If necessity is the mother of invention, transformation may well be the big daddy of re-invention. That’s perhaps what Dell and GENCO thought as they held a Global Outlet Partnership Summit in Fort Worth, TX in 2011. The purpose of the summit was to restructure and align their outsourcing agreement to move from a traditional […]
Kate Vitasek
Leadership Excellence – Sales and Service Excellence – November, 2013
Getting to We: Negotiating agreements Article in the October 2013 edition of Leadership Excellence – Sales and Service Excellence, by Jeanette Nyden, Kate Vitasek and David Frydlinger. The article is at pages 6 and 7 of the magazine. Here is the link: http://tinyurl.com/mvm8fmc
I’m Finished with Final
I’m giggling a little as I write this. I just signed off on one of the latest articles my team and I are writing. Its title now files under “When you Build Fatal Flaws into a Contract, Don’t Be Surprised If Your Contract is Fatally Flawed FINALv4.doc.” It’s the “FINALv4” part that I find funny. […]
Thinking Through the Negotiation Game
In last week’s Halloween post I wrote about the negotiation I had with my son about his costume. It made me think about some of the downright scary negotiation tactics companies use to help them get a better deal. I did a little researching and ran across Chester L. Karrass’ website, which has a negotiations […]
Halloween and the Scary Art of Negotiation
It’s Halloween. Time for kids to dress up and go trick or treating. Last year Austin (then age 7) went as an artist. This year he insisted he wanted to be an artist again. I was trying to negotiate with him to “be” something more fun (or scary) this year and to “change things up.” […]
Catching Up on Ketchup
Because I’m so familiar the McDonald’s “System” and its “three-legged stool” philosophy, I was somewhat taken aback by a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette news report that McDonald’s is dropping Heinz ketchup from its menu—after more than 40 years. The article implies that the breakup came about at least in part because Heinz recently hired Bernardo Hees as […]
Googling It and Outsourcing
I just got back from the Sourcing Interests Group fall summit in Ft. Worth and as usual was thoroughly impressed with the fantastic job they do at these events. I had the opportunity to chat with David Natoff, Head of Procure to Pay for Google, after his insightful presentation on the “search for outsourcing excellence […]
Yoga Gear Needs Alignment Too
Getting your supplier relationships right is more and more a question of getting and then nurturing the relationship’s alignment. Supplier relationships are not only vital to the financial health of your company, but can also be a key driver to overall brand health. These thoughts occurred to me as I listened to a short Wall […]
Talking Logistics — October 2013
Getting to We: A Conversation with Kate Vitasek and Jeanette Nyden by Talking Logistics Ready to “walk the talk” on creating highly collaborative business relationships? In this episode, Kate Vitasek and Jeanette Nyden discuss the key points from their recently published book, Getting to We, which “flips conventional negotiation on its head and shifts the perspective to […]
Outsource Magazine — October 2013
Stewart and Plotkin, the Prisoner’s Dilemma and Generous Strategies Column by Kate Vitasek published Oct. 16 in Outsource Magazine online. I’ve been a game theory fan for many years, particularly as it relates to showing that cooperative behavior indeed creates true “win-win” situations. So I was excited to read a work of University of Pennsylvania […]
