what that means in actionable terms in the specific contexts faced.

To repeat myself here, I began this succession of postings to this series from the perspective of negotiating for a business, by at least tacitly assuming that it is always going to be clear what type of negotiating context is being faced. Then and in the most recent three installments to this series in particular, I have been expanding upon that with my offering thoughts about how to identify and navigate the uncertainty in that, that real negotiations always face at least measures of.

• Real negotiations always bring measures of uncertainty and the unexpected with them. If matters were entirely clear and in a manner that could be collectively agreed to, and if both sides were willing to compromise as needed and in good faith there, then actual give-and-take negotiations would probably not even be needed. Or at most, they could be more limited for what they had to resolve.

In this regard, and to reframe a term that I have repeatedly used here, all real negotiations have Plan B elements to them. The only question in that is one of how smoothly they can be developed, agreed to and implemented. Plan B options as overt possibilities, as that term is more commonly used, means failure in achieving the ideals of the above bullet point and with a need to enter into more fundamental, disruptive reimagining and change as a result. But as I have sought to illustrate and throughout this series, such change accommodating goals can often be realized. And they more usually are and even if negotiating success can seem hard won coming out of such efforts.

• What of the negotiating best practices that I cited in the above to-address bullet Point 2 as repeated at the start of this posting? I have in fact been offering a succession of them and in contexts where they would apply and throughout this series.
• My more explicit goal here in this posting, has been to put that into perspective and particularly at a more general-principles level.

I am going to turn to and address arbitration as a third party refereed negotiating process, starting in the next installment to this series. This will, of course, mean my adding to this ongoing discussion of negotiating too, and certainly as I would discuss the give and take processes that would lead to third party provided arbitrated decisions.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Leveraging social media in gorilla and viral marketing as great business equalizers: a reconsideration of business disintermediation and from multiple perspectives 42

This is my 42nd posting to a series on disintermediation, focusing on how this enables marketing options such as gorilla and viral marketing, but also considering how it shapes and influences businesses as a whole. My focus here may be marketing oriented, but marketing per se only makes sense when considered in the larger context of the business carrying it out and the marketplace it is directed towards (see Social Networking and Business 2 and its Page 3 and Page 4 continuations, postings 278 and loosely following for Parts 1-41.)

I began discussing the fourth and last of a set of topics points that I have been successively addressing in recent installments to this series, in Part 41:

4. And in an ideal world all of these categorical types of protective systems would be seamlessly integrated together into a single smoothly coordinated whole, with both higher level artificial intelligence and human support, as well as carefully developed and coordinately functioning specialized, simpler artificial intelligence agents that can collectively deal with a variety of conventional cyber threats and that can at least red flag many possible instances of the types of artificial intelligence sourced threats that I address here.

To bring this initial orienting note up to date here, I have been discussing these issues in largely general and even abstract terms up to here, and certainly as I have touched upon them in this specific narrative. I said that I would take this at-least somewhat out of the abstract here. And I begin doing so by pointing out a detail emergent to the above repeated Point 4 that essentially any business owner or manager reading this would have already spotted.

I write in that topic point, of networks of artificial intelligence agents collectively contributing to and even effectively enabling business cyber security, and as an already realized fact. Most business owners or managers seeing that would scoff, noting that they do not have or need artificial intelligence agents and that they most certainly do not have veritable armies of them in their business.

• Their point is both true and completely wrong and as an increasingly general principle, and certainly for how they are wrong in their assessments there.
• They might not have their own named chatbots or other artificial intelligence agent “on staff.” But essentially every cyber security software package and service that they might have and use is artificial intelligence enhanced and enabled now, and both for scanning for snippets of malicious code as that has to be addressed, and for detecting suspicious online behavior patterns that might indicate systems compromise or risk of that.
• Every time an employee goes online to use a search tool, or access cloud storage, or make use of cloud based tools, or to carry out any of an ever increasing range of other basic online tasks, they are dealing with automated systems that are increasingly and ever-more thoroughly dependent upon artificial intelligence capabilities for their basic functioning.
• And while these professionals might not think of this and certainly routinely, at least most of the information technology that they maintain in-house has artificial intelligence built into it too, even if that is all kept unobtrusively “under the hood,” at least as long as everything is functioning normatively (or at least until a breach that does occur and perhaps with stealth, is finally detected.)

