My frequent travel means I've seen my share of airport terminals – and airport conflicts.
Nothing compares, however, to my experience at a large Midwestern airport on my way home from a client visit last month. Snow was falling as a winter storm pelted half the country. Air traffic was grounded from the Midwest to the Northeast. Flights were delayed and passengers were stranded.
When it became clear I would be in that airport for the duration of the night, I molded myself into the permanent slouch of a vinyl chair, relaxed by repeating my travel mantra ("serenity now"), and plopped open my latest reading, Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement Without Giving In.
As frustrated passengers lined up to barrage the lone airline agent with angry questions, I began applying the book's principles to each conversation. One woman in particular was a great subject for this musing. As her saga unfolded, it became – at least to me – a powerful allegory for our interactions with supply chain vendors.
Here's what happened.
Still bundled from the outside chill the young woman's gloved hands gripped the gate counter, vehemently demanding that the airline agent find a way to get her home. Immediately! As her threats mounted, the agent lapsed into party-line mode, calmly citing the weather conditions and safety issues that were "out of his control." His matter-of-fact, not-my-fault attitude only fueled her agitation. She wanted attention! She wanted solutions! She wanted it now!
While I realized a sort of negotiation was happening, the rising tension obscured what it was they were bargaining over. The woman was angry, but what specifically did she want the agent to do? The agent didn't want an unhappy flyer, but how could he satisfy an impossible request?
Clearly, both parties needed to step back and look at the conflict from another perspective.
My book provides some help with this. Getting to Yes authors Roger Fisher, director of the Harvard Negotiating Project, and William Ury, co-founder of Harvard's Program on Negotiating, encourage readers to use techniques where neither party loses and the relationship comes out intact. This should be familiar ground to supply chain folks. Look at the underlying interests in a negotiation, the authors suggest. Ask yourself what motivates you to take your position and consider what motivates the other party to take his.
As the economic downturn persisted this past year, the supply chain was under particularly high pressure to help hospitals reduce costs. The situation could have produced a lot of supplier arm twisting and other aggressive tactics as materials managers tried squeezing a penny of savings from a nickel of spend. But, not surprisingly, I saw a different approach. One that works.
Hospital supply chain managers invited their suppliers to the table and engaged them in very candid but civil discussions about their common interest: namely, making sure the hospital made enough margin to continue conducting procedures in which physicians used the supplier's devices. In many cases, hospital contract negotiators shared detailed financial data with the vendor reps. What were the reimbursements? How did that compare to the fully burdened costs? And when the margin was too low (or the procedure was losing money), what could be done about it?
I was heartened to hear that many suppliers were responsive to this approach. It makes sense, i.e. they should be responsive! A supplier's direct relationship with a physician can only take them so far. If the procedure loses money for the hospital – and if the supplier's product plays a primary role in that – something has to give. Once acknowledged and understood… we have common ground! And from this common ground can come a win-win negotiation. The hospital can continue conducting the procedures (but at a lower supply cost), and the supplier gets to keep the business (albeit at a lower price point).
Back at the airport, a similar resolution seemed to be unfolding. When the angry passenger finally took a breath, she began to realize she needed to compose herself before the agent could help her. At the same time, the agent knew other frustrated passengers were witnessing this scene spiraling out of control. They both had a vested interest in calming down the confrontation. In finding common ground.
When the would-be passenger shed her overcoat and began to relax, she was able to get to the real reason for her frustration. After a grueling two-day business trip, she needed to get home to her 11-month-old baby boy. It was the first time she'd been away from him.
The gate agent now had something to work with! Wanting to make the customer happy – only limited by his inability to magically put airplanes back in the air – he pulled up a weather report on his computer that showed the snow stopping, both at the departure and arrival airports, within the next two hours. He also gave the passenger a pass to the airline's luxury lounge where she could privately call the baby's caregiver to check on her son and make arrangements for the night.
Simply by offering comfort and reassurance (see "empathy"), the agent eased the frustrated passenger's anxiety. After confirming her baby was ok and arranging for his care overnight, she relaxed until the plane boarded. After witnessing what the agent did for this distraught mom, the other passengers stopped seeing him as the adversary and started treating him as a fellow victim of the wintry weather. My next few hours in the faux leather chair were very peaceful.
Conclusion: when you keep a cool and level head, and you make the effort to understand the underlying interests that motivate each party's position, a fair and amicable agreement is often within reach.
I bet you have similar stories. If so, please share.
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