What It Is · Key Takeaways · Do’s and Don’ts · Pair With · Things to Explore
On 29 March 2017 Sir Tim Barrow, the United Kingdom’s permanent representative to the European Union, handed Donald Tusk a letter from Prime Minister Theresa May, formally notifying the Union of the UK’s intention to leave. That letter started a clock. Under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, the treaties stop applying to a departing state two years after its notification, with or without a deal, unless every member state agrees to extend. Thirty-one days after the letter, the twenty-seven remaining governments adopted joint guidelines setting the negotiation agenda: the terms of withdrawal were to be discussed first, and the terms of a future relationship only once the European Council judged that “sufficient progress” had been made. At the first negotiating round on 19 June, the British side agreed to that agenda. The cabinet decided on a detailed British proposal for the future relationship at Chequers on 6 July 2018. On two occasions, the UK asked for more time; on both occasions, the EU agreed to an extension. On 31 January 2020, the United Kingdom left the European Union. After its government had started the process, it took fifteen months to present a detailed proposal. The twenty-seven other members had only needed a month to organize, and controlled when the process would end.
What It Is
Velocity is the rate at which a negotiation process forces a party from picking up an issue, to evaluating it, to deciding and committing on it. It is the second pattern in the Momentum triad, where Pathos meets Structure. The others are Load (6.1), governing how much an actor has to carry at once, and Reversibility (6.3), which measures the cost of changing course or undoing a prior decision. Load distorts what gets thought about. Velocity determines when the thinking stops. The pressure comes from process design: deadlines, the planned succession of discussion rounds, response windows, the time available for consulting with your own side. It can operate decoupled from direct interaction: a party working alone against a binding deadline on a complex decision is under maximum Velocity.
Below the processing speed an actor can handle, Velocity is merely operational pace. But above that threshold, the actor skips steps. Analysis is cut short, objections don’t get raised or remain unanswered, alternatives stay undeveloped, and deal options are unexplored for lack of time. Commitments still get made, so terms increasingly become a product of the clock rather than careful deliberation on the issues. Velocity distorts in both directions. Too fast, and commitments harden before evaluation finishes. Too slow, and the window closes before anybody decides. The important questions are whether the pace matches the complexity of the case, and who decides on it.
Deciding too hastily doesn’t always immediately feel like failure. A decision under pressure still feels like progress, and the imminent arrival of the next one leaves no time to evaluate the previous one. It costs twice: first in the concessions made to meet a deadline that may not have been real, then in execution when unaddressed issues come back to bite. At that point, they are usually perceived as shortcomings in operations and not in deal making. So without displaying bad manners in making your counterparty feel distrusted, politely inquire what drives the deadline, and what the consequences would be if it were missed.
Key Takeaways
I. Control the timing, and you control the decisions
When a round or process step is completed, items that are not fully worked out yet get treated as final anyway. That gives the party that set the schedule the means to force open items to close. Deadlines and decision gates act like miniature versions of what the Convergence Mechanism (5.3) pattern does to the entire negotiation. Taking control of the schedule is rarely done in terms of blunt demand; it usually takes the form of constructive action. “Let me propose a timeline so we do this properly” sounds cooperative and is easily accepted as a courtesy. It doesn’t require formal authority over the agenda either: give an offer a validity date, insert a spell of silence while time ticks away, isolate a few issues that require a quick joint answer… None of them seem aggressive or unreasonable, and yet they silently bend the decisions in favorable direction. They establish small instances of status quo, to which objecting looks like obstructing.
Contesting the schedule or punctuations in timing costs least at an early stage. Amend a proposed timetable while the process itself is still under discussion. Later, contest inconvenient timing on grounds of quality. “Our engineers need to review the interface” is hard to override without appearing to want a worse outcome. Phrasing it as “We won’t accept your deadline” turns it into a contest of will.
One exception is common. In a competitive tender, the expiring clock is how a set of bidders is selected down. Ask for more time and you just eliminated yourself.
