Teaching Negotiation Online: What Happens when you Adopt a UX (User Experience Design) Orientation?

I taught an online negotiation course for the first time this spring.  MIT’s Professional Education Program and its Office of Digital Learning (ODL) invited me to design and teach a course for professionals around the world willing to pay approximately $500 to participate in a six week course for about 3 – 5 hours a week. I chose to focus on Entrepreneurial Negotiation and gave the course an added twist by adding to the title “The MIT Way” (reflecting the MIT motto of “mens et manus” or mind and hand, or knowledge and practice”). Over the past few years, ODL has attracted tens of thousands of online learners, so it sounded like an exciting opportunity. 

Some of you have heard about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).  MIT participated jointly with Harvard and other top-tier universities -- through an entity called Edx -- to offer free online access to regular college courses.  These consisted of videos of college lectures supplemented by power points.  Students took machine graded multiple choice exams at the end of each module, and received a certificate of completion if they made it all the way through a class. Production and dissemination were paid for by foundation grants or donated by universities hoping to sell accompanying books or other teaching materials.  Edx has run through many millions of dollars. Only a tiny fraction of the global participants who signed up for most MOOCs (many of them high school students) actually completed the courses and mastered the material.  So, MIT has decided to look for a more financially sustainable and effective way of sharing the knowledge developed on campus with a wider international audience.

The MIT professional staff I worked with are practitioners of a new approach to online learning called User Experience Design (UX or UXD or UED). I like the Wikipedia description of UX: it is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product. It is revolutionizing all kinds of design efforts, including the way companies market products and organizations interact digitally with their clients.  The MIT Professional Education staff, with its UX orientation,  made me rethink every aspect of my approach to teaching negotiation.  I will share a few of things I learned.

First, online learners prefer to watch videos rather than read text. When I say videos, I don’t mean videotaped versions of the 50 minute lectures I would usually give in a regular class or training program.  They want short, animated or otherwise highly produced segments that get to the point and entertain (infotainment). The MIT team informed me that my usual negotiation lecture introducing key negotiation concepts would need to be reduced to a six minute animated short.  It took some doing (and a lot of help from several skilled graphic artists, especially one in the Czech Republic I never talked to directly) to present almost two dozen concepts in a six minute cartoon strip based on two key characters – Novi (a female, African-American inventor) and Vic (a male, Caucasian venture capitalist) who were about to negotiate the possibility of some kind of joint venture keyed to a new device Novi had created.  If you start, as UX does, from the standpoint of the learner rather than the instructor, everything you say and the way you say it, changes.

MIT has developed a platform that allows hundreds (actually thousands) of course participants to interact face-to-face simultaneously via the web (not skype).  So, each week, more than two hundred participants negotiated with randomly assigned partners from elsewhere in the world.  Each negotiation was scheduled for 60 – 90 minutes. When the scheduled time for negotiations was over, students could watch a taped version of my MIT graduate students doing the same negotiation (from start to finish) that they had been assigned.  Viewing my same negotiations that the online participants had just completed was optional, but almost all of the online students chose to view the tapes. Then, they watched me (on tape) interacting with two sets of my students who had completed the negotiation assigned to the online class that week.  My online video debriefing of each week’s negotiation assignment involved me going through the full tape of my two graduate student pairs of negotiators and selecting video highlights focusing on the key learning points I wanted to raise.  When I met with the four students (in a studio setting) to debrief, I had two giant screens on the wall that I controlled from a laptop in front of me. I pre-selected highlights (almost like a sports broadcaster reviewing all the games on a particular day) so I could question my students, pressing them to explain why they did what they did, what they might have done differently and what they learned.  The tapes of these studio interactions initially ran for several hours. But, with the help of my editing team, we were able to post-produce three or four eight minute segments keyed to the theme of the week. The online participants were also asked to complete short assigned readings each week from the electronic version of my recent book).  My assumption was that watching me debrief my students would resonate with the experience the online learners had just had. From the polling we did, that turned out to be true. It was as if I was debriefing the online learners.

