How to Negotiate a Salary

Here are some valuable tips I found for salary negotiations:

Commandment 1: Be Prepared

Preparation is critical when negotiating the terms of your employment. The more information you have, the more successful you will be. This is so important that I have devoted a full chapter in my book to preparing for employment negotiations. This is the first commandment because it is the most important single thing you can do to ensure that you get the best deal possible.

Commandment 2: Recognize That Employment Negotiations Are Unique

Employment negotiations are different from other types of negotiations. They are not a one-shot deal like buying a house or a car. When the employment negotiations are over, you will have to work with your former "adversary" on a daily basis; more important, your career success may depend on the person with whom you have just finished negotiating. Therefore, even though you want to negotiate the best possible deal, you need to proceed in a way that doesn't tarnish your image.

By the same token, your future boss will want you to feel good about joining the company. Once an employer has decided that you are the person for the job, the primary concern will not be to negotiate the least expensive compensation package the company can get away with. Rather, the main focus will be on getting you to accept the job. As a result, employment negotiations are unusual in that both sides share that same basic goal.

Commandment 3: Understand Your Needs and Those of Your Prospective Employer

Any employment negotiation is going to involve trade-offs. To be successful in this type of negotiation, you need to examine your own priorities. What is it that you want? Are comfortable with a low salary and a large equity stake? Do you feel confident that you can meet the requisite criteria to earn a bonus? Are you able to handle dramatic swings in income from year to year? How important is job security to you?

Understanding your needs will also help you determine what type of company you want to work for. (For example, a family-owned company might offer a larger salary than start-up company, but the same start-up company will offer stock or stock options that a family-owned company typically will not.) Regardless of the type of company you are considering, an employer may not be able to give you exactly what you want. There are numerous institutional constraints on how much a company can pay for a given position or what kinds of benefits it can offer.

Understanding what you want and what a company can do within its own organizational and budgetary constraints will enable you to determine what trade-offs are possible in order to maximize what you get. This knowledge will also enable you to walk away from a job when a company cannot offer the type of compensation package that suits your needs.

Commandment 4: Understand the Dynamics of the Particular Negotiations

Sometimes you will have skills or experience for which there is a great demand. You may be the only qualified candidate to have made it through the interview process, and the company would like to hire someone quickly. Similarly, if you have been able to defer discussing compensation until the company has determined you are the best candidate for the job, your bargaining position will be greatly strengthened. These are enviable positions to be in.

On the other hand, you may in fact be one of several candidates the company is considering, any one of whom it would be happy to hire. Under those circumstances, compensation may be the key factor in determining who gets the job. Sizing up the situation and understanding the relative position of each of the parties to the negotiations will help you determine when to press your advantage and when to back off.

Commandment 5: Never Lie, but Use the Truth to Your Advantage

Honesty is important. If you lie during the negotiations, sooner or later you are likely to be caught. Once you are caught lying, you lose all credibility. Even if you don't lose the job, you will be placed at a tremendous disadvantage, and your future credibility on the job will be undermined.

On the other hand, total candor will not be rewarded. You are not required to answer a specific question directly unless the answer helps your position. You can determine what you want to say and how you want to say it. One element of preparation is to understand those areas which may be problematic so you can rehearse how you will handle them when they come up.

Commandment 6: Understand the Role That Fairness Plays in the Process

The guiding principle for most employers in determining what they will agree to is fairness. Within the constraints of their budget and organization structure, employers will usually agree to anything that is fair and reasonable in order to hire someone they want. Appeals to fairness are the most powerful weapon available in employment negotiations. Sometimes such an appeal may even convince an employer of the need to adjust its salary structure or increase the amount of money budgeted for a position.

You should be able to justify every request in terms of fairness. If the cost of living is higher where you're going, it is only fair to have your salary increased sufficiently to compensate. If comparable executives in similar companies are given one percent of the company's stock, you should be treated no differently. Your prospective employer will want you to accept its offer and to feel that you have been treated fairly. Understanding the importance of fairness as a negotiating principle can make the difference between success and failure.

Commandment 7: Use Uncertainty to Your Advantage

If an employer is not certain what it will take to recruit you , its initial offer is likely to be close to its best offer. If you have divulged too much information, it will likely not offer you as much as it might have otherwise. By not disclosing exactly what your compensation package is or exactly what it would take to get you to leave your current job, you will force a potential employer to give you its best offer.

Commandment 8: Be Creative

You may not be able to get everything you want, but you want to be sure to get everything you can. Focus on the value of the total package. Look for different ways to achieve your objectives. Be willing to make trade-offs to increase the total value of the deal. Limit your "requirements." When you lock yourself into a position, you limit your ability to be creative.