II. Excessive speed causes errors of omission
Overload announces itself: people look strained and meetings run long. Speed leaves gaps. Alternatives don’t get developed, benchmarks and stated facts don’t get checked, fine print is not proofread, financial models don’t get updated. To an outside observer, such omissions are invisible. To the participants themselves, it feels like progress and efficiency. Some agents may even silently like that there is no time to do the hard things: it keeps the negotiation simpler, and they can explain to their principal later that “there was no time”.
If you are on the receiving end of too fast a process, keep track of the important decision-supporting elements and give them an owner. That does not exclude you’ll need to make judgment calls on cutting corners, but you’ll make these calls eyes wide open and you’ll have a trace to avoid that the potential consequences get attributed to the wrong causes or people.
Think about your counterparty in the same way. Proceedings that look too smooth to be true probably are. If there is no contention, question or request for more time where you would expect it, it is possible they move faster than they think. That serves your objectives today, but can mean their principals will reopen agreed items later, or they’ll fail to execute on the deal.
III. Excessive speed causes errors to compound
Under sustained pace, commitments stack. The first commitment, made before its evaluation was finished, serves as the basis for what follows. Each additional layer raises the cost of revisiting earlier decisions: any unwinding touches more scope to correct. By the time the original error becomes apparent, reversing it costs a multiple of what it would have early on.
So take the pain as early as you can. Reopening a point burns some credibility and goodwill, but it will only get worse with time. Only reopen if it is crucial: if the clock is dialed back on your request, it also gives them permission to revisit previously agreed items favoring you.
IV. Your preparation determines your exposure
Two parties can face the same deadline and experience different pressure. A party that briefed its principals, defined a practical mandate of items that can be committed without referring back, and sufficiently developed its Plan B, bought itself time to comfortably meet the next deadline. A party that must frequently consult, initiate internal discussion to reconcile different interests, or still start the work to develop alternatives, spends a lot of the same time window catching up. Preparation is power, and velocity is one of the ways it is exercised.
Reactive defenses, such as asking for more time, cost goodwill and can be refused—or be impossible in practice. No counterparty can deny you your preparation. Principals aligned in advance shorten every deadline that follows. But be aware that there are downsides to giving agents too wide a Mandate (4.1). Preparing is a good thing, unless it’s preparing to give the entire store away.
A Few Do’s and Don’ts
Don’t Answer a bundle as a bundle
A bundle packages several decisions into a single window. If the bundle depends on you conceding items, you’ll only be able to take them back later by reopening the entire package. Respond item by item. How you frame it drives how that will be received. “I want to give each of these the attention it deserves” is hard to refuse, while “I won’t accept them together” makes it a contest. Check first whether the bundle contains a trade-off you need. If one item pays for a concession on another, it’s OK to keep that pair together. If not, accepting means you will have forfeited your own leverage.
Do Put early commitments on record as provisional or conditional
“Agreed in principle.” “Subject to legal review.” “Agreed at working level, pending sign-off by principals.” Each keeps the process moving while leaving the point open, and staying disciplined in formally marking them as such prevents the counterparty from treating them as closed. Then harden commitments deliberately in the order you choose. Items can’t stay provisional indefinitely, but you shouldn’t give away what you haven’t yet been compensated for.
Don’t Let a quiet period expire without a signal
A classic pattern in institutional Procurement is the “hurry up and wait” of a tight deadline followed by silence, no feedback and no status update. In this case, no news is not good news. At best it’s no news, worse is if the time gets spent talking to your competitor. Staying quiet also hardens whatever was agreed at speed or merely left hanging: bringing a point up again after a long pause looks like reopening settled ground. If you don’t get a meeting or airtime, maintain a cadence of short written notes, to keep the important points alive.
Do Remeber that no clock is neutral: know which side it benefits
If failing to agree hurts you less than it hurts them, you can afford to slow down. If it hurts you more, an unhurried schedule is working against you: your alternatives age, your mandate runs out, your internal support thins. Passively accepting a leisurely schedule or delay tactics when your position erodes is a mistake. But so is mindlessly pressing for speed when the passage of time strengthens you.
Pair With
Load (6.1).6. Overload is the product of Load times Velocity. A heavy agenda with enough time to work through is survivable. So is a fast pace with a small set of light topics. The combination is where things break. Pace is the variable that changes fastest, meaning a pause is a more effective way to give an overloaded party relief than cutting back on the issue list.
