Nolan Martin :
Hello, welcome to the Negotiate X Podcast. My name’s Nolan Martin. With me as always, Aram Donigian. Aram, wanna kick it off for today?
Aram Donigian :
I will. Great to see you, Nolan. Thanks so much and it’s a pleasure to introduce our guest to you today. Jonathan Hughes has spent the last 30 years working with companies and state owned enterprises across a range of industries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Haven’t been to Antarctica yet. We’ll have to fix that somehow.
With a focus on growth strategies, initiating and responding to disruptive competition, external innovation and supply transformation. Before BDO, Jon was a partner at Vantage Partners, and before that, an analyst and then senior analyst at Putnam Hayes and Bartlett.
Jon has published multiple articles in California Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Ivy Business Journal and Supply Chain Management Review, as well as articles in Sloan Management Review, Global Business and Organizational Excellence, Journal of Strategic Alliances and more places than I could probably mention in the hour that we have.
Jon was recently recognized for excellence in Leadership Award in Consulting Magazine just in 2025. Congratulations, Jon. Jon has also been a guest lecturer at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke, the Darden School of Business at UVA, the US Military Academy at West Point, near and dear to our heart, the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and the advanced program of instruction for lawyers at Harvard Law School.
Jon, thanks so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to join us.
Jonathan Hughes :
It’s my pleasure to be here and looking forward to chatting with both you gentlemen. So thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.
AD :
Jon, you’ve worked all over the globe and across an incredibly diverse set of industries.
As you look back, what was it that initially pulled you into this kind of work? And I’m really curious about what it is that keeps it meaningful and exciting for you still today?
From Arbitration To Collaboration: How Business Breakdowns Sparked A Career In Strategic Partnerships [01:49]
JH :
Yeah it’s scary to think it’s been 30 years of doing this work in different kinds of ways, but I do remember exactly how I got into this.
So my first job was at Putnam Hayes and Bartlett which at the time was one of the major economic consulting firms long since acquired and not an independent firm anymore. But a lot of that work and the work I did was building economic damage models for corporate litigation, breach of contract patent infringement, and I had from school an interest in negotiation.
And what I found in doing that work in Putnam Hayes and Bartlett, which I loved, was that all of the work we did had its genesis in some kind of business partnership alliance relationship between companies that went south, that went awry in some way and ended up in some form of arbitration or litigation, which created interesting work to do.
But as I did that, I kept thinking back to some of my negotiation training in school and ideas about how, what is the work where you could help companies make these relationships work, negotiate better deals that could be successfully implemented, manage those ongoing relationships at a company to company, team to team, and person to person level, which is ultimately where the rubber meets the road and avoid litigation, but instead focus all that energy and be part of making these things successful.
And so that then, led me back to a firm that then became Vantage Partners with roots in the Harvard Negotiation Project, really focused on a lot of the work of Roger Fisher, William Ury and others on negotiation as a collaborative enterprise. Doesn’t mean there’s not disagreement or conflict, but that parties approach each other not as adversaries, but as potential partners who, for all their conflicts have common interests, things they could do together, and expanding outward from that approach to negotiation, to team organizational, company to company, business relationships, and the opportunities to collaborate to create more value for customers. Innovation, more value in the market place.
And hopefully, although my work has been primarily in the corporate sector, some government, some military, you know, do that in a way that makes the world a better place in some small way too.
AD :
Yeah. And there’s certainly no shortage of demand on what you’re providing. As we look at the news these days, I just love how you framed that, Jon, which is, we really do have this choice about where we put our energy. We can put our energy in managing these relationships, or we can put our energy into fighting each other and litigating. So yeah, that’s a beautiful way to frame that.
NM :
Jon, you’ve written for some of the top journals in our field. Is there a piece or framework you’ve published that you think best captures your thinking on how companies should approach negotiation or like you mentioned collaboration today?
How Embracing Differences Fuels Innovation, Strategy & Stronger Partnerships [04:37]
JH :
I think the shorter answer, short answer to that is no. At some point I would love to write a book and kind of bring things together, but such as it’s been, my writing has been piece parts including great opportunities that more years ago than I could probably count with Aram to do a piece in in Harvard Business Review.
But there’s, and so across different journals and writing, often on planes to and from clients, I would say the common theme in what I’ve written from a lot of different angles, again, it’s this intersection of kind of larger strategy, be it business strategy or strategy in general and connecting that all the way down to interpersonal interactions.
