The Program on Negotiation at Harvard recently (a while ago) started a (somewhat) daily blog.  It’s mostly edited versions of longer articles written by the professors that teach PON classes.  The posts have enough to spark your thinking and get yourself chewing on how you’d tackle that particular issue.

Professor Subramanian is one of my favorites.  He taught a good portion of the classes I’ve taken through PON and he’s good.  This post is from a longer article he wrote on the complexities presented when negotiating through agents.

Agency negotiation (which is what I do) can be difficult because there is a lot of translation that needs to happen, and like everything else in life, it doesn’t always happen well.

And you know what?  A LOT of negotiations in art involve agents in one way or another.

So, here’s what I want you to do:

1.  Go read the article.  (It will take you 10 minutes if you are very very very slow about it.)

2.  Think about a negotiation situation where you would use an agent or where you would be negotiating with someone else’s agent.

3.  What are things you could do before the negotiation to avoid the problems of miscommunication & agents acting too much in their own best interests?

4.  No, seriously; what are they?  Write them down in a free form brain storming.

5.  Do the same thing regarding stuff you could do while those problems are happening; what could you do?

6.  Look at the lists (or clouds, or spider webs, or poems; whatever) you’ve created.  What do you NOT know?  What do you wish you knew about dealing with those situations?  Where does your brain get stuck?

7.  Discuss below.

Have a great weekend, everyone!