Agreement

I used to negotiate contracts for one of the big boy firms on the Dow Jones Index. We were always working on getting an agreement finalised. Sometimes this took months — more than a year once. It almost always required too much input from legal.

And still we wrote, revised, struck and discussed. Arguing over things that we were certainly not going to litigate in the event of a disagreement.

Sales people often wondered why it took so long to resolve a contract that had been agreed to in principle with the client over two bottles of some mid-range wine at an upscale steak house in a major metropolitan city. I told them it was necessary to protect the firm.

Huh?

We were selling a product to a customer and we needed protection. From what, I never really understood. Customers would leave without so much as a goodbye, if a better price was dropped at their door by our competitors.

Would they have been so quick to leave if we had converted all the effort of protecting the firm through agreements into serving the customer?

But, I digress.

What is agreement? It’s nothing, really. No one ever truly agrees to anything — when you probe the depths.

All that time at the firm has me thinking we should seek not agreement, but understanding. If we really understand the other person, party or state — things like joint ventures, peace treaties and even marriages might last a lot longer.

I don’t strive to reach agreements; those usually involve one party bullying the other into submission (like a treaty). I seek to understand and to be understood. It’s definitely more difficult to use this approach. But, when an understanding is reached, it leaves room for healthy disagreement from time to time without having the entire venture fall on its face.

I could end with some wise Buddha quote here, but I think you understand.