When I first saw the tapes of my students completing the negotiations that the online class was assigned, I didn’t want to leave anything out.  Every second seemed valuable.  After multiple tries, however, I was able to isolate 8 – 10 minutes of highlights (especially pair handling the same moments in the negotiation differently). I pre-load these for the studio debriefing with my students.  When I reviewed the several hours of video of the debriefings that followed (all unscripted), I didn’t see how I would be able to cut these down to three or four segments of seven to eight minutes.  I had to put myself into the learner’s position. What did they most want to know?  And, why?  Each finsished video segment was “tested” multiple times by people like those we thought would sign up for the course.  While you need skilled editors to smooth out the video and audio, and to add titles and music, those of us who have only taught from our own perspective can eventually, on our own, identify with the needs of the learners.

There are lots of other innovative instructional elements in the course.  We interviewed Cambridge entrepreneurs – mostly MIT spin-offs – in their offices. I asked them on camera to talk about the most difficult negotiations they have had. These were also reduced to six minute cameos that appear week by week and align with the four teaching themes around which the course is structured – dealing with ego and emotion, coping with uncertainty, managing technical complexity and building trusting relationships. While I got better at preparing five or six minute mini-lectures introducing topics like these, it took the guidance of a skilled video producer to help me transform my usual pedagogical style to a learner-oriented approach to presenting my ideas.  By the way, I found it impossible to use a teleprompter to read scripts. It was only through multiple impromptu takes that I found the voice I was looking for.

The MIT teaching platform allows students to share their written work with each other, and give each other grades and feedback (all anonymously).  I assigned a short-follow-on scenario each week that picked up where the assigned negotiation exercise left off.  They had to write out one page of their best advice to Novi and Vic in each situation. Then, each participant had to offer comments and grades to at least two other people on their written responses.  I provided a detailed grading template with an example of how I graded a student’s response to each assignment. This is all accomplished electronically and automatically by the MIT Professional Education platform.  But, a problem emerged when a handful of online participants offered nasty comments and unfair grades.  I had to add an online ombudsmen (one of my post-docs with a lot of negotiating teaching experience). He was available to re-review comments and grades for anyone who felt they had been treated unfairly. While this only amounted to 1% - 2% of the participants, I was genuinely surprised at how mean the class participants could be to each other.  Remember, everyone was paying to participate in the six week course and these were mostly young professionals.  These were not your usual internet trolls who write vitriolic comment and leave.

I asked the participants to reflect at the end of each week (in writing, but for themselves) on what they learned and what they were confused about.  At the end of each week I entertained questions (on the Open Electronic Forum also supported by the platform). I chose about a dozen (from about 50 – 60) questions to answer in writing each week. It took me about two to three hours to write out my answers each week. It was clear that participants were taking the class very seriously and reflecting carefully on what was happening.  I posted by weekly answers for the whole group to see each Monday morning as a new unit began. I could tell from their questions where I had failed to be clear or where the materials I had developed did not go far enough.  Answering their questions in real time was important, also, for those who had expected to interact with me personally when they had signed up for the course.

In the last week of the course, I asked them to prepare a composite reflective memo.  While we polled the group each week (after every exercise and assignment) to find out the ratings and judgments about each component of the class),  their detailed closing evaluations made clear that the idea of a “learning journey” really does make sense.  They elaborated on what they took from the course (relative to their individual needs) and gave me a sense of whether I had succeeded.  There’s no way a “final exam” makes sense in this context (and I wonder, in retrospect, how much sense it makes in more traditional in-person classes).  My focus on their evolving theories of practice and the importance of continuing to learn from your own negotiation experience may be the most important thing I gave them.

