NEGA - Negotiation Analysis -Did it help?

Scenario::Placement Season
Day 9 -
One of my friends has not yet found a company and a role that he is comfortable working with.

Then he finds a company and a role that he loves. He talks to the interview panel and they forward his profile to someone who they think he will work with if given an employment. They both connect have an amazing discussion on the possibilities and their interests. They share a lot in common professionally (Both from IIT, Both MBAs, Both analytically inclined, Both Data oriented). My friend is told that someone will get back to him on the next steps. My friend is very happy and so are we all. However there is no news after that. Complete silence. I finally call up the company HR and ask what the issue is and am informed that they are not making him an offer. On further enquiries I find out that the company feels he is asking for too much (is there something like asking for too much in ISB? :) ). I ask the company to forget the salary negotiations and give me a sense of what they feel about the candidate. They said he was an amazing fit for them, and explained to me the role they were offering him. This role was exaclty what my friend was looking for. So I asked them what they were ready to offer and they quoted figure "X" which was a just a little under what my friend was looking for. The company agreed to take the salary a few notches up and my friend was elated to take the offer.

Later I asked him what went wrong in the salary negotiations and he said that he remembered the Negotiation Analysis class and wanted to anchor high. But I think he slept through the part where Prof Kamdar said that while anchoring ensure that you are not driving away the other party.

My experience because of Negotiation Analysis has been very different and nice.

Negotiation Skills -they surely helped a lot during all the contract negotiations that we have had over the past 2 years. Whenever wehave reached an impasse, some of the skills acquired during the class has helped me a lot. There was this one time when the client was not ready to pay for additional capacity that was required to complete the work and we found it impossible to function without the additional. Capacity. We ended up breaking the discussion up into smaller components and making it a menu based pricing model.

Does an MBA help grow?

There has always been a debate on how helpful an MBA is.

Many successful CEOs and Business magnates have not been MBAs. This is an oft quoted arguement against linking MBA to becoming a CEO.

However now the authors of the Harvard Business Review article ranking the world’s top 100 CEOs recently wrote in BusinessWeek that their research has led them to conclude that MBAs make better CEOs than non-MBAs.

Some interesting finds from that article (entire article worth a read)

While analyzing the performances of 1,999 top CEOs, Herminia Ibarra, Morten T. Hansen, and Urs Peyer were able to obtain the educational records of 1,109 of them. Of this group, fewer than one-third were MBAs. But the MBA minority had some impressive stats on their side:

• CEOs holding an MBA ranked an average of 40 places higher in the list
• CEOs with MBAs had average shareholder returns of 93 percent, compared to 81 percent for non-MBAs
• 100 of the MBAs reached CEO by age 50, compared to only 40 in the non-MBA group
• Five out of the top 10 CEOs attended MBA programs (though only four graduated)

 

Why the MBA advantage?

The researchers offer a bit of speculation as to why the MBA can be a CEO’s “magic” ingredient. Here are a few ideas:

• MBAs have better skills, adding “right-brain creativity and warmth to left-brain logic and financial acumen. Or vice versa. It can even help get the hard and soft skills working together,” they write.
• MBAs’ networks “pay out” during their entire career
• MBAs are more willing to work on themselves and are open to new ideas
• MBAs develop broader perspectives

 

Post ISB Job ---- Money or Role or Location or Post or Brand or Boss?????

The pertinent and age old question is always "What to look for in a Job? - Money or Role or Location or Post or Brand or Boss?"

I had this question when I was preparing for my MBA and most prominently felt this same question staring at me while preparing for the Placements Season in ISB. There were the normal voices of sanity which spoke of a long term career and the choice of role. There were the "practical" voices of saying that you have to get a decent salary first because you have this large loan waiting to be repaid. Everyone finally spoke of the long term career but somewhere inside were still thinking of what would be the salary on offer.

I am still confused on what the right answer is. Of late when I have been looking for a change myself these questions came back to haunt me. It was nearly 2 years after my Placement anxiety but the feeling was the same. So basically this question I have decided is not meant to be answered at all. It finally just figures out by itself.

But one thought I will leave you all for sure, and that is from the Negotiation Analysis class which I think is critical. The anchoring that you have in a negotiation is very critical and for every job post ISB your current salary is that anchoring figure. Hence what you "get" out of ISB IS important. Money does matter. Other things matter as well but remember that do get a good salary out of ISB. It helps !!!!

More on how I made my decisions later (Fooled by Randomness)