If you are creative, you can package what you want in ways that are acceptable to the company. You will also be able to find creative "trades" that allow you to withdraw requests that might be problematic to the company in return for improvements in areas where the company has more flexibility.

In the end, however, you still must get the company to agree to those elements of the deal that are critical to you. If you are not able to do so, or if have to give up too much to get what you need, perhaps this is the wrong job for you. However, before you insist on any particular term in your employment package, be sure that it is really essential. By insisting on a particular term you may be giving up something of greater value; you may even be giving up your chance to get the job altogether.

Commandment 9: Focus on Your Goals, Not on Winning

Too often in negotiations winning becomes more important than the actual goals that are achieved. This tendency is particularly problematic in employment negotiations. Not only is it important to focus on achieving your goals; it is also important not to make your future boss feel like a loser in the negotiations. Remember, that this person will control you future career. You will have gained little by negotiating a good deal if you alienate your future boss in the process.

Commandment 10: Know When to Quit Bargaining

There comes a point in every negotiation when you have achieved everything that you could gave reasonably expected to achieve. At that point you should thank the person you are dealing with and accept the offer. If you don't recognize when to stop negotiating, you run the risk of having the company decide that it made a mistake by offering you the job in the first place. Most companies will want to treat you fairly and make you happy, but few companies want to hire a prima donna. Being perceived as greedy or unreasonable may cause the deal to fall apart. Even if it does not, you will have done immeasurable harm to your career with your new employer.

Commandment 11: Never Forget That Employment Is an Ongoing Relationship

This is the most important commandment and cannot be overemphasized.

Employment negotiations are the starting point for your career with the company. They set the tone for your employment relationship. Get too little and you are disadvantaged throughout your career; push too hard and you can sour the relationship before it even begins. How you handle the initial negotiations can have an impact, for better or worse, on how successful your tenure with a company will be.


Reference: http://www.acetheinterview.com/interview/salarynego.php

Dan Pink: Why Rewards Don’t Work

http://lateralaction.com/articles/dan-pink-rewards/

Followup on ENFP=ADHD?

Of all my posts, it seems to be "ENFP=ADHD?" seems to be the most popular because of people googling similar phrases. Here's a direct link to it: http://entrepreneurness.blogspot.com/2008/11/enfp-adhd.html

I conclude from this that other people must be sensing the relationship. My guess is most people aren't familiar enough with both terms to understand a correlation. But, if you've found your way here through a search engine... then obviously, you aren't most people.

I've had a handful of people in my life like my mom and high school math teacher tell me that I had ADD. Being told that you have "Attention Deficit DISORDER" is not a pleasant thing to hear, so it felt like a kind of insult. No one wants to hear that something is wrong with them, especially when it feels like an insult to your personality and being. But here is the thing, I don't think it's a disorder.  I've found someone to agree with me, and she happens to be a psychotherapist with 40 years of experience. Lynn Weiss, Ph.D. is the author of "Attention Deficit Disorder In Adults: A different way of thinking". She explains that the people who decided to label it a disorder were selected mental health professionals and pharmaceutical companies, both of whom have high stakes in the outcome. In short, by labeling it a disorder, people in the industry can make more money.

I think of being an ENFP, which happens to have a strong correlation to ADD to be a different way of thinking.  We are lateral thinkers, not sequential thinking.  If you are an ENFP and talk to someone of the similar personality type you will know exactly what I'm talking about because you shift from one subject matter to another with ease, following each other's footsteps perfectly.  The communication is visual, lively and engaging.  Its not about how things are, it's about how things can be.  We don't ask what, we ask why.  We have different motivations, a different skill set, and a very different way of looking at things.  We are big picture people, we are people of passion.  We want to do what we love, and we want to love what we do.

We are people who follow our gut instincts, people who make decisions on how things make us FEEL.  We see patterns, we see patterns and relationships everywhere.  Conversations play out in our head, we see the 10 next steps before we even get started on the first.  We move to the beat of our own drum, our schedules are unpredictable, we live in a disorganized way.  Sometimes the disorganization gets the best of us and we end up spinning in circles for a while.  When we stop spinning and get pointed in the right direction, we can make anything happen.  Have faith in yourself that you can do it.  Get help from your support system when you need some guidance.

Here is something that'll help you, written by a fellow ENFPer! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQRWeZy-S8Q

Stepping out

When either taking the jump out on your own, or being pushed there and into a place of self exploration, here are a couple of important things I have learned first hand along the way.

