Forty years ago today, Negotiate Ltd was born.
When we started back on June 8th 1986, the landscape of business training was entirely different. But our roots go back even further – to 1972, when our founder, the late Gavin Kennedy, began building our very first negotiation courses.
At that time, there were no “how-to” books on the shelf. Our approach wasn’t cooked up in an academic vacuum; it was forged by watching real-world negotiators in the trenches. We watched what failed, we mapped what worked, and we distilled it into a definitive process. Over the decades, we refined that into our signature Four Phases: Prepare, Debate, Propose, Bargain.
But at the absolute heart of everything we teach is one golden rule. The ultimate conditional proposition:
“IF you give some of what I want, THEN I will give you some of what you want.”
This “IF-THEN” format is a negotiator’s shield and sword. It allows you to make bold, creative proposals without the fear of sliding into weak, one-sided concessions. It clearly and concisely “prices” what you are willing to give.
But we were not entirely original in pioneering this format. Gavin loved to point out that history has a funny way of keeping you humble. Years into our journey, we discovered that the credit for discovering the power of the conditional bargain actually belongs to a modest moral philosopher from Kirkcaldy, Scotland, who wrote about it exactly 196 years before our first 1972 workshop.
In 1776, Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations: ““Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.”
Spot on.
As we look forward to the next 40 years, markets will change, technology will evolve, and new industries will emerge. But human nature doesn’t change, and neither does the secret to a great deal.
Thank you to every client, partner, and negotiator who has walked this path with us over the last four decades. Here’s to the power of the conditional proposition, and to the next 40 years of negotiating successfully.
