Cascade Manor
Cascade Manor
Planning and Strategy:
Before a strategy could be developed for our future negotiation with the City of Bainbridge, the first task was identifying all of the relevant issues that would impact our negotiation with the City. My partner, the Vice President of Alki, had some project concerns that were different than the list that I had compiled. After discussing each of our concerns we compiled a list of issues that would need to be discussed with the City of Bainbridge.
Our strategy was quite simple. Implementing it turned out to be the most difficult task. Knowing that we had five basic issues that we were concerned about, and the relative importance of each issue, our basic strategy was to perform a give-and-take negotiation where we would sacrifice the issues that were least important to maximize the profits on the bigger issues (height of building, real estate taxes, and open space). Our BATNA was ultimately reasoned to be zero. If we could negotiate a positive profit it would be in our best interest to conclude a deal.
Even though we didn¡¦t have a strong BATNA, we did set an artificial limit that would guide us in our negotiation. The reason for setting an artificial BATNA was twofold: 1) having a defined limit would add a firmness to our communications and possibly make it harder for us to concede points quickly; and more importantly 2) it gave us a unified goal that would limit future conflict over what was an acceptable offer.
Because our strategy was to try and produce an integrative solution that would require both sides to give-and-take, we decided that the first thing to do was to try and ascertain what were the City of Bainbridge¡¦s main concerns. When the meeting started we stated that we had not heard any comments from our last meeting, and was wondering were the City stood on the project. This allowed us a starting point for negotiation, and more importantly it gave us an outline of their major concerns.
Framing the Negotiation:
All of our gestures and communication were geared toward making the effect that we were seeking an integrative solution. Our frame going into the negotiation was that of aspiration, trying to meet the needs of the community and the broader vision of the company. We tried to develop this orientation through an attitude that we were here to help the city, and that our values towards our customers and employees was the most important consideration. We wanted a tall building and little open space because this would allow the greatest possibility of success and provide more potential revenue for the city.
We soon learned that the City of Bainbridge had a different orientation, and the goal then became trying to reframe the situation so [next page]