My point is that while Point 4 might appear to be big-business and major corporate-only for how and where it applies, it is increasingly the norm everywhere. And I add that is true both for businesses of all sizes and types, and also for individuals and certainly if they: as we make any real effort to keep our personal computers and related tools cyber-secure with antivirus software updates and the like.

I write this thinking of Elon Musk’s X (formerly known as Twitter), and how that social media platform’s cyber security and other failures serve as a counter-example that effectively proves the point that I am making here. Musk fired everyone at Twitter who was responsible for maintaining cyber security and for managing and limiting the flow of disinformation and fraud going online there; he did this as one of his first moves there. He fired everyone there who managed and carried out hands-on fact checking and cyber security duties and who maintained the more automated sides of these activities that had been in place there. This meant his decapitating that business’ automated and artificial intelligence resources that it had developed for safeguarding the reliability and trustworthiness of it as a social media platform, as those resources do have to be maintained by experienced and expert staff and certainly as I write this. And it very overtly meant decapitating that platform for it’s having anything like that type of skilled professional staffing.

Real world businesses that are not run by the likes of Elon Musk are in fact actively supported by the types of cyber security and related infrastructures that I write of here, even if these resources are not generally all that visible and certainly overtly so – and by design. A Twitter/X type of disaster happens when this is no longer in place.

I am going to take this further out of the abstract in the next installment to this series where I will offer a more specific case study example of how all of this works. Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Business Strategy and Operations – 7, and also at Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5 and Page 6 of that directory. You can find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2. And I also include this posting and other startup-related continuations to it, in Startups and Early Stage Businesses – 2.

Rethinking national security in a post-2016 US presidential election context: conflict and cyber-conflict in an age of social media 44

This is my 44th installment to a series on cyber risk and cyber conflict in a still emerging 21st century interactive online context, and in a ubiquitously social media connected context and when faced with a rapidly interconnecting internet of things, among other disruptively new online innovations (see Ubiquitous Computing and Communications – everywhere all the time 2 and its Page 3 and Page 4 continuations, postings 354 and loosely following for Parts 1-43.)

I focused in Part 43 on China and on the role that cyber technology in its many and varied forms enters into there, and both in its inwardly intranationally facing, and its outwardly globally facing plans and initiatives. To be more precise, I focused in that posting on how all of this effort is tightly coordinated and with active government, Communist Party and “private sector” participation entering into it. And I focused in all of that on how China’s cyber policy is essentially entirely oriented towards achieving greater control, and greater power and authority over all and both within China itself and over competing world powers.

I said at the end of that installment that I will continue discussing these issues as I proceed in this series, returning to this China story as I do so. But I also added that I would turn here in this posting to discuss:

• The role in all of this, of technological change and the pace at which it and its always-dual use capabilities are advancing.

I begin addressing that complex of issues with its second half and by acknowledging the by-now obvious. The 21st century is an information age, and information gathering, information development and processing, and its communication underlie essentially every aspect of our lives and for all of us, everywhere. And crucially importantly, that is just as true where information and communications are systematically limited and controlled to the public at large, as it is where information can arise and be shared without let or hindrance and completely freely so and by essentially all. Information creation and accessibility restrictions there, constitute discriminatory barriers and certainly where information that would not be genuinely security- and safety-compromising if freely shared is systematically limited and controlled (and with that characterization leaving out genuinely sensitive information such as potentially safety compromising personal information, business trade secrets, or legitimately classified government held information – where there are overlaps in these categorical examples.)

That addresses public development of and sharing of information, which can be open or restricted, controlled and limited. But even the most restrictive of governments use information technology and freely so for their own purposes.

So information and its flow are crucially important issues and from an individual level up to that of entire societies, and globally as well. And as information with its transformative influence has become a driver and at all organizational levels, and of essentially all human endeavors, it and its globally connecting value have been helping to create what at least potentially could be a more unified global society – depending on how the ongoing battle between openness and connectively there, and pushback and resistance to that resolves. But we do not see such global opening and connectedness emerging from this potential yet, or anything like it.

