Quantum Physics of Belief - Win-Win Negotiations

For the past few weeks, I was writing on how scientific and business research shows that human thoughts and beliefs have an effect on the physical world. In this article, I am going to explore further on how businesses deal with communications both within their organizations and outside clients and vendors in relation to greater profitability and productivity. Sales ability determines your gross revenues, but negotiating ability determines your profit! As a result, most business leaders, at least in Western cultures, think it’s a foregone conclusion that aggressive negotiation with suppliers will yield the highest profitability. Although it’s a common belief that obtaining the lowest price should be the goal, regardless of the impact to the other party, business research and scientific discovery indicate otherwise.

When Wal-Mart sneezes, everybody catches a cold. For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2011, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, reported a net income of $15.4 billion on $422 billion of revenue with a 24.7% gross profit margin. With its single-minded focus on "EDLP" (Every Day Low Prices) and the power to make or break, a partnership with Wal-Mart is either the Holy Grail or the kiss of death for the suppliers, depending on one's perspective. There are numerous media accounts of the corporate monolith riding its suppliers into the ground. The concept of win-win bargaining is a good and powerful message. And, what happens when you encounter someone with a great deal of power, like Wal-Mart, who is also the ultimate non-negotiable partner? Let’s look at how Proctor & Gamble executive Tom Muccio pioneered a new supplier-retailer partnership between P&G and Wal-Mart. Built on proximity (Muccio relocated to Wal-Mart's turf in Arkansas) and growing trust (both sides eventually eliminated elaborate legal contracts in favor of Letters of Intent), the new relationship focused on establishing a joint vision and problem-solving process, information sharing, and generally moving away from the "lowest common denominator" pricing issues that had defined their interactions previously. From 1987, when Muccio initiated the changes, to 2003, shortly before his retirement, P&G's sales to Wal-Mart grew from $350 million to $7.8 billion.

Another great example is the automotive industry. There is a huge difference between the manner in which the US Big 3 automakers – Ford, GM, and Chrysler – negotiate with their suppliers, compared with Toyota-way doing things by Toyota. The Big 3 aggressively pursue the lowest cost in negotiations and have created adversarial relationships with their suppliers. In contrast, Toyota-way is all about creating collaborative relationships with the suppliers. They believe in creating close-knit networks of vendors, where all companies prosper. In essence, they commit to co-prosperity.

When we have important ongoing relationships with people, it’s generally appropriate not to play a competitive game and instead play an alternative game: a collaborative, compromising, or even avoiding or accommodating negotiating game. Collaboration is the opposite of competition in most ways (see the 3^rd article of this series for more on collaboration vs. competitive): you share information instead of concealing it, you focus on the other side’s concerns over your own, and you sit side by side instead of negotiating at arm’s length. Collaboration requires rich, ongoing communication, and it relies on joint problem solving. They talk more, they listen more, they ask a lot more questions, and they make a lot fewer declarations. They are also more forgiving about waffling and take-backs, since they want to get at the real underlying issues and understand that these may not be apparent to the other side at first. The negotiating game is very different when the goal is to make sure both sides win.

Win-win negotiations are the lifeblood of business success in most organizations. Anyone you work with is a candidate for win-win negotiating, including coworkers, team members, employees, bosses, suppliers, customers, regulators, and boards of directors. The payback of win-win negotiation can be seen in traditional terms in that your partners will be more willing to cooperate better and accommodate for future concessions. However the payback can also be considered from a scientific perspective, when considering what new science is teaching us about how we shape our experience.

The implications of the physical effect of our consciousness on our world are that when a business has a consciousness based in abundance rather than scarcity, events unfold in a manner that brings higher abundance, or profitability. Businesses demonstrate a belief in abundance when they adopt win-win negotiation styles, by showing they believe there is enough for all parties to win. Chance events then occur more frequently in favor of the business, such as customers being attracted to it more strongly and employees being more likely to hit upon the next big innovation.

The implications of the research and science are that adopting a win-win mindset can lead to higher profitability, so rather than fighting to retain the most dollars in each transaction, it’s wiser to work towards ensuring that all parties win.

An important caution is that negotiation with a belief in abundance does not mean letting vendors take advantage of you. In any negotiation, always negotiate strongly, while holding the view that all parties could win.