So, whether it’s managing conflict, whether it’s negotiation, whether it’s strategic alliances, whether it’s a piece a couple of years ago on innovation and open collaborative innovation between companies. I feel like there’s this emerging theme over my writing. Yeah. Now over 25 years or something of how to make, and it was a phrase, I think in an article with Jeff Weiss in Harvard Business Review, transforming differences in conflict from a liability to an asset.
And again, relating negotiations, business strategy, overall strategy, connecting that to ultimately, all these things do come down to people and how people interact. So that, I guess as it’s emerged over the decades and for what time remains for me, that’s the uniting theme of a lot of the work that I have done in the public and private sector.
NM :
Do me a favor? What’s that theme one more time so I can make sure I write that one down.
JH :
Differences and conflict, right? Conflict in a non pejorative sense, but that just a clash of I want this, you want that, or, I think this is the best approach, and you think something different. So that disagreement and conflict can easily create gridlock. It can damage stress or damage relationships.
It can often be a liability, but there is the potential and it’s all about not conflict or not, it’s how you deal with it. There is a way to deal with those differences, those disagreement that is productive, that is generative as opposed to a liability and toxic. So that’s the thing is how do you translate or transform those differences in conflict to be an asset rather than a liability.
So it drives innovation, it drives better decision making. You and I disagree. Probably the odds are neither one of us has a monopoly on the truth in the situation. And if we can be curious about those differences, not try to negate them, but learn from them, put our different perspectives together in a synthetic way, we’re probably gonna come out with better ideas, better decisions, more creative solutions than we would independently if we hadn’t had the conflict to begin with.
There’s a classic case, like if we’re all sitting in a room together and we all agree on everything, most of us don’t need to be in that room together. And so that’s and again, in terms of business partnerships or alliances between companies, there’s this irony. That’s why you form an alliance in the first place. You have different business models, you have different expertise, you have different capabilities. You. Sit within a different part of the value chain out in the marketplace. That’s why you come together, is that one plus one equals three, and yet, the irony is those very differences that create the business case to come together in the first place, those actually lead to disagreement and trade offs and the potential for conflict.
So, unless you figure out how to manage those well, the differences that brought you together in the first place are the differences that end up driving you apart as, what I saw in the early part of my career in kind of corporate litigation related work.
AD :
So Jon, as you talk about this, what can be disruptive competition and you also talked about the article you’ve written about innovation, thinking about external innovation and I adding to it the HBR piece that had the pleasure of writing with you a long time ago on, on extreme negotiations.
As you think about the organizations that you’ve helped navigate these sorts of challenges. Could you share an example or a moment when you had a client who had some sort of, whatever the challenge was and had to pivot very quickly and what it taught you? Or at least it was an example for you about the kind of negotiation strategy under great pressure?
Building Trust & Strategy In High-Stakes Partnerships Through Empathy & Understanding [08:50]
JH :
Maybe I’ll share a couple examples and to protect both the innocent and the guilty as we all deserve a little bit of grace. I will not name the companies. But I’ll give some pretty concrete, I think descriptions. So I’ve had the opportunity to work with a particular company and I’ve got a lot of longstanding client relationships.
I worked with a team with this particular client. We’ve worked together, in a variety of different ways for about 15 years now. And when we first started working with them, there was a particular focus on, they’re in a very complex, broadly within financial and data services. They have an incredibly complex ecosystem that they work within. Almost all of what they do for their customers depends on data and technology from other companies, right? So they’re absolutely interdependent with many other partners.
And yet those partners compete with them day-to-day, month to month. And we came in to help them formalize a strategy and a program to manage these partnerships in a strategic and collaborative way. And one of the jokes that they made, which resonate a lot with me is. They said, we’ve always had an approach to managing these partnerships but in the past it was through litigation or threatened litigation.
And yet if, and again, the kind of insight where they brought us in is if we could redirect the amount of energy and resources we put litigating and defending against litigation, given all this complexity, intention and these sort, if we could just redirect that to how do we go out, serve our joint customers better and actually make more money together, wouldn’t that be transformative? And I think over many years of working in partnership with them we were able to do that.
But it did, it started with that insight of we are managing these relationships. We are codependent and interdependent. It’s just the way we’re managing them comes out of a completely zero sum adversarial frame, and that’s a choice. That’s not inevitable. There’s actually a better choice, and now we have to do the work to bring that new vision into reality. So that’s one.
The other thing I will say is, and actually this has been true with a number of different clients, both in negotiations and business partnerships with strategic customers, strategic suppliers, joint venture partners, business relationships that were worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, right, in commercial activity back and forth and revenue. When I have been or with a team brought in to help with some of these. A lot of times there’s a conflict that precipitates that.
