consultants and recommendations

Dilbert had a neatly outlined strip on recommendations. A software is recommended against and still gets installed causing it to be a DoA! You can check the strip here.

After checking out the strip, a few questions that linger reader's mind are :

1. How to make persuasive recommendations?
2. How to prevent political agendas from derailing your recommendations?
3. Do recommendations become negotiations? If yes, how do we negotiate?
   

Recommendations can become negotiations depending on the situation (the ones who get recommended, the ones who recommend, the political agendas of different stakeholders, etc). Consultants in advisory capacity always face such situations where the recommendations can become negotiations.

Consulting is an art and not a science. As Dr. Young taught us the psychology of audience decision making in his course on Consulting and Conflict Resolution, I recall a few of the prime points are as follows:

• Insist on using objective criteria. For instance, in case of software architecture negotiations, a good method to use is ATAM or Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method
• Focus on interests and not positions. Use data to back your interest - it could be industry reports from authoritative sources such as Gartner, Forrester, etc
  
• Like it or not, negotiation is a fact of life
• In negotiations, neither be too hard nor be too soft - use principled negotiation to get what you entitle and be good to people as well
  
• Separate people from the problem
• Invent options for mutual gains
• Use BATNA for folks who are more powerful
  
• Use negotiation jujitsu for difficult folks with dirty tricks

All of the above points are important and they work if practiced the right way. I have experienced it and recommend it to every reader of this blog.

Happy Consulting !