Quantum Physics of Belief - Scarcity is a Limiting Belief

In the past couple of articles, we were exploring how our experiences form based on what we believe about the world. This week, let’s extend that concept to how businesses shape their profits. The accepted model of business in our society is rooted in scarcity, and thus presents a limitation to our experience of profitability. When we recognize this, we can become cognizant of these limiting beliefs and move beyond them.

We all know that in some way, our beliefs create our reality. Before a person or team can achieve something, they have to believe they will. Sure it gives them confidence to perform their best, but science tells us the very form of matter is influenced by our beliefs (see the earlier articles 1: Quantum Physics of Belief – Effects of Universal Consciousness and 2: Quantum Physics of Belief – Keys to Sustainable Success in this series.) In other words, in some way, what we believe is what reality becomes.

It follows that to be profitable, business organizations must believe that profits are abundant and achievable. Businesses operate within a social system and obtain their profits from external sources, so let’s assess how most businesses operate in this larger context and how their practices reveal their beliefs in the scarcity of wealth.

In the book The Science of Getting Rich published in 1910, Wallace D. Wattles wrote that ‎"People must be taught to become rich by creation, not by competition... every person who gets rich by creation opens a way for thousands to follow him/her and inspires them to do so." Now, science validates this and we will see how.

Most business leaders would say that it’s the goal in business to retain or acquire the maximum dollar amount in every business transaction. We would generally say that we are doing the right thing as business leaders when we are able to extract the highest prices from customers and pay the lowest prices to suppliers. But when we engage in business in this competitive manner, without consideration for the financial health of the other party, what does that indicate about our underlying beliefs?

These competitive practices reveal that we believe there is not enough for everyone to win, and therefore we have to make sure we are one of the winners. This demonstrates that we believe profits are not abundant, but rather they are scarce. We can easily recognize this at a personal level: think about when we act competitively versus collaboratively. We act competitively in situations such as playing in sports games where there are multiple players or teams but only one winner. We act competitively when we are a student in a class where only the top 10% will receive grade A. We act competitively when we are working for a company that periodically purges the lower performers. So, we act competitively when we believe that what we are vying for is scarce in that there is not enough for everyone.

In contrast, we act collaboratively when we believe that there is enough for everyone. We act collaboratively when we are engaged in a sport such as mountain climbing, where the goal is for everyone to make it to the top. We act collaboratively when we are a student taking a class in which there is no limit to the number of grade A’s given. And we act collaboratively when we are working for a company that has enough jobs for all employees. So, as a rule, we act competitively when we believe the object of our actions is scarce, and collaboratively when we believe the object of our actions is abundant. Therefore, striving to retain the maximum dollar amount in each business transaction, without regard to the other party, indicates a belief in the scarcity of wealth, which creates the condition of lower profitability.

Observe the belief systems that are prevalent in your business. Are they rooted in abundance or scarcity? Observe how your beliefs correspond to your reality and understand that the science proves that your beliefs came first and led to your experience. This understanding is the first step to creating greater abundance for your business.

The belief in abundance versus scarcity is relevant for any action in which money changes hands. This includes negotiation practices, employee compensation philosophies, and the degree to which competition is considered a threat. An organization’s belief about abundance is revealed to the extent they seek to protect their own interests more than the other party’s. If we truly believe in abundance, there is no reason to be concerned about personal protection at the expense of someone else. We know there is enough for everyone.

Physics experimentation shows us there is no fixed amount of wealth. Our consciousness is determining what we experience, so there is as much as we believe there is. Underlying this is a profound reality: there is no limit to the abundance that exists in the world, except for the limits that exist in our minds. As such, we can learn to be better at choosing how we perceive the world.

Science has proven that we are "wired to cooperate." Indeed, it is how we have survived as a species. It is probably true, that our future survival is also rooted in this principle. You wouldn't know it by looking at the condition of the world. How would the world be different if, instead of competing with one another on a daily basis, we actually sought to cooperate? Maybe too utopian, maybe a naive thought (I am about as competitive a person as you will ever meet) but a wonderful hope for the world. I am finding that as I apply the Axiogenic principles, I now compete to cooperate. It sounds weird, I know, but I am applying the same emotional energy to a different goal. It is quite satisfying.

Can you imagine if politicians competed to cooperate? And, wow! What a novel thought that would be? I believe that most politicians are good folks, who initially intend to do the best they can within their belief system. Not all, but most. The system corrupts them. Unfortunately, we are the system. Imagine if we were all focused on value, but all actually knew how to evaluate "value" effectively. What a different world it would be.