1)  Set up time limits and schedule yourself.  When you leave time to make decisions open, you may never make a decision because you are afraid of making the wrong decision.  There is no 100 percent correct decision, and variable are constantly changing.  If it is time you are taking to try and save money, factor in the extra time you are putting in to save this money, and ask yourself if it is worth the possible outcome.

2)  Trust the people you talk to before you tell them too much.  If you don't feel comfortable with the person or haven't reached the needed level of trust...do not tell the person too much.  Yes, there is that possibility that someone may steal your idea or tell others.  But, the larger factor in all of this is that they can bomb your idea and self confidence with one quick blow.  If you let them in too deep without making sure they are qualified to hold what is most precious to you in their hands you are playing with fire.

3)  Use your community.  In life you are up and you are down.  You are in front and behind.  You are novice and you are experienced.  The only way to steadily get ahead is by helping and being helped by others.

4)  Stick it out.  Things don't happen overnight.  You need to be serious and persistent.  People need to see your dedication to want to help you.  There will be waves of good and waves of bad, you need to weather the storm to see the rainbow.

5)  It becomes about the small triumphs and achievements.  When you step out on your own, everything suddenly becomes very real and very personal.  Your stake becomes much higher so the pressure is on to perform.  When things don't work out it feels like the weight was on you to make it successful.  It is easy to stress out when your goals aren't reached, because you are the one responsible.  On the other hand, when things do work out, when things start to click together and make sense...the euphoria takes over.

6) The secret sauce of success.  Projects are made up of many components.  The main of which are people, ideas, timing, and passion.  Most projects will be off balance.  But, once you get that projects where these components can work together in a harmonious fashion, the secret sauce is made and you get a taste of what  makes the most successful companies and projects in the world succeed.

Any more to add to this?  Leave your comment below!

Dealing and Stone Soup

I went to a conference a year ago, and one of Silicon Valley's most well known venture capitalists, Tim Draper, gave a talk. He mentioned something along the lines of "You can't get anywhere in business without dealing. Creating a business is a series of deals.  Dealing to an entrepreneur is like breathing to a person" A light bulb went off when he said that, and since then those words have been rolling around in my head, because I think they carry more usefulness than just the business sense.

First of all, do you know how to make stone soup?

Once upon a time, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. One day a wandering man came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.

"There's not a bite to eat in the whole province," he was told. "Better keep moving on."

"Oh, I have everything I need," he said. "In fact, I was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you." He took a giant pot, filled it with water, and built a fire under it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.

By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or watched from their windows. As the soldier sniffed the "broth" and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their skepticism.

"Ahh," the soldier said to himself rather loudly, "I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage -- that's hard to beat."

Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he'd retrieved from its hiding place, and added it to the pot. "You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of onions as well, and it was fit for a king."

The village butcher managed to find some onions . . . and so it went, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for all.

When the people were unwilling to share what they had, no one had a very appetizing possession.  It was only when they began to share did they all jointly benefit.  In fact, everyone went in on a deal.  They gave up some of their product to collaborate on a greater product that was exponentially better than what they started with.  By working together, with everyone contributing what they can, a greater good is achieved.

The way I see it, no one knows or has everything in life.  Sometimes we are up, sometimes we are down.  You could cope with this by yourself...or you could choose the better option.  You could join a community.  Joining a community entails contributing what you have for the greater good, and then you'll find that when you are in need of something your community will be there to help you.  We are much stronger as a whole than we are as an individual.  Use your strengths where you can helping others, and when you need help, don't be afraid to ask for it.  We are all be better off when we each contribute what we have to offer...the soup tastes much better that way.

The Basics of Product Design

A designer must develop a product that by definition has the capabilities to meet some need that is not fully defined

Seven basic actions of Problem Solving:

1. Establish the need or realize that there is a problem to be solved
2. Plan how to solve it
3. Understand the problem by developing requirements and uncovering existing solutions for similar problems
4. General alternative solutions
5. Evaluate the alternatives by comparing them to the design requirements and to each other
6. Decide on acceptable solutions
7. Communicate the results

Planning occurs mainly at the beginning of a project.  Plans are always updated because understanding is improved as the process progresses.  These are called design iterations.

There are 2 well known methods of design, the over-the-wall design method, and concurrent engineering.

With the over-the-wall method, more often than not the customer is not content with the product that comes out of production.  Because, like the children's game 'telephone', there is much important information that gets lost in translation along the way.

