Top Executives Describe 3D Results
“Lax and Sebenius capture what I've seen great dealmakers take years to perfect. Silver tongues and tactics can be a sideshow. As chess masters know, success at the table flows from advance preparation and strategically positioning your pieces to maximize leverage.”
Stephen Friedman
Fmr. Chairman and Senior Partner, Goldman Sachs & Co., Fmr. Chair, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Fmr. Special Assistant to the President of the United States for Economic Affairs and Fmr. Director, White House National Economic Council - Goldman Sachs
“We faced some of the firm’s most challenging and delicate negotiations during its startup period. Over those early years, we worked daily with Jim Sebenius, who was often very helpful with critical deals at key moments.”
Peter G. Peterson
Fmr. Senior Chairman and co-founder, The Blackstone Group; Fmr. Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations - The Blackstone Group
“Following the clear and innovative concept of ‘3-D Negotiation’ has contributed invaluably… many agreements that are critical to Novartis. These deals must sometimes accomplish conflicting objectives, be sustainable and enhance relationships.”
Daniel Vasella
Chairman & CEO, Novartis AG (fmr.) - Novartis AG, Switzerland
“Lax and Sebenius have a powerful new way of thinking about negotiating. 3-D Negotiation is having a profound impact on how we approach deal making in Shell.”
Malcolm Brinded
Executive Board Member & Executive Director, Upstream International, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (fmr.) -Royal Dutch Shell plc
“I have worked directly with the authors on some of the most challenging negotiations of my career. Their 3-D approach was important in helping to deliver hundreds of millions of pounds of value for shareholders.”
Philip Yea
CEO 3i PLC, Vodafone Group PLC (fmr.) -Diageo plc & Guinness plc
“For many years, we searched for just the right firm and individual to find the best approach to enhance our senior executives’ negotiating skills and after endless presentations of tired win-win and win-lose clichés, we began working closely with Dr. Jim Sebenius. His 3-D approach is in use at many levels of the Estee Lauder Companies with excellent results.”
William Lauder
Executive Chairman of The Estée Lauder Companies - The Estee Lauder Companies
“Lax Sebenius have provided extraordinary value to Bupa and Diageo. They have worked with my teams on a wide range of corporate and commercial negotiations for almost 20 years. Rather than play the game that presents itself, they proactively set up a negotiation game that has a higher probability of achieving a successful outcome. In doing so, they have developed creative, thoughtful and sometimes out-of-the box strategies that have saved/created Diageo and Bupa over £300 MM in value while a) often improving relationships with external parties; b) improving our own internal negotiations; and c) building the teams’ capabilities to perform better.”
Stuart Fletcher
CEO Bupa, Diageo (fmr.) - Bupa
“I asked William Ury and David Lax to help me in the most contentious and difficult business negotiation of my career – the sale of my final stake in the company I grew from a small firm to the largest food company and largest employer in Brasil. The two years prior to their engagement were filled with public sparring, litigation, and unproductive negotiation. They helped me think carefully about my own interests, worked to create leverage with respect to the buyer and developed a plan to meet the fundamental interests of both buyer and seller. They negotiated on my behalf with their chosen intermediary, the distinguished Baron David de Rothschild, and achieved an agreement that met my interests so well that it surpassed my expectations at the time I engaged them of what might be achievable in the negotiation.”
Abilio Diniz
Chairman & CEO of BRF, then Chairman & former CEO of Grupo Ponte Azucar - Grupo Ponte Azucar
“David Lax and his team at Lax Sebenius worked behind the scenes to help us take on an extraordinarily challenging negotiation that threatened the viability of our company. They brought to bear a strategic sense and sage advice, helping to lead our team through a process in which we and Lax Sebenius collaboratively developed and executed a negotiation strategy. The 3D Negotiation approach helped us identify and activate external parties – including some that were not initially obvious to us – that usefully influenced our negotiating counterparts. David and his team worked as a sounding board for us before and after key points in the process, offering tactical advice and helping us to adjust our strategy as needed.
As a result of the negotiating strategy we developed in close collaboration with David and the Lax Sebenius team, the share price of TransAlta jumped 25% on the day that the agreement was announced; beyond our relief at getting this brutal negotiation behind us, jointly working through the systematic 3D negotiation process strengthened our management team’s capabilities.”
