When I heard about the I-5 bridge collapse on the Skagit River in Mount Vernon, WA I thought about a lot of things—injuries, safety, infrastructure. But with everyone safe, I turned my attention to how Gov. Jay Inslee and the Washington State Department of Transportation now have a real opportunity to show effective leadership by using […]
contract
Contract Management – July 2012
In the July issue of Contract Management magazine: Vested Outsourcing: The Path to a Long-Term, Win-Win Contract By developing outsource agreements that include 10 specific elements, firms learn by doing, employ their best talents and resources to the tasks at hand, and transition their thinking from the adversarial to the truly collaborative. By: Kate Vitasek […]
Needed: A “Getting to We” Negotiations Philosophy
If you are familiar with the Vested business model, you are probably aware of what we in the Vested universe actively promote as a What’s In It For We (WIIFWe) approach for developing and negotiating outsourcing contracts. A long time friend and expert in negotiations skills training – Jeanette Nyden – joined our UT faculty […]
Balancing the Outsource Contract Scales
The old adage that the more things change the more they stay the same probably should be revised when it comes to contract terms: the more things stay the same the worse they get. Tim Cummins, CEO of the International Association for Contract & Commercial Management (IACCM), expressed that thought in a recent Commitment Matters […]
Costing Out the Cost of the Contract
I’ve talked recently about the need for outsource contracting in a transparent and flexible Vested environment, but what about the actual cost of establishing a business contract? While there is obviously no standard cost template for contract negotiation services—contracts can vary from the exceedingly short and simple to the immensely long and complex and you […]
Going Beyond the Handshake
I’m sure you have heard of the handshake deal. Some are amazingly successful and long-lasting, but it’s rare that the initial handshake is not followed up with a contract that formalizes the initial meeting of the minds. In a way the handshake is (or should be) a very Vested act, because it implies – if […]
Equity Shares and Vested Outsourcing
Is equity sharing a good strategy to build a long-term, collaboration between companies and vendors? And how well does it fit into the Vested Outsourcing model? A recent Bloomberg Businessweek article about the electronics company Vizio prompts those questions, and the simple answers are that it depends, but probably not. What seems like a straightforward […]
