The disruptive effects of social media have been felt in virtually every corner of the world, as digital technologies introduce new capabilities and dynamics that touch business, diplomacy, culture, and politics. Yet I’ve seen a growing number of dealmakers who worry about the potentially adverse effects of social media on their negotiations while the academic community has given this topic strikingly little attention.
To address this odd blind spot, we held the the first of three planned webinars, “New Rules for Negotiators: How Social Media Can Kill or Enhance Your Deals” on Aug 27, 2020; you can view an upgraded recording here with about 30 minutes each of presentation and lively Q&A. Details of the next webinar and registration information are below. Under the auspices of Lax Sebenius LLC, the negotiation advisory firm I co-founded with David Lax, the first webinar briefly scoped the broader topic of social media and negotiation, then quickly dug into a fascinating case study of Amazon’s failed bid to locate a second headquarters in New York.
Many who watched told us what a compelling story it was and were intrigued by our research that illustrated the use of sophisticated digital tools unfamiliar to many negotiators. We showed
How, by doing a graphical analysis of the Twitter traffic before and during the process, a small band of digerati using social media derailed Amazon’s plans for a New York headquarters—despite the plan’s ardent support by Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and over 70% of the city’s residents.
How such tools and open source data could have helped Amazon identify and influence events both before and in real time during this contentious process . . . including spotting parties who had almost no interest in this project but ended up having a major impact on the outcome.
How a different strategy could likely have produced a negotiated outcome that would have been great for virtually all stakeholders.
Next week, on September 10, from 11:30-12:30 Eastern, we’ll present the second free webinar in this series. Rather than a globally publicized battle between Amazon and NYC, this time we’ll look at a very different role for social media in negotiation over whether a union could organize the employees of a prominent Boston hospital. The setting is different from our that of our first webinar, the players and stakes are different, the negotiation roles of social media are qualitatively different, and the lessons are different—but highly complementary. The only constants are a) our focus on the intersection of social media and negotiation and b) our hope you can join.
In both cases, we demonstrate how this advice has much broader implications for negotiators in a new era of social media. First, we explore how to audit the likely vulnerabilities for social media “attack”—often unrelated to the issue under discussion—and how to inoculate against them. Second, we show how sophisticated use of social media tools can enable one side to learn vastly more about its counterparts including their interests and relationships. Third we explain how social media can influence relevant parties in a manner that helps at the table. Finally, we demonstrate how savvy negotiators can mobilize latent supporters and neutralize potential opponents of a target agreement. Throughout, we remain acutely mindful of ethical and privacy considerations.
In assembling a first-class panel to make presentations on role of social media and negotiation at a May 2020 Harvard conference on “Artificial Intelligence, Technology, and Negotiation,” we were struck by the extent to which both scholars and high-level negotiators effectively agreed on two propositions: 1) social media can and often does profoundly affect today’s negotiations, yet 2) best practices and major mistakes remain unclear to many dealmakers and relatively little academic research has explored this topic. Drawing on our academic research for this conference, which provides the intellectual foundation for our work, we look forward to your joining us at our upcoming webinar. We are sure that you’ll find the implications for practice to be both surprising and useful.
Logistics for the next zoom webinar on September 10:
When: Thursday, September 10, 2020 11:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: New Rules for Negotiators: How Social Media Can Kill or Enhance Your Deals
Register in advance at:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_72kFVdllQPCrZRUCj8BnKA
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. We hope you can join us.