Dawn Farrell
President & CEO - TransAlta
"While at Ericsson, I brought in Lax Sebenius LLC to help the $1 billion division I ran negotiate and close sales with carriers. Lax Sebenius LLC delved into our deals, developed several highly customized training programs that excited and motivated my team, served as advisors on a small number of deals, and helped us develop a new selling strategy. Moreover, they designed a negotiation strategy review process that I ran with my team, which gave my team continuing incentives to do the hard work of preparing for their negotiations.
Their efforts contributed to our success in both turning around an unprofitable division and simultaneously becoming market share leader and increasing margins.”
David King
General Manager, Ericsson Wireline - Ericsson
"In the course of my business career, I’ve started, grown, and negotiated the sale of several technology-based firms, often to major industry players. Although I routinely use top lawyers, accounting firms and bankers in these deals, I recently engaged Lax Sebenius for negotiation advice to help sell my automotive parts firm. This complex transaction took over a year to complete and required distinct negotiating strategies for dealing with a range of actively interested potential buyers: a major French firm, a German automotive corporation, a Canadian conglomerate, a Japanese trading company, as well as one of the most sophisticated and successful U.S. private equity investment firms (which was the ultimate purchaser).
Throughout the process, Lax Sebenius helped to conceptualize our negotiation approach, formulate tactics, move the process forward, propose innovative deal features to get us past serious sticking points, as well as offer key economic and psychological insights to restart the negotiations after they had totally collapsed. The firm was critical to the deal and its negotiation expertise undoubtedly added tens of millions of dollars to the final result for our side."
Confidential
Founder & CEO, confidential auto parts manufacturing firm - Confidential auto parts manufacturing firm
"Lax Sebenius were a source of clear-headed counsel, focus and objectivity during a long and intense period of difficult negotiations and conflict. Their excellent advice helped us avoid numerous pitfalls and guided us toward actions that we might not have taken otherwise. Their advice complemented and helped us frame the input we received from our top legal and merchant banking advisors. As advisors, they told us what they thought we needed to hear rather than what they thought we wanted to hear.
Their advice contributed significantly to the ability of our company to successfully complete negotiations that created billions of pounds of value for Guinness and Grand Metropolitan shareholders."
Kenneth Mildwaters
Group General Counsel, Guinness PLC & Diageo PLC - Guinness PLC
"Lax Sebenius was extremely helpful to the Partners Healthcare System in very dicult, sensitive, strategically important negotiations. (They were) adept at bringing together individuals who were not like-minded on the subject at hand and assisted the parties by creating a forum in which mutually advantageous outcomes could be pursued."
Samuel O. Thier, M.D.
CEO, Partners Healthcare System, Inc. (fmr.) - Partners Healthcare System, Inc.
"Sebenius and Lax set the standard by which all teaching professionals are to be judged. The circuitous path to unforgettable conclusions gives their seasoned professional students intellectual souvenirs, which will be useful daily ad infinitum. The same students, executives themselves, unanimously give the professors the grade of A+. Final. Not Negotiable."
Participants
Strategic Negotiation Class
"The insights I gained on the 1st day were applicable on the rst call back to the office. What I learned was not only theoretically interesting and challenging, but highly practical and applicable."
Small Firm CEO
"If you have attended many negotiation sessions directed at win-win or the process or art of negotiation, this course will add many advanced tools and dimensions that you may never have considered. Well qualified workshop leaders and excellent material."
Bob Hellum,
Novartis
"Excellent course! Real-world examples, cases and realistic exercises drove home key learnings. Instruction is world-class."
Mark Coin,
Novartis
"“…Practitioners like Lax have developed tools that can help make the art and intuition of a gifted negotiator accessible to the rest of us."
Forbes Magazine
"Dr. Sebenius’s global expertise, proven methods, vast intellect, and dynamic speaking style put him in a league of his own. We consider him to be the worldwide master on the important topic of negotiation. No person or organization we’ve come in contact with can even come close."
Phebe Farrow Port
Senior Vice President, Global Management Strategies, Estee Lauder Companies