And with this in mind, I reiterate and stress a key phrase from the above offered to-address point: “its (e.g. information technology’s) always-dual use capabilities.” Information in its seemingly endless volumes and flows, and the technologies that make that possible are, and of necessity, globally spanning and including endeavors and for their design, manufacture, distribution and use (where I use the word design in an information context there to cover the issues of selection, content processing and formatting.) Information and its technologies are ubiquitous, and just as much in nations such as North Korea that actively limit general public access to anything but the “state-curated” of that, as they are in the most openly free of all nations. But information and its underlying supportive technologies are always – and without any exceptions, dual use. And while I focused on China in Part 43 for how that nation has weaponized them and for use against both their own peoples and the world at large, they are most definitely not the only nation to have actively pursued paths of making both sides of that duality, their own and our reality.

I offer this posting as a brief general statement of principles that I will build from as I return to addressing case in point specifics, and with further consideration of China but also with thoughts offered as to the role that these issues play in North Korea and in today’s Russia and more.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Ubiquitous Computing and Communications – everywhere all the time 4, and at Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3 of that directory. And you can also find this and related material at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 128 – the business context 77

This is my 128th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-127.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general terms in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples of how they can and do take place. And that has meant my successively discussing each of a set of aspects to the issues and challenges raised by the first of these two subtopics points:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

To bring this initial orienting note up to date here, I have finished offering a response to the first of those topic points and I began transitioning from that to discuss Point 2 and is issues in Part 126 and Part 127. And my goal for this posting is to at-least begin to address the change compelling issues and contexts that I raised in Part 127, in terms of the due diligence issues that I listed in Part 126. And I begin doing so here by noting the dual nature of the ten point list that I offered in Part 126. It is simultaneously a broadly stated checklist of the basic elements and steps of a negotiating process and a list of benchmark points where the expected and planned for of that can give way to the unexpected and the emergently problematical. And when such changes there are not seen and understood for what they are and when their significance is overlooked, they become challenge points and sources of disruption that will have to be corrected for.

I wrote in Part 127 of how goals and priorities can change during a negotiations process, and about how negotiations can facilitate and even compel change and on both sides of the table for what their actual goals and priorities are. This is in fact central to reaching a negotiated agreement and certainly for issues that both sides see as being important, but where middle ground, or even entirely novel resolutions would be needed if any agreement can be reached for them.

• Negotiations, and certainly successful ones, are in this sense processes of change accepting convergence in finding and agreeing to resolutions that neither side might have started from but that both sides can comfortably enough conclude with. That is what compromise is, when it is said that negotiations are the art of that.

And with this I have offered three postings that seek to address the above Point 2. And it brings me to the more precise wording of Point 2 and to the “networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there” as tools for enabling such productively directed, agreed to change. I am going to address that in the next installment to this series, building from that foundation.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Hands-off management, micromanagement and in-between – some thoughts on what they mean in practice 23

This is my 23rd posting to an occasional series on better management practices to address the issues of how and when to actively step in, and how and when to step back as a manager and supervisor. And for earlier installments to this, see Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 4, with this series included in its Addendum Section.

• As a manager, how can I enable and encourage, and reward the people who report to me who seek to both excel in their here-and-now and who seek to advance themselves professionally in what they can do, bringing out the best in them, but without even just appearing to show favoritism?

I concluded Part 22 with this here rephrased question, offered from a first person perspective as if I were mentoring a supervising manager earlier on in their career. And it does raise real concerns. If you as a manager come across as selectively mentoring and otherwise enabling some of the people on your team while bypassing others for this, they might very well see this as discriminatory. And even if that is not your intention, they might in fact be right there, and certainly if such unequally distributed attention and value sharing determines who is going to be promoted in workplace title and position, in compensation received, or both.

