Elevating Negotiation to the Next Level
As director of Channel Accounts at Lilly USA, Keith Wagner leads a team that's responsible for the negotiation of agreements and the implementation of strategic priorities. Looking to expand his expertise and build on his previous Harvard Business School (HBS) Executive Education experience in the Strategic Negotiations program, he attended Changing the Game: Negotiation and Competitive Decision-Making. He shares his thoughts about the program's faculty and participants as well as its impact on the day-to-day challenges he faces.
Why did you choose to apply to this program?
The pharmaceutical supply chain is a dynamic and highly politicized space. Rhetoric across the political landscape around price transparency and access has put additional strain on the business partners in this channel. As a result, negotiations over both pricing and service agreements between multi-billion dollar global health care companies have become complex—with a focus on value claiming. Changing the Game offered the opportunity to look at complex problems through a different lens and provided real-life examples of both value creation and value destruction resulting from critical decisions made at critical times.
How did this program complement your past experience in Strategic Negotiations?
Changing the Game added an additional focus on influence and decision-making. This program emphasized principles of framing, negotiating the structure of the negotiation ("negotiauction"), and creative deal making through contingency offers. These ideas built on foundational negotiation tactics—such as "Know your BATNA"—that were the focus of Strategic Negotiations.
How did the faculty and fellow participants contribute to your learning experience?
The faculty members for both programs were simply world class. They were the perfect blend of provocative, charismatic, and brilliant. Throughout both programs, the faculty demonstrated the innate ability to extract many points of view without actually accepting any as the right answer. Also, the diversity of backgrounds and opinions from fellow participants created the ideal ingredients for the recipe of learning and debate. A few of the in-class exchanges were the most memorable of my educational career.
What are your biggest challenges today, and how has the program helped you to tackle them?
Market conditions have led to very tense and value-claiming negotiations over formulary access with payers and service-fee discussions with wholesalers. The program has helped me build a mental framework for approaching negotiations differently. I learned to not only look for the win-win in a negotiation, but to look for a bigger opportunity for overall value by understanding fundamental interests and what is truly most important to individuals and companies. Two years ago I used the principles I learned in Strategic Negotiations to unlock value for all parties in a major negotiation, and more recently I have begun to apply takeaways from Changing the Game to ongoing negotiations.
What advice would you give to future participants?
Soak in every moment and really invest in the role-playing opportunities that the case negotiations provide. Your faculty and fellow participants are some of the most intelligent and inspiring people you will meet. Take every opportunity to get to know who they are and where they are from both geographically and philosophically.