Preparing and presenting the online course made me think very hard about how people learn to negotiate, how they acquire and master various micro-skills, how they confront and reformulate their personal theories-of-practice and how they learn from their own ongoing negotiating experiences.  As I try to think 10 years ahead, I imagine that my face-to-face negotiation instruction and training sessions will incorporate a lot more prepared video elements (before and after class).  I’ve already introduced a new kind of video assignment in my “regular” MIT class – requiring students to videotape (using an ipad) at least three other pairs or groups of students doing assigned negotiations and producing (using imovie) annotated video presentations for the rest of the class.  The act of having to edit, add titles and sub-titles, and narrate a three to four minute composite video turns out to be a great way to get students to realize what they are supposed to be learning.  Video debriefing allows us to all be looking at the same thing.   

The MIT Professional Education team hired someone (an MIT undergraduate, it turns out) to write the detailed code “automating” every moment of the six week on line course.  Imagine you had to anticipate every question, every concern and every bit of confusion that online learners might have. Then, you had to write the instructions to those learners (both in terms of how to use on the platform and in terms of queuing up the learning assignments they are required to complete).  That’s what it means to incorporate a UX perspective in online negotiation instruction.  That’s what I think we should all learn to do.

Successful Entrepreneurs Must Learn to Negotiate

Successful Entrepreneurs Must Learn To Negotiate

If you can’t negotiate, you can’t be a successful entrepreneur. My new online class at MIT is designed to help both new and experienced entrepreneurs improve their negotiation skills. This includes learning how to handle the four unique features of entrepreneurial negotiation.

Harvard Business School Professor Howard Stevenson had it right when he said that entrepreneurship is “the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled.” That means that no matter what the sector, entrepreneurship requires convincing others—start-up co-founders, angel investors, venture capitalists, employees, and potential business partners —to commit their knowledge, time, reputation, expertise, and money to your idea.  You’ve got to convince them it’s in their interest to do what you want, when you want, the way you want. And, you also have to be able to listen and improvise so you can refine, or even overhaul, your ideas in light of others’ needs and contributions.

These are learnable skills. Studies and experience show that people can get better at negotiation, no matter what their underlying style or background. Self-confidence has nothing to do with it, either. Empirically, confidence is a terrible predictor of one’s negotiation ability. So, if you think you can’t negotiate, don’t be discouraged. And if you think you’re a negotiation genius, don’t be so sure.

My new online MIT Professional Education course, Entrepreneurial Negotiation: The MIT Way, is designed to teach dealmaking skills to people working in start-ups or other entrepreneurial settings. It focuses on the unique features of entrepreneurial deal-making: the importance of ego and emotion; technical complexity; uncertainty; and the need to build and maintain relationships. Most simple buy/sell negotiations don’t always these factors; most entrepreneurial endeavors do.

My online negotiation course is like no other. It teaches negotiation through the use of role-play simulations developed by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (which I co-founded, and where I have taught executives and students for many years). These sims allow participants to practice the skills they’re learning, and discuss what worked and what they could have done differently. The course also includes video of real people negotiating, and shows me giving them coaching advice using video-recorded highlights of their efforts. The course provides opportunities for students to put their learning into action by writing short (two-page) response papers that other students in the class read and grade using an assigned template.

It is not possible to learn negotiation skills without practicing. And, it is best to practice with someone you can talk to afterwards. So, everyone who registers is urged to have a buddy register with them, so that they can complete four face-to-face practice negotiations.  For those who can’t co-register with a buddy, we have other ways to help you practice.

The course focuses on the four unique features of entrepreneurial negotiations:

(1) Ego and Emotion

Anyone who invents or creates something tends to become attached to it—maybe even a little protective or defensive about it. After all, they’re proud of what they produced—which they understand better than anyone—and have their own ideas about the best way to proceed. They are likely to get upset if someone else even appears to downplay its value. Entrepreneurial negotiations, therefore, almost always involve some degree of defensiveness on the part of the proposer or creator. On the other side, negotiation counterparts, such an investors, tend to have a healthy skepticism about the claims any inventor is making. After all, a large percentage of all new businesses and new ideas fail. Put these two together, and talks are likely to be delicate, perhaps even escalating into increasingly bold claims and deeper skepticism. Such interactions can lead to bruised egos.

