Scenario - Conflict and Negotiation It's your fourth week into Project X, and your getting worried. You have tried to set up a project status meeting...

Scenario - Conflict and Negotiation

It's your fourth week into Project X, and your getting worried. You have tried to set up a project status meeting several times. No matter when you scheduled the meeting, the manager of the procurement department was unable to attend. You need the procurement manager to attend in order to coordinate delivery of materials needed for the project. Already long-lead components needed for manufacture of the product had, apparently, not arrived on schedule. You have finally agreed to let the procurement manager's assistant attend the meeting in his place but you doubt that the assistant could contribute much to the project.

Your concerns increased when the assistant did not show up for the next meeting and did not appear for the second meeting until it was almost over. The assistant seemed apologetic and indicated that departmental crises had kept him away from both scheduled meetings. The project was now seven months old and you are almost three weeks behind the long-lead procurement plan.

Assignment:

• Propose a meeting to negotiate with the procurement manager. You need a commitment from the procurement manager to attend the regularly scheduled project-planning meeting and, also, be prepared to provide updates on the scheduled delivery of materials needed for Project X. Describe how you would conduct this meeting and your approach to resolution of this problem.