Mentoring as that can be selectively offered comes to mind here as an obvious example. But the same applies to how decisions are made for both allowing and even actively supporting members of the team that reports to you for they’re gaining specialized training, and even third party validated certification in new skill sets. Anyone brought into such added opportunity is going to gain advantage over their colleagues who are left out, and certainly when some are consistently brought into this and others are consistently left out and as a pattern. Even discrepancies in the amount of one to one face time offered to team members can be enormously impactful here and certainly where some have your ear and your attention and on a regular ongoing basis but others find themselves left out of that – and even when they have specific issues that they see need to address with you.

Personality clashes can lead to that last possibility here happening. Some people are easier and more comfortable to work with and some can be grating in how they interact with others and real challenges, and without they’re intending to come across as such. And their idea as to what needs your immediate attention might not be the same as your idea of that. This happens. When managers take a to-them easiest and most comfortable approach to dealing with this type of challenge and as their default, they can create what is in fact the very type of discriminatory bias that I warn of here – even if unintentionally.

What I am doing here is to lay out a map of a potential mine field that even experienced managers can find themselves caught up in, and particularly when they have direct supervisory responsibility over large teams and their own direct hands-on responsibilities are seemingly fully time consuming. How can a manager advance the careers of those who report to them who show real promise and who display the drive to succeed that is needed to fulfill that, while also being supportive of the members of their team who have essentially plateaued out in what they can do and in what they seek to do, when all of this would effectively be paid for out of a limited budget? And how can they best address the issues of opportunity that I raise here for better managing employees who show real promise and potential but who simply do their jobs and who do not stick out, one way or the other as demanding direct attention? Here, and considering all of the categorical possibilities that I raise here, addressing team members needs and capabilities here means juggling limited directly monetizable resources such as outside or even in-house training funds that have been allocated in support of your team, that you have to budget and distribute. But this also includes your time and effort and its value to your business, and to you as your seek to carry out your own work and on time, meeting your own assigned performance goals.

I am going to at least start to discuss approaches for avoiding that mine field where possible, and getting out of it intact where necessary, in the next installment to this series. Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, with this put into its addendum section (and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3.) And you can also find this at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation (and also see its Page 1 and Page 2), and at HR and Personnel – 2 (and see its Page 1.)

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 127 – the business context 76

This is my 127th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-126.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general terms in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples of how they can and do take place. And that has meant my successively discussing each of a set of aspects to the issues and challenges raised by the first of these two subtopics points:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

And to bring this initial orienting note up to date here, I discussed a set of issues and tools of importance when business negotiating in Parts 93 through 125, as a first draft response to the above Point 1. Then I began discussing Point 2 and its issues in Part 126. My goal moving forward in building from that start is to offer an approach for knowing and understanding precisely what you face going into a negotiations effort, and seeing how such initial understandings can best be updated there as events unfold.

I began my business side of negotiating discussions here, assuming that you would know and essentially automatically so, precisely what you face and what you have to achieve there. That is often the case in real world negotiations and certainly for knowing what you face in general terms. But even then, change can happen and so can a need to reconsider, reframe and re-plan what has to be negotiated and how. It is this complex of issues that I would address in this next progression of installments here, as begun in Part 126 with its starter due diligence checklist.

And I add, initial assumptions and expectations of the type that I assumed to be stable in the first half of this business-side narrative, can fall into uncertainty and even fall apart entirely, even as attempted negotiations begin. And such disruption can come from your own side of a negotiations table, as easily and as quickly as it can from the other side.

I return as I write that, to a point that I raised and discussed when addressing Point 1 here, where the people who you would have to work with in this might not be in agreement among themselves, and with this disruptive force a possibility on either side of the table or from both sides of it at the same time. And I will go farther there in noting that:

• Negotiations, and even the most effective and productive of them can take the form of engagement across a table between opposing views, while the people holding them are still coming to agreement within their own ranks as to what they see as most important to them there.
• Negotiations in this sense are at least as much about arriving at priorities and at mutually agreed to priorities as they are about winning agreement on some set of outcome goals that they would begin from.
• All of the more generally stated communications and negotiations issues that I have discussed in this and certainly from Part 93 on here, address opportunities and challenges that can arise that would impact upon how efforts here would, or even could proceed.
• And ultimately the negotiation scenarios that have to be navigated, take form and identity out of all of this, and certainly as they come into focus for what is actually there that has to be worked through.