Why does this happen? Psychologist Lee Ross at UCLA has identified an important cognitive bias that applies in these situations—reactive devaluation. It causes all of us to automatically question the legitimacy of anything proposed by a negotiating partner. An inventor is inclined to mistrust the statements made by the other side about his or her invention. While investors or business partners almost always start out skeptical about the claims made by an inventor.

There are a number of strategies and techniques that can be used to counteract important emotional and cognitive dynamics like reactive devaluation. Entrepreneurial Negotiation: The MIT Way gives budding entrepreneurs a chance to learn and practice these deal-saving techniques.

(2) Technical Complexity

Many start-ups are built around a technical insight or design. These may involve innovative hardware or software, or a complicated new application of old tools to solve a tricky problem, or capture an untapped market segment. Despite plenty of exceptions, potential investors or business partners rarely have the same specialized expertise as the inventors with whom they are negotiating. That’s why investors often rely on experts of their own to test and vet whatever is being proposed. Asymmetries in technical understanding and the involvement of skeptical experts working for the other side can create difficulties.

For example, experts selected by an investor or potential business partner may represent a particular school of thought on a technical matter that causes them to be skeptical of what is being proposed. When this happens, the inventor has to work especially hard to win over the other side’s expert. Moreover, even in the face of a great idea, an investor’s technical expert might remain skeptical, just to prove his or her worth, reflecting more of a bias than an objective evaluation of whatever is being proposed. In such situations, the entrepreneur will end up negotiating not only with the investor but also, indirectly, with what we call the investor’s or partner’s “back table.”

To negotiate with a back table (even indirectly), entrepreneurs have to find a way to make sure claims about their product or service, based on technical or scientific tests they have done themselves, are convincing. They know the strengths and weaknesses of the tests inside and out. Unfortunately, given typical negotiation dynamics, their results may fail to persuade a back table for the reasons mentioned above. Entrepreneurial Negotiation: The MIT Way teaches “joint fact-finding” – a technique for overcoming this problem.

(3) Uncertainty

Entrepreneurship turns on innovation, and innovation is ripe with uncertainty. The usual argument in favor of something innovative is that no one has ever tried it before. The argument against it is also that no one has ever tried it before. All this uncertainty creates both risk and opportunity. Both are magnified by technical complexity in fast-changing markets and shifting business environments.

Especially at a start-up, reasonable minds can disagree about how to manage uncertainty. Experimentation and creativity help, of course. But in negotiations, investors and entrepreneurs sometimes turn to another tool to resolve their different estimates of what is likely to happen.  Instead of trying to negotiate agreements based on whose forecast is more likely to be correct—e.g., how fast the user base will grow, how soon the company will become profitable, when the next round of funding might arrive, how fast the company can scale up its presence or production—the parties can use “contingent agreements.” These bridge competing forecasts by spelling out what both sides agree should happen regardless of which scenario is correct. In Entrepreneurial Negotiation: The MIT Way, I examine the best ways of using contingent agreements as a hedge against uncertainty.

(4) Relationships

At the conclusion of many buy-sell negotiations, the parties are glad they never have to see each other again. Entrepreneurial negotiations, on the other hand, often require ongoing relationships. Managers need to keep talking to their board of directors; founders need to talk to venture capitalists more than just once. Once they have worked together for a while, they may part company; until then, though, they are best off behaving as if they will have to continue to work together.

