Blazing Saddles. Young Frankenstein. The Producers. History of the World, Part 1. Spaceballs. High Anxiety.
Mel Brooks created some of the world’s funniest movies, including several of my all-time favorites. But I never associated him or his movies with negotiation. Until recently, that is, when I started reading Brooks’ autobiography All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business. Yes – it’s a funny book. In fact, I read most of it on a plane and got some strange looks when I would burst out laughing!
Surprisingly, though, Brooks shares some great negotiation stories from his over 100 years of life. Don’t get me wrong, Brooks’ main skillset is not negotiation. But we can all learn from his negotiation experiences.
Here is Part One, with at least one sequel coming soon.
1. Failure can lead to success, if you learn from it.
Brooks cut his baby teeth as a comic in summer resorts in the Catskill Mountains. Here’s how he described his experience, which is relevant to anyone who has failed at a negotiation table.
“Failure is vital. It is an incredibly important quotient in the equation of a career. . . . Failure is like corned beef hash. It takes a while to eat. It takes a while to digest. But it stays with you. Failure may not feel good when it happens, but it will always sharpen your mind. You’ll always ask yourself, ‘Where did I go wrong? Why didn’t this joke or this sketch work?’ And there will always be reasons. You can’t just say, ‘Well, it’s not funny.’ You have to ask yourself, ‘Why is it not funny?’”
Regular column readers will recognize the importance of debriefing after all negotiations, especially after ones that didn’t end up well. Identify what worked, what didn’t work, and how you can improve. Then track and review these lessons. Lifelong learning!
2. The value of role-playing.
Brooks first real job in comedy was writing for The Show of Shows, a weekly live TV comedy starring perhaps the funniest comedian of the time, Sid Caesar. Brooks detailed the exhausting nature of all the show’s rehearsals, which included three full ones plus the dress rehearsal each week.
As I read this, I just kept thinking about how often even professional negotiators like lawyers and investment bankers go into high-stakes multi-million dollar negotiations without even one rehearsal!
Of course, negotiations are not scripted like TV shows, but not one? I doubt you could find one negotiation professor in all the world who – if asked – would not recommend at least one role-play of a big negotiation before it actually starts.
3. The power of a great Plan B/leverage.
Sid Caesar in 1952 was making about $5,000 a week as a huge TV star which was, according to Brooks, a “gargantuan sum for that time.” But Brooks had caught the movie bug and urged Caesar to go to Hollywood and get into the movies.
But when NBC heard that Caesar might not renew and leave (his Plan B/leverage), they:
“made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. They didn’t want, under any circumstances, to lose their time slot and its incredibly lucrative sponsorship. So they offered him an unprecedented raise in salary. He would go from five thousand dollars a show to twenty-five thousand dollars. Which came out to a million dollars a year.”
Caesar told Brooks “I just couldn’t say no.”
Wow! The power of leverage and having a strong Plan B.
A similar leverage-related story took place when Brooks pitched the movie Young Frankenstein as a black-and-white spoof to Columbia Pictures. Columbia said “never.”
So Brooks took it to his Plan B, Twentieth Century Fox. As he noted, the rest is “history” as it started a long and very profitable partnership between them.
His Plan B became his Plan A, and it worked out great for everyone (including us)!
Latz’s Lesson: The power of failure, role-plays and leverage. Each helped Brooks attain incredible success.
* Marty Latz is the founder of Latz Negotiation, a national negotiation training and consulting company that helps individuals and organizations achieve better results with best practices based on the experts’ research. He can be reached at 480.951.3222 or Marty@LatzNegotiation.com.