I am going to continue this line of discussion in the next installment to this series, returning to the due diligence issues list that I offered in Part 126 as a starting point there. Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 126 – the business context 75

This is my 126th installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. And in that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-125.

I began explicitly focusing on communications and negotiating in a business in general terms in Part 93 after, and in follow-up to my offering a succession of discussions of more granular case in point scenario based examples of how they can and do take place. And that has meant my successively discussing each of a set of aspects to the issues and challenges raised by the first of these two subtopics points:

1. Working widely in and across a business, and networking up and down and across its table of organization in order to succeed there.
2. And the networking and communications and negotiating best practices that would be used there, as they can be fine tuned and used in the particular contexts of specific businesses.

And to bring this initial orienting note up to date here, I completed an at-least first draft take of a response to the first of those topics points in Part 125. And my goal here is to begin to discuss Point 2 of that set as well. And I begin doing so by noting that I am not simply going to reiterate – or expand upon the succession of specific case in point examples that I offered in Postings 52-92. My goal moving forward here is to in effect, take my Point 1 discussions out of the abstract by reframing the more generally stated communications and networking tools that I offered there in more specific relevant contexts. And as a starting point there, my goal for this posting is to:

• Raise and discuss issues of knowing the actual circumstances that you find yourself having to negotiate in, knowing what specific type of scenario among other details that you actually face there.

I begin addressing that complex of issues by offering a starter level due diligence list of issues and considerations that for their details, would answer a significant number of the basic, core questions implicit in that bullet point:

i. What type of group, organization or other constituency do you face a need to negotiate with?
ii. What type of group, organization or other constituency would you help to negotiate with them?
iii. Which side there is more actively seeking a negotiated resolution?
iv. And what do they see as calling for such resolution, at least to the level of their general, overall-goals? This question, of necessity has to be addressed in counterpart from the perspective of both sides of any possible negotiating table.
v. Where do the two sides in this agree, and where do they disagree going into possible negotiations?
vi. Where do the points of at least initial disagreement there differ for those on opposing sides to a negotiating table here, to a degree that would make active efforts at reaching negotiated agreement necessary? This is a question of both relative priorities and of overall importance, as each side sees them.
vii. What other stakeholders have to be taken into account there, who might or might not be at the table, but that have shadows over it that cannot be denied and that must be accommodated?
viii. And looking back at postings 52-92 here for contextual constraints – and opportunities that might raise here, do all parties that would enter into this come across as being willing and able to negotiate in good faith as discussed in recent installments to this series?
ix. And if not, then how and under what circumstances would they deviate from that, and with what likely impact?
x. I add as a comment on this, that the earlier you start preparing for Plan B alternatives here, best alternatives to achieving any mutually acceptable negotiated agreement included, the better off you and your side in this will be if such options becomes necessary. Last minute here, of necessity means fewer and more constricted alternative options, where advance, longer term Plan B preparations can lead to prepared-for flexibility and adaptability.

Preparedness and the understanding that goes into that are essential if you and the people who you would help in negotiations are to have the best chance for achieving the best outcomes for themselves – and for you.

I offer that as a once (actually more than once) burnt, twice and more learnt lesson from having to negotiate with one hand effectively tied behind my back because some of the people who I was trying to represent, had secret agendas and for what they actually wanted and as their highest priorities, and for how they were burdened with problematical issues that would have to be negotiated around to achieve those goals but that they did not want to acknowledge.

My above starter due diligence list is more than just a partial road map for moving forward. It is a cautionary warning list and a risk management tool, and particularly where issues that its points should clarify remain opaque and even from the people at a negotiating table on your own side of it.

I am going to continue this line of discussion in the next installment to this series. Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

Leveraging social media in gorilla and viral marketing as great business equalizers: a reconsideration of business disintermediation and from multiple perspectives 41

This is my 41st posting to a series on disintermediation, focusing on how this enables marketing options such as gorilla and viral marketing, but also considering how it shapes and influences businesses as a whole. My focus here may be marketing oriented, but marketing per se only makes sense when considered in the larger context of the business carrying it out and the marketplace it is directed towards (see Social Networking and Business 2 and its Page 3 and Page 4 continuations, postings 278 and loosely following for Parts 1-40.)