There are several ways negotiators should and should not behave when they anticipate the possibility of long-term interactions with their negotiating partners. First, long-term working relationships hinge on trust, and trust depends on truthfulness. My course explores the differences between the kind of bluffing that’s seen as appropriate in many negotiating contexts, and the kind of deceit that sours relationships. Second, when relationships matter, negotiators should avoid win-lose deals that eventually leave one side realizing they didn’t get a fair shake. The alternative is a win-win outcome that benefits everyone, at least one that leaves all parties better off than they would be with any other available deal. This is more if both sides commit to creating enough value to go around. Entrepreneurial Negotiation: The MIT Way explains how to create value through win-win trades that build trust and sustain relationships.

The MIT Way

To be a good negotiator, you need more than mere tactics and technique. You need a theory, one that explains why you should do some things and not others. MIT’s motto (“Mens et manus”) is Latin for mind and hand—theory and practice, why and how. Any good entrepreneurial negotiator must know what to do and how to do it. Without adequate theory, you won’t know how to improvise or apply what you know in new situations.  Without adequate technique, you won’t be able to pull it off. The MIT way is to learn the theory of negotiation (that has developed in academic and business settings over the past several decades) try it out, and then formulate a personal approach to entrepreneurial negotiation that integrates both the why and the how.

The text for the MIT course is Good For You, Great for Me: Finding the Trading Zone and Winning at Win-Win Negotiation. Those who enroll get a free electronic copy.

The Effects of Climate Change Are All Local: Here's What You Can Do to Help Manage the Risks

We've spent far too much time thinking about the global causes of climate change, and not nearly enough worrying about the local impacts that climate change is already having on coastal communities. The distinction is important. Most of the people pushing for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are environmentalists or experts worried about future generations. But there is a very immediate constituency – the people being hit with higher costs for insurance, water and electricity, and those facing substantial property losses or a drop in business income today because of increased flooding and water shortages. People who live in a coastal community or on a river nearly anywhere in the world are a lot more worried about what's happening right now, than what might happen to future generations if we don't limit greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., China, India and elsewhere.  Climate change means too much water or not enough water in the wrong place at the wrong time! It means deadly heat waves. It means radical changes in natural places, animal and plant life and the onset of new diseases. 

Our new book, Managing Climate Risks in Coastal Communities: Readiness, Engagement and Adaptation (by Lawrence Susskind, Danya Rumore, Carri Hulet and Patrick Field) is about to be published by Anthem Press. It tells the story of four coastal communities trying to take climate change-related risks seriously. What they are doing -- and what we have helped them learn from their efforts -- can help other cities and towns fast-forward the adoption of climate risk management measures that everyone agrees on.  Here's what these four communities in New England have done:

1. WHAT WE DID:  The “we” in this story is the New England Climate Adaptation Project (NECAP), a partnership based at the MIT Science Impact Collaborative and the not-for-profit Consensus Building Institute. Our close partners included the National Estuarian Research Reserve System, the University of New Hampshire, and four New England coastal communities. We prepared four Stakeholder Assessments—one for each partner town in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine. These involved interviews with several dozen officials, activists, business leaders and scientists.  The scientists on our team prepared a local climate change forecast (estimating likely temperature, precipitation and sea level changes in the near term, mid-term and long-term) using downscaled regional climate models and long-term data from local meteorological measuring stations. With all this information in hand, we developed tailored role-play simulation (RPSs). These are "serious games" that ask participants to imagine that they are working in a community a lot like their own, trying to figure out what to do about possible climate risks. We organized several workshops in each of our four partner communities at which more than 100 - 150 people played the games in each place. Workshops were co-sponsored by a wide range of local environmental, business and public service organizations.  The press attended.  We used social media to generate as much interest as we could.

