Vancouver Chapter Virtual Meeting
Decision Support for Negotiation
Date: April 16, 2026
Time: 3:30pm – 5:00pm PT
Via Microsoft Teams
Abstract
Join us for an engaging session on Decision Support for Negotiation, led by SDP Fellow Bill Haskett. Negotiators can reap high value from implementing decision support tools and methods. We will see how our standard approach, both qualitative and quantitative, can be modified to identify opportunities for agreement and increase deal stability and value.
Decision quality principles can be adapted to support negotiation by modifying what we do and the order we do it in.
We start with an understanding of what is important for us to achieve. Since your counterpart is human, a successful negotiation may depend on you helping them achieve their objectives, so we add that context. We may cautiously use an initial interaction with them to assess what they deem important. We may resort to game theory to help us, though beware of bias. Think about uncertainty from the beginning. Understand links through time and activity, including dependency and correlation. Do a qualitative pre-mortem with a root cause analysis to help you understand critical negotiation elements. Unlike standard support, we take a strategic approach to mitigate failure for both the negotiation process and the outcome.
Every negotiation has multiple levers and multiple currencies. It is the decision specialist’s job to assist the negotiator by determining degrees of freedom. You will never end up exactly at the ideal so understand how different an outcome would have to be before you would want to do something different. Keep the negotiator informed of this optionality and the consequences. If the negotiator understands the acceptable degrees of freedom, they will find a good solution, or know when to respectfully walk away.
We typically delay the quantitative side of DQ for as long as feasible, but not in negotiation decision support. We want a good, uncertainty-literate model from near the beginning. Be careful to be general and avoid anchoring.
Your job does not end with negotiation planning. Set up a nearby “hot room” where you can prepare to provide real-time assessment of negotiating positions and options to the negotiator.
Application of DQ principles to negotiation leads to higher mutual value, decision clarity, confidence, better outcomes, mutual respect and a jump-start on project execution.
About the Speaker:
Bill Haskett is an internationally recognized decision science and risk expert with 45 years of experience in energy, mining, water management, and sustainability. He helps teams, organizations, and countries make strategic, evidence-based, and practical decisions. Bill is Managing Director of Haskett Consulting International.