The more effective method of design is concurrent engineering.  In concurrent engineering the primary focus is on the integration of teams of people, design tools and techniques, and information about the product and the process used to develop and manufacture it.

Ten features of concurrent engineering:

• Focus on the entire product life
• Use and support of design teams
• Realization that the procceses are as imporant as the product
• Attention to planning for information centered tasks
• Careful product requirements development
• Encouragement of multiple concept gerneration and evaluation
• Awareness of the decision-making process
• Attention to designing in quality during every phase of the design process
• Concurrent development of product and manufacturing process
• Emphasis on communication of the right information to the right people at the right time

The success of the design process can be measured in the cost of the design effort, the cost of the final product, the quality of the final product, and the time needed to develop the product.  In addition, how well the product is received by the end user is a true measure of a successful design process.

The above is just a glimpse at some of the basics of product design.  Much of the information above can be found in the book The Mechanical Design Process (Mcgraw-Hill Series in Mechanical Engineering). This is the book that was used in my sophomore design class and is used throughout industry.

My Theories and Lessons Learned

As I live life I tend to create my own theories/thoughts/guidelines as I start to notice patterns.  I like to document them as they come.  Here are some thoughts that have hit me lately.

"Just before you begin to get smarter, you first feel really stupid"- SM

•  The graph below represents the population as a whole.  As people mature in their environment they are within one of the brackets and progress from 'dumb' to 'smart' as they understand the world around them better.  If they stay in their current environment, less is unknown to them and they maintain in a lower bracket in the pyramid, but at the top of their bracket.  If they choose to change their environment or a change is brought on forcing a drastic change, they will break through to a higher bracket , realizing that they knew less than they thought they did, but their potential for learning increases.  The pyramid represents the world population, people have a different 'maximum bracket' that they will achieve in their lives.  It all depends on how much they decide to explore, discover and learn in their lifetimes.  In order to keep progressing up the pyramid one would have to break out of their comfort zone each time they feel like they are quite knowledgeable able their current surrounding environment and no longer being challenged.

"Everything is always changing.  Nothing is constant.  It's about being flexible and adaptable to your environment"- SM

• successful companies are the onces that are constantly changing their business and business model to fit the ever changing needs of their consumers and environment.  There is no one business or product that has remained forever constant.
• Relationships with people are not always perfect, but the ultimate personal relationship knows how to handle different situations and issues in a constructive manner and the people will evolve and change together. 

"There is no ultimate truth.  Everything is how we perceive it to be in the moment" /"The only reality that exists is perceived"- SM 

• Combined with different experience, ages, emotions, view points, i.e., no two people will ever view a situation in the same way, and even one person at different points in time will view a situation differently.
• A clear example would be fashion.  People will love or hate the same thing.  You could love an outfit one day, and then 30 years look back at a picture and think to yourself, "what the heck was I thinking?!"
• One second you could think you are in a perfect relationship.  The next moment you may only see flaws.  In hindsight you will see the same situation very differently again. 

"Decide something.  It doesn't always need to be perfect.  Things are always changing anyway.  You just need to be able to adapt to your changing environment"- SM

• Don't be afraid to fail.  We learn more from failures than we do from success.  Indecision which leads to no action is much worse than a wrong decision that can later be corrected or modified.

• Why Fail?

• 1) ENCOURAGES LATERAL THINKING
  Failure encourages us to look for other more creative solutions that we ordinarily would not have thought of.
  2) GIVES US EXPERIENCE
  If we had succeeded immediately without the disappointment associated with failure then we may not get familiar with the full scope of the subject matter.
  3) BUILDS CHARACTER / SELF DISCOVERY
  We can learn from the experience, gain confidence, build character and become more the person that we ideally wish to be.  In the process you'll also find out more about yourself.  When you take the time and effort to overcome hardships you'll figure out how badly you actually want it.
  4) MAKES ONE MORE THICKSKINNED
  Becoming thickskinned is really a by-product of character building with a bit more; it shows the development of the individual and reflects the change in attitude that brings the best out of us all.
  5) SUCCESS TOO SOON CAN GIVE FALSE CONFIDENCE
  Working hard and trying multiple routes will give someone more knowledge than the person who made a couple of lucky right decisions to start with.
  6) FAILURE REVEALS YOUR WEAKNESSES
  By being more aware of where you are weak, you can improve yourself or then begin to focus more on your strengths.

"Its never a good thing to seek or expect the approval of everyone, it is impossible to receive it, there will always be critics.  Go with your gut, and when you need a more objective view, select a few people which of whom you trust and value their opinions."- SM