2. WHAT WE WANTED TO LEARN:  We wanted to know if this approach to enhancing community readiness to address climate-related risks works. Does it give people a better understanding of the problems they face, the options open to them, the reasons that experts and locals think differently about what is happening and what ought to be done, and the costs of taking different actions?  Does this approach to public engagement build capacity and political momentum? Does it change anyone's mind?  Does it legitimize the search for immediate "no regrets" actions as far as public spending is concerned?  Does it help the community see why adaptation is a local (not a state or a federal) problem?  To answer these questions, we used independent town-wide polling to establish a base line of public attitudes about climate change before and after the workshops, surveying more than 500 people. We held intensive debriefings with all participants at the end of each workshop. We interviewed almost 25% of the participants 4 - 6 weeks later to see what they remembered.  We did statistical analyses of the results across demographic groups within each community, between those who participated in workshops and those who didn't, and then compared the four communities in the four states. We prepared detailed Case Studies summarizing what we learned in each town. In the book, we summarize all of our findings.

3. RESULTS: A simple, but tailored one-hour game with a 30-minute debriefing can change minds with regard to the importance of climate change, the nature of climate risks, and the need for local action. People from almost all groups (except those so convinced that climate change is not a problem that they refused to participate) learned about the science involved, increased their sense that local governments need to act and became more optimistic that people in their community could and should act together to manage climate risks. Public officials and staff felt more empowered to take action in their respective spheres (public works, emergency response, health services, etc.) after seeing people’s hearts and minds change at the workshops.

4.  WHAT COMMUNITIES CAN DO.  Communities facing climate change-related risks have a few different options: they can do nothing and hope for the best. They can invest in emergency preparedness so they are better able to respond and recover from crises. They can "retreat" from the most vulnerable areas. They can try to defend themselves by building protective infrastructure and adopting new policies, such as land use regulations and building codes. They can mix and match elements of each of these strategies. Whatever they decide, they will need widespread support because it will take public and private cooperation and a continuous, not a one shot, effort to bring all but one of these options to fruition. Individual landowners, businesses, environmental activists, public agencies and taxpayer groups will have to work together. 

5.  WHAT WE LEARNED: Above all, communities must enhance their level of readiness if they expect to address climate risks. They will have to provide opportunities for widespread public involvement in something other than a few "town hall" meetings at which pre-packaged information is handed out and people are lectured at. They will have toh help taxpayers understand that there are "no regrets” moves they can make to reduce climate risks while simultaneously accomplishing other important objectives at the same time. For example, using this year's open space preservation money to create natural barriers along the shore can provide storm protection for private property owners, reduce saltwater intrusion into freshwater wetlands (protecting underground water supplies), armor waste disposal and electricity infrastructure, and minimize flood risks. 

6.  OUR TAKEAWAY: The sooner the U.S. shifts its focus to reducing local vulnerability to climate risks (so that everyone can see what the costs are going to be year after year as climate change accelerates), the sooner there will be more of a political constituency that wants to get at the source of the problem. So, unlike many who worry that any talk of adaptation detracts from global efforts to push for mitigation (i.e. reduction in greenhouse gases), we take just the opposite view.  We think the political pressure for mitigation is not strong enough to push for a global action plan or new US laws because people don’t recognize the costs to them today.  Now is the time to highlight what it’s going to take to help vast numbers of coastal and riverine communities all over the world avoid paying immense costs just to survive in the years ahead. When they see what it really costs to manage climate risks, we believe they will care much more about the underlying cause, and quickly become the missing constituency needed to push for global emissions reducing policies.

6. WHAT CAN YOU DO?  Get your community to play the serious games we have developed (or look for a range of local partners that will help adapt the games to your local conditions). Do a simple, anonymous assessment to understand what everyone's real views are at present on issues of climate change (you might be surprised!).  Use our before-and-after surveys to document the shifts that occur once people start attending workshops and playing the right games.  Get local officials and community activists to be the first to play the games and talk about what the results suggest for your community. Involve the local media in reporting the story.  Adopt a consensus building approach to formulating a collective risk management plan for the community. Don't wait for extensive state or federal direction -- it's probably not coming anytime soon. Emphasize the search for no-regret options -- things you can do right away that are good for multiple reasons AND will reduce your community's vulnerability to sudden climate change. 

You can order our book from Amazon.  You can learn more at scienceimpact.mit.edu.