Today I realized what I need to learn out of my stint in Construction Engineering. I need to learn how to negotiate from a lesser (or perhaps non-existent) position.
For you non-oil and gas people this may be hard to follow. Operations is currently holding my project ransom - threatening to stop our work unless I fork over money to repair some roads they broke. By analogy, imagine if the government required you to plant a tree in your neighbor's yard. Then imagine that your neighbor told you he would only let you plant the tree after you painted his house.
It's times like this that I fall back on the advice my first supervisor gave me - no one comes to work to do a bad job. Operations is doing what they think is right. I just have to convince them that they should get the money elsewhere (or convince my project to give up the money).
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Prashant,
ReplyDeleteYou should read Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged". Then you can learn to negotiate from a position of imposing guilt on your victim. In your analogy, you would tell your neighbor you would be happy to paint his house, but first he must steal the paint for you from his company's warehouse since you are too busy digging up an already planted tree from some tax funded public works environmental project. After he steals the paint tell him he owes you now for not ratting him out. If he brings up the part about you digging up the tree, tell him that it was for his own good as the tree is now in his yard.
Carolyn