{"id":179,"date":"2015-07-05T13:23:12","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T17:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/?p=179"},"modified":"2015-09-11T17:20:07","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T21:20:07","slug":"negotiating-the-walt-disney-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/negotiating-the-walt-disney-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiating with PL Travers \u2013 the Walt Disney Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mary<\/a><\/p>\n

Enjoying a guilty pleasure over this July 4th<\/sup> weekend, I watched a Netflix-delivered DVD of Saving Mr. Banks.<\/em> It is the 2013 behind-the-scene story of Walt Disney\u2019s effort to get the rights to make a movie of the beloved children\u2019s book, Mary Poppins.<\/em> Mr. Disney, it seems, had promised his daughters he would make the movie, but the author, P.L. Travers (played by a dour Emma Thompson), resisted Mr. Disney\u2019s chirpy importuning for twenty years. When she found herself in need of money, she accepted a trip to Los Angeles to allow him to try to convince her. He launched a two-week charm offensive with the help of talented songwriters. But Mrs. Travers, as she insisted on being called, would have none of it. She said she did not want her beloved umbrella-toting character Disneyfied. So, essentially, the entire film is about a negotiation.<\/p>\n

At the end of the trip, when Mrs. Travers storms off back to England, a key negotiating insight occurs. Mr. Disney is told that she is not English but Australian and that her family name is Goff. Mr. Disney says what I found to be the crucial negotiator\u2019s insight line: \u201cHave I been talking to the wrong person?\u201d By the time he follows Mrs. Travers on the next flight to London and knocks on her door, he not only knows who she is but that her father\u2019s name was Travers Goff and that she has taken his first name as her last name \u2013 and he has discerned that Travers Goff is Mr. Banks, the Mary Poppins <\/em>character whom the author cannot relinquish. We all know that the outcome of the negotiation was a great success for both parties.<\/p>\n

Why did I focus on this one line? I think it contains within its short seven words a few overlooked keys to negotiating success. First, it suggests that you do need to know your negotiating partner\u2013 that itself is often missed. It is not just how much you want something or the great reasons that you have to support your vision of a deal, your own power, fame, or previously successful charm, you must know the other party and how she might react to your \u201cclear and correct\u201d views.\u00a0\u00a0 And it implies that you must do even more, you must have enough empathy to perceive another\u2019s world view. In this case, Disney thought it was both the author\u2019s perceptions of him and his background and her strong attachment and the unjustified guilt of a child about her father that made her cling to her creation even against her own financial interest and in the face of losing her home.<\/p>\n

Make sure you are never talking to the wrong person when you negotiate, talk to Helen Goff, not Mrs. Travers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Am I talking to the wrong person?
\nYou do need to know your negotiating partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,26],"tags":[28,27,29],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arbitration","category-mediation","category-negotiation","tag-negotiation","tag-negotiator","tag-research"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6qGtQ-2T","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":133,"url":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/getting-to-yes-at-downton-abbey\/","url_meta":{"origin":179,"position":0},"title":"Getting To Yes at Downton Abbey","author":"lakaster","date":"November 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Preparing for mediation is preparing for a negotiation with your mediation partner. \u00a0You can prepare not only by understanding what you need but by learning as much about your negotiating partners and what they might want or need and who has influence on them. \u00a0Check this out: http:\/\/www.adrtimes.com\/library\/getting-to-yes-with-the-dowager-countess-of-downton","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34,"url":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/facebook-and-the-social-network-speak-on-mediation\/","url_meta":{"origin":179,"position":1},"title":"Facebook and The Social Network Speak on Mediation","author":"lakaster","date":"April 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cSocial Network\u201d has come to life with lessons on how to prepare for mediation. The storyline for this blockbuster movie, in case you missed it is that on \u201ca fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Facebook and Social Network\"","block_context":{"text":"Facebook and Social Network","link":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/tag\/facebook-and-social-network\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appropriatedisputesolutions.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}