Reversibility (6.3). Velocity dictates how fast commitments become hard to undo; Reversibility prices what it costs to undo them. When there is leeway to keep points provisional and revert back, a high pace is less of a problem. Forcing even early decisions to be irreversibly final, on the other hand, means forcing your counterparty to slow down.
Relative Advantage (2.2). Whether time works for you depends on which side a failure to agree damages more. When the other side imposes a daily cost that they can switch off at will, such as halting supply or withholding payment, the negotiation turns into an endurance contest. The party that can’t carry the daily cost or whose alternatives deteriorate the most will have to give in.
Things to Explore
Book
Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, MIT Press, 1998. Klein studied fire scene commanders deciding under time pressure and found that for around 80 percent of their decisions, they compared no options at all. They recognized the situation as a type, took the first course of action the type suggested, and acted. At high speed, that is what everybody does: you act on what you recognize. Klein also lists where such recognition is unreliable, including domains where you must predict human behavior and where feedback is slow or scarce. Negotiation meets both conditions. Search handles: recognition-primed decision, singular evaluation.
Article
Carsten De Dreu, “Time pressure and closing of the mind in negotiation,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 91, 2003, 280–295. In an experiment, all paired participants had the same allocated negotiation time, but one group was told it was plenty and the other that past research showed it was tight. Pairs who believed they were short of time settled in nine minutes against sixteen, and reported they cared less about thinking it through. They also kept their walk-in assumption that whatever they wanted, the other side wanted the opposite. Only the unpressured pairs corrected it during the negotiation, and did better as a result: a joint 6,970 points against 6,380 for the rushed pairs, out of a possible 8,000. The relative split between both sides was unaffected by the pace, so feeling rushed didn’t transfer value from one party to the other but cost them both. Search handles: closing of the mind negotiation, fixed-pie perception revision.
Case study
The gastroenterology fellowship market, 1986–2006. From 1986 through 1997, American hospitals filled their gastroenterology fellowships through a central match, in which programs and applicants ranked each other and every offer was settled simultaneously. That changed in 1996, when there were more places than people to fill them. Programs began hiring on their own, ever earlier until offers went out over a year before the job started. Most were exploding offers: applicants needed to decide before seeing what other programs offered, or the place went to someone else. No program could afford to wait, as they risked losing the best candidates. As a result, neither side ended up with the best available match, and once committed, applicants couldn’t easily move. In 2006, the professional bodies did not ban early hiring but adopted a rule letting an applicant resign an already accepted place to enter the match. An early offer no longer bound anyone. That alone restored the central match system, which attracted 79 percent of eligible programs and filled 98 percent of their places. Making acceptance reversible removed the reason to rush. Search handles: market unraveling exploding offers, Niederle Roth gastroenterology.
And one you would not expect
Chess Stetson, Matthew Fiesta and David Eagleman, “Does time really slow down during a frightening event?”, PLoS ONE 2(12), 2007, e1295, together with Michael Land and Benjamin Tatler, “Steering with the head: the visual strategy of a racing driver,” Current Biology 11, 2001. Racing drivers say that at speed the world arrives in slow motion. People who survive frightening events say the same. Eagleman’s group tested it by dropping volunteers from a 46-meter tower into a net, a fall of about two and a half seconds. Each wore a display flashing digits too fast to read at normal speed, so that anyone whose perception had genuinely sped up would be able to read them. Nobody could: reading in flight was no better than on the ground. Still, participants remembered their fall as 36 percent longer than it was. For racing drivers, what buys them time is where they look. Land and Tatler tracked a driver’s eyes during high-speed practice and found his head turning toward the next corner about 0.9 seconds before the car rotated. The perceived extra time comes from taking information in earlier, not processing faster. It’s what preparation does for negotiators. Search handles: perceptual chronometer free fall duration, racing driver tangent point gaze.
Velocity is pattern 6.2 of twenty-seven. The two axes, the nine categories and the full map are laid out in this introduction to The Negotiation Pattern Language.