Even the word ‘negotiation’ strikes fear into the heart of many people. It conjures visions of squabbling, fighting, conflict – perhaps even losing. Many people believe that a negotiation needs to be ‘won’; – the implications being that the other party invariably needs to lose.
In fact negotiation can be the route to ensuring that all parties have their main needs met. There doesn’t always need to be any element of compromise. The goal of negotiation is that everybody wins.
Getting to a win/win outcome needs careful facilitation but the rewards are considerable. A little work at the beginning – taking time to understand everybody’s needs and concerns – has tremendous payoffs later. In the case of a consortium, if you don’t have the commercial and constitutional agreement sorted out at the beginning, you are certainly not going to get them sorted out later when the business takes off. By then discussions about the allocation of profit, risk and liabilities will, by their nature, be insoluble.
We have experience in many forms of negotiation – including those involving high levels of conflict, political agendas and emotional attachment. In conjunction with a sound understanding of business and company law and corporate finance, this makes us perfectly qualified to facilitate the constitutional negotiations between the member companies of a consortium.
> I would like a call-back from somebody at Stablebridge
> We need help selecting partners to fill a capability gap in our consortium
> We need help sorting out differences in our consortium, that are at risk of getting out of hand.