There’s a common pattern in these conversations where we come in and we’re starting to look at the situation with a client and they say they, meaning, the customer, the supplier, the licensing partner or the joint innovation partner, whatever they are. They’re trying to cheat us. They’re trying to take advantage of us. You start to peel that away and it’s like they are a company and companies are just containers for people. Like companies don’t intent. Companies don’t lie. Companies don’t cheat company, right? It is so peeling that away and saying, oh, like who are the people that you’re interact with?
Where do they sit within that larger company? You know what profit and loss? What P&L statement do they own? What are their objectives? What are the pressures they’re under? Who else is making decisions and start to peel away? And again it’s been a huge theme in my career of getting beyond the, just looking at companies as entities, but breaking them apart and getting down to the people who make decisions, who have goals and incentives.
Yes, they are agents. Of those companies that they work for, they’re working on their behalf. But until you get to that level of individual people making decisions under pressures and you’re not gonna really understand what’s driving a business to make certain decisions. And again, you wanna just be very careful of looking at behavior that, and we run into this in all spheres of life, right? Personal as well as professional.
Seeing behavior that we don’t like. I wish that person or that company would do something else. And jumping to the fact that because I don’t like it, they’re intending to hurt me. Very rarely is that good. They’re trying to do whatever is good for them. And once I can develop that level of empathy, it doesn’t mean that I agree with what they’re doing with, it doesn’t even mean that it’s, may or may not be ethical, but until I understand why they are doing what they’re doing and why to them it, it probably seems reasonable or justifiable.
Like until I get there I’m not gonna be able to change the situation or influence their behavior. And once I do, all of a sudden there are, again I may really disagree with what they’re doing, but once I understand where their mind is at this. So Roger Fisher formulation from getting Yes in other places.
Once I understand them, then I can start to figure out how I might begin to change their mind and influence them. And to do that I gotta be willing myself to be a little bit open to changing my view and my behavior as well. ‘Cause a lot of times when there’s conflict, I’m focused on what are all the bad things the other side’s doing, not paying attention to, you know what, on their side of the equation, they’re looking at me and they don’t understand the pressures I’m under, and they’re probably equally unhappy with stuff that I’m doing and, wondering if they can trust me or why I’m doing these things. Am I out to hurt them? We gotta break past that and come to greater understanding to find a way through our differences.
AD :
Jon, that’s a response from a very seasoned and veteran consultant and someone who’s been in this field and done this work for a long time. I’m curious if you were to go were to back, let’s change, I was gonna say, if you go back 25 years. But let’s say you’re coaching a junior consultant, someone who’s a little newer.
Through that, through these scenarios that you’re discussing this company who’s, hiring you to help manage kind of different partnerships and this idea of getting to people and that it takes time, what would you, what would be your, if you boiled it down to a single kind of coaching point to this consultant trying to help an organization, what would you tell ’em to do or not do?
How Understanding Others Deepens Influence & Strengthens Relationships [14:50]
JH :
Maybe a couple things. I would tell them to try really hard to be curious. And often, and I, I try to relate this to my own journey and struggles along the way of which I’ve learned some things, and I continue to try to relearn those things that are easy to forget in the moment.
Again it’s an ironic thing. Curiosity is so important. And it’s most important generally when it’s hardest to do right. And it’s hardest to do when I’m like, oh, I know intellectually I know I don’t know everything about the other side or the other person, but viscerally, I’m pretty sure that of what’s relevant.
I know everything I need to know about the person and the situation, and I know they’re behaving badly. And that’s the gist of it. And that’s when it’s hardest to be curious and most important to say. Yeah, there’s always, I’ll really date myself for anyone in our listening audience for whom this will mean anything, Paul Harvey. The other side of the story. But you gotta find it and it doesn’t mean you agree with it.
But until you see how other people see the situation, you just don’t have a lot of power. And even when we think we have. No power because the other company is bigger, or the other person in the situation is more senior. The power that is always available to us is to look more broadly, to look more deeply, to potentially to understand the other side better than they understand us. Which again, like I’ve had this conversation with myself and with clients, why should I bother to understand them? They don’t care at all about my point of view.
I’m like, yeah, that, that doesn’t feel great. But the reality is from a pure enlightened self-interest perspective, if I understand them better than they understand me, I’ve got a lot of power to shape the situation for my own benefit. So those are a couple things that I would offer to people with less experience because I try to remind myself of those things in my own personal and professional life.
