Capability Building

FAR BEYOND SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS, we work with clients directly to invest in their team’s long-term capacity to negotiate more effectively.

Our high-impact Organizational Capability-Building Services put the client’s organization and processes under a microscope and offers specific, customized solutions to achieve significant and sustained improvements in behavior, process and outcomes.

Seminar participants who are very enthusiastic about our approach to negotiation return to the same pressures, the same complex internal procedures, the same (sometimes skewed) incentives and the same habits preventing them from doing the right kinds of preparation and ongoing analysis.

We develop highly customized training material that uses past and current client negotiations as case examples. We identify people who are handling certain kinds of negotiations well, and develop training programs that match the needs and challenges of the group whose capability we are seeking to improve. The training program combines our more general negotiation exercises and case studies with real-world client negotiations, enabling us to diffuse best practices throughout the group being trained.

This kind of engagement often targets a group of people who do related negotiations (or are part of teams that work on similar negotiations) such as the people who negotiate large sales, joint venture relationships, large distribution contracts, business development, M&A (as well as those who work with them in support functions) or who are part of related internal negotiations.

What Clients Say About Our Capability Building Services:

“David Lax and his team at Lax Sebenius worked behind the scenes to help us take on an extraordinarily challenging negotiation that threatened the viability of our company. They brought to bear a strategic sense and sage advice, helping to lead our team through a process in which we and Lax Sebenius collaboratively developed and executed a negotiation strategy. The 3D Negotiation approach helped us identify and activate external parties – including some that were not initially obvious to us – that usefully influenced our negotiating counterparts. David and his team worked as a sounding board for us before and after key points in the process, offering tactical advice and helping us to adjust our strategy as needed.

As a result of the negotiating strategy we developed in close collaboration with David and the Lax Sebenius team, the share price of TransAlta jumped 25% on the day that the agreement was announced; beyond our relief at getting this brutal negotiation behind us, jointly working through the systematic 3D negotiation process strengthened our management team’s capabilities.”

“Lax Sebenius have provided extraordinary value to Bupa and Diageo. They have worked with my teams on a wide range of corporate and commercial negotiations for almost 20 years. Rather than play the game that presents itself, they proactively set up a negotiation game that has a higher probability of achieving a successful outcome. In doing so, they have developed creative, thoughtful and sometimes out-of-the box strategies that have saved/created Diageo and Bupa over £300 MM in value while a) often improving relationships with external parties; b) improving our own internal negotiations; and c) building the teams’ capabilities to perform better.”

"Their 3D approach was important in helping to deliver hundreds of millions of pounds of value for shareholders."

"Following the clear and innovative concept of '3-D Negotiation' has contributed invaluably to many agreements that are critical to Novartis."

“For many years, we searched for just the right firm and individual to find the best approach to enhance our senior executives’ negotiating skills and after endless presentations of tired win-win and win-lose clichés, we began working closely with Dr. Jim Sebenius. His 3-D approach is in use at many levels of the Estee Lauder Companies with excellent results.”

“I asked William Ury and David Lax to help me in the most contentious and difficult business negotiation of my career – the sale of my final stake in the company I grew from a small firm to the largest food company and largest employer in Brasil. The two years prior to their engagement were filled with public sparring, litigation, and unproductive negotiation. They helped me think carefully about my own interests, worked to create leverage with respect to the buyer and developed a plan to meet the fundamental interests of both buyer and seller. They negotiated on my behalf with their chosen intermediary, the distinguished Baron David de Rothschild, and achieved an agreement that met my interests so well that it surpassed my expectations at the time I engaged them of what might be achievable in the negotiation.”