I concluded Part 40 by offering what amounts to a puzzle that I would at least begin to address here. I wrote there about continuity and change, and both in what risks and types of them we face in a cyber context, and in how we need to be able to address all of this. I add here in that context that this has to include addressing all of these issues in ways that actively coordinately address long-standing vulnerabilities and our challenges in getting users to help close them, while also actively addressing the new and emerging of this too – and without everyone involved having to become a cyber security expert in order to achieve any of these goals.

What is the puzzle that I set up for discussion here? I said that I would address the fourth and last of a set of topics points that I have been successively discussing in recent installments to this series:

4. And in an ideal world all of these categorical types of protective systems would be seamlessly integrated together into a single smoothly coordinated whole, with both high level artificial intelligence and human support, as well as carefully developed and coordinately functioning specialized, simpler artificial intelligence agents that can collectively deal with a variety of conventional cyber threats and that can at least red flag many possible instances of the types of artificial intelligence sourced threats that I address here.

I framed this posting’s discussion to come at the end of Part 40 by stating that I would begin it here with explicit consideration of how “overall cyber security has to be able to coordinately address all of this, all the time and at every possible point of vulnerability.” And I went on to more specifically reframe these issues in terms of a specific type of contextual example, of specific relevance to this series per se with:

• Much of marketing as we know it now in an online connected context, is interactive and with engaged voices from outside of any given marketing business or other organization playing a significant role in shaping and prioritizing the business and organization sourced message.
• These organizational entities are important and I add often vulnerable targets for cyber attack and both from private sector and governmental sources.
• So all that I write of here concerning cyber threat and responses to it, crucially applies to that context.

And I added that I would “discuss all of this at least in part in terms of intermediation and establishing security barriers, and disintermediation and keeping communications and decision making as openly and directly connected as possible in the face of that.”

I begin addressing all of this by noting a basic point of conflict and of at-least potentially competing need that can be found when considering the implications of the above repeated Point 4 and the set of issues that I said I would begin this posting with, that immediately follows it, above.

• Actually addressing Point 4 and its issues calls for careful prioritization of attention and of follow-through as funding, expert staffing availability and essentially all other necessary resources are always going to be limited,
• Where risks faced can seem to be open ended.
• But the point of discussion that I said I would begin this with, focused on how realized harm can appear and consequentially so, essentially anywhere in a system and at any time – and I add particularly when disruptively new and novel threat types are always realistic possibilities, though I have to add particularly as even well known sources of risk remain ongoing open vulnerabilities too.
• Addressing this overall dynamic of necessity challenges how cyber security and its resource allocation and use would be and should be prioritized so as to achieve and maintain as close to a best possible as can be possible.
• That and its ongoing resource demands can fundamentally limit how proactive such systems can be in the real world, as a matter of constraining the possible at any given time from the up-front resource expenditure requirements that proactive calls for,
• Where moving from reactive and a need to pick up the pieces after adverse events, to proactive and avoiding such incidents and such need should be a high priority goal.

Systems resiliency and adaptability: terms that I make ongoing use of, are at their simplest expressions of organized effort to find balance between these types of conflicting needs and requirements, and certainly given the resource limitations that are (always in practice) faced. And selectively balancing the benefits of and the challenges of intermediation and of disintermediation with the information controls and openness that they bring, are structural tools within an organization that can be used to shape, and ideally help to optimize for this and according to the specific needs and the specific risks known to be faced by the particular organization and its particular functional units.

This more general discussion brings me to the specific case in point example that I said that I would discuss here, tying this narrative thread explicitly into this series as a whole as an essential part of it. I am going to turn to and discuss the above repeated marketing oriented topics points in the next installment to this series.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Business Strategy and Operations – 7, and also at Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5 and Page 6 of that directory. You can find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2. And I also include this posting and other startup-related continuations to it, in Startups and Early Stage Businesses – 2.