NM :
Let’s continue on the route of personal development here. Obviously I have learned through failure throughout my career and especially in the military, not, yeah, it’s a great teacher. And I know that you’ve seen the evolution of supply chain management firsthand.
What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve seen companies make when trying to transform their supply chain, and how might you advise ’em today given so much uncertainty in the global trade market?
Rethinking Supply Chain Strategy In An Era Of Uncertainty & Technological Change [17:12]
JH :
Yeah I remember even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, prior to COVID. Talking to anyone who is not in supply chain management about sourcing and supply chain management was like, blank stare. What is that? And then with COVID started front pages of the Wall Street Journal, everyone was talking about supply chain. So now there’s a little bit more understanding of how supply chain management that function inside a company affects all of us, the movement of goods, all around the world and the global economy. You know, one of, I don’t know that I would call it a mistake. I think it’s been a blind spot within procurement and supply chain.
Two things historically. One is, as with a lot of business, I think over reliance and over optimism about what technology on its own can do. Now, I like technology. I feel like I’m very pro technology. And whether it’s, what’s going on now with an agentic and generative AI and predictive modeling and different forms of machine, that’s an important piece of how companies need to learn how to deploy that technology, continue to invest.
It’s evolving very rapidly. There’s a lot of potential there in all spheres of business, including supply chain. And over my 30 years, every time I’ve seen a company look at a new technology, whether it’s CRM or ERP systems or now, generative or genetic AI and say, okay, this is. This is the silver bullet.
This is the answer to transform that rarely turns out well. I know there are people predicting that all of us will be out of work soon because AI will take all of our jobs. I’m not so sure if that is true. It’s gonna change all of our jobs probably sooner rather than later but technology always exists within a larger organizational context. It ultimately depends on people understanding the technology, adopting the technology, and changing business processes and the way people do their jobs in alignment with what that technology enables.
So again it’s not a new challenge, it’s an ongoing challenge, and every time there’s a new technology or breakthrough in technology it’s so exciting. I think the natural tendency is to get a little bit of tunnel vision on that technology as opposed to the larger interdependent system of which I just believe people and organizational culture are always like essential to how do you unlock?
The other is if you roll back the clock to the advent of strategic sourcing as a discipline decades ago in supply chain management, it rose with customers saying, you know what, we are outmatched by suppliers.
Our suppliers have a professional sales force. They come in, they’re selling to people on our end, in our company. Don’t know the supplier’s cost structure, don’t know the competitive market. They just need goods or services or some kind of solution. And so we are overpaying. We’re not managing our spend in our supplier relationships in an aggregated and coherent way as a customer. And that all led to strategic sourcing as a discipline and formalizing the procurement function to match up, reduce the information, reduce the disparity, use competitive bidding to try to get better pricing.
That’s all fine, but the history of that function of procurement supply chain has been primarily, I would say, in practice transactional, focused on buy, sell, transactions and often within a shorter timeframe. Now, I’m a big believer in competition, I believe, for a company within its supply chain using competitive pressure as a lever to not be taken advantage of by suppliers who are in a business trying to make money and deliver value for their shareholders. That’s fine. And actually using competition across suppliers to drive all of them to a higher level of performance. Just like the role of competition, the broader, that’s all good, underdeveloped muscle for most procurement supply chain organizations is balancing that with a relational view, not just a transactional view, a balance of competitive pressure along with collaboration.
And certainly now with all of the uncertainty going on, do you wanna take an approach where you just try to shift risk and cost upstream your suppliers or downstream from your customers? I mean that puts you on an island with not a lot of latitude to navigate through all this uncertainty. If your philosophy for procurement, supply chain and your company overall is we are in a value chain. We have suppliers that depend on us and we depend on them. We have customers who depend on us and we make money, right?
We’re dependent on them and their business, and how do we not shift as much risk or uncertainty to others? How do we work within our supply chain, our customers and our suppliers to figure out. Who is best positioned to bear what degree of risk and take a more, a longer term, more collaborative approach to that.
That I think is, and I’ve seen companies right now who I think are having an easier time navigating the current tariff and geopolitical uncertainty. A lot of times those are companies who back in COVID, took that more collaborative approach across their value chain and built or solidified a level of trust.
That is now an asset that they can fall back on to navigate the current degree of turbulence and uncertainty in the marketplace. So that was a long answer. Post-production editing will net that out, hopefully in an effective way.
NM :
Hey everyone, Nolan here. I have to jump in and end today’s podcast for Part A of the show. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the Negotiate X Podcast if you haven’t already. And join us next week for Part B of this awesome interview.
