Mike Tyson once said - "Everybody has a plan untilthey get punched in the face". Improvisation, in other words, goes a long way toward a successful strategy in any context but also in the context of negotiation.

In The Art of Negotiation, Harvard Business School Professor and editor of Negotiation Journal, Michael Wheeler echoes the sage insight of the master of the ring: canned, scripted plays can't survive contact with reality because the people you're negotiating with are capable of surprising moves and are just as smart and fallible as you.

Assume otherwise, and you've set yourself up for failure before you start because you hobble yourself with rigid plans that never account for every outlier. Negotiation, like any strategic interaction, is, above all an interaction, a conversation, and to maintain an edge you need to be flexible and open to possibilities.

Read more from the Seattlepi.com HERE