If I am ever to be found walking the Tel Aviv boulevards on a sunny, spring day, with only happy thoughts in my mind, then it's a sign that I've completed another exam in my MBA course. Today's exam was on Negotiation, a subject which I don't seem to have written much about. Almost all of the lectures were held in December/January, leaving us six weeks in which to forget the material. About three weeks ago, I started revising, and I was pleased to note that I remembered most of the material. Since then, I've been working on specific points and looking at previous exam papers, in order to see what is required.
The exam is structured in the following manner: the opening case study has five small questions, each worth eight marks. After that, there are three essay questions, each worth twenty marks. The first three questions regarding the case study are almost always the same, so these can be learnt by heart, although obviously the data has to come from the case study. The latter two questions come from a slightly wider pool but these also can easily be memorised.
And so it was today: the case study was about a French company contracting with a British company who would provide training courses. A day before the agreement was to be signed, the French company sent an email which basically reneged on all the terms of the agreement. What are the interests of both sides? What are the negotiating issues? What is Negotek and how can it help? These questions were like an arcade game: I wrote the answers and could hear in my mind how my score was steadily increasing, ching ching! The fourth question was about the email - a clear case of closing stage manipulation to my mind. I wrote about this subject at a deeper level than the previous questions, ching ching! The final question of this section was about each side's BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) - also easy, ching ching!
The first essay question required us to contrast Fisher and Ury's "Principled Negotiation" with Kennedy's "four stage plan", specifically in the context of negotiations between management and workers in a factory about a pay rise. Since I had gone over the four points of F&U with a fellow student five minutes before entering the exam room, this material was extremely well known. Ching ching ching!
The final two questions were slightly awkward in that in first reading, it wasn't clear what they were about. After reading them through a few times, I noticed that the clue to both was in the final sentence. Unless I am very much mistaken, the penultimate question was about constructive/destructive behaviour (Carlyle and Rackham), whereas the final question was about the ten ways to making decisions. I wouldn't say that the arcade game was going ching! ching! ching! as I wrote my answers, but I should have done well on these questions.
Summing up, it looks like that I did very well on this exam, which would be somewhat ironic as it is a subject not close to my heart. On the other hand, appearances can be deceptive and the examiner may be more balanced regarding my mark. I'll know in about six weeks.
All that is left is Strategic planning.....
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