Reference

The five scorecards, side by side

Every muscle is judged on four things, each worth a quarter of the score. The four change from muscle to muscle, but the shape never does. Learn to read one and you can read them all.

	Criterion 1	Criterion 2	Criterion 3	Criterion 4
Decide	Clear recommendation	Sound reasoning	Honest trade-offs	Delivery
Investigate	Found the real fraud	Cleared the innocent	Exact total	Few false alarms
Negotiate	Preparation	Value creation	Communication and relationship	Deal quality
Persuade	Hook and clarity	Value to the buyer	Objection handling	The close
Respond	Protect people first	Decisions under pressure	Communication	Composure and adaptation

Read down any column and you will notice the same thing rewarded again and again: figure out what actually matters, put it before what merely feels loud or urgent, and act on it honestly.

Glossary

BATNA. Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. Your walk-away: the deal you will take if this one falls through. It is the only thing that tells you when to say no.

Break-even. The amount of something (sales, months, units) at which a decision has paid for itself. Below it you are behind; above it you are ahead.

Contribution margin. What one sale adds to the business after subtracting what that one sale cost to make. A $9 burrito with $3 of food cost contributes $6.

Cross-reference. Holding two records side by side to find a match that neither shows alone, such as a supplier address that matches an employee’s home address.

Feature. A fact about your product (handmade, all-natural). Contrast with benefit.

Benefit. What a feature does for the audience, in their terms (more margin, faster sales, less risk). Pitch benefits, not features.

Inject. A new development a facilitator drops into a crisis scenario on a timer, forcing the team to re-triage and act with incomplete information.

Integrative trade. A swap across two issues the sides value oppositely, so each gives up something cheap to them and valuable to the other, and both come out ahead.

Points table. In a negotiation brief, the hidden list of how much each possible outcome is worth to your side.

Position. The specific thing someone demands (“$2,600 a month”). Contrast with interest.

Interest. The underlying reason behind a position (“predictable income”). Negotiate on interests, not positions.

Reconciliation. Comparing two records that should agree (cash rung up versus deposited, bought versus used) and reading the gap.

Red herring. An anomaly that looks like fraud but has an innocent, documented explanation, such as a shortfall fully covered by a recorded refund.

Segregation of duties. The control that no one person should hold two jobs that let them both commit and hide a theft (counting the cash and depositing it, ordering supplies and checking they arrived). Its failure is the mechanism behind nearly every case.

Value creating versus value claiming. First grow the pie by finding trades (creating), then split the issue you truly fight over (claiming). Both are fair; the order matters.

Walk-away. See BATNA.

ZOPA. Zone Of Possible Agreement: the range of deals that beat both sides’ walk-aways. If it exists, there is a deal to be had; if it does not, walking is correct.

A note for instructors

This book is a self-contained introduction to five business skills, and also an on-ramp to five live experiential programs. A few notes on how the parts fit together:

• The walkthroughs use a demo business, Sunny’s, on purpose. Sunny’s is not part of any live bank, so working its examples in full does not spoil a scoreable challenge. The five worlds in the live bank stay fresh.
• The Try It problems are the students’ self-check. Their answers are in Appendix A. This is deliberate: the lone reader always has a checkable problem per chapter, even though the live bank keys are held back.
• The live challenges are an optional extension. Each chapter ends by pointing to the live bank: team-based, facilitator-run, scored challenges kept separate from the book on purpose. The book is complete without them, every problem it poses is answered in Appendix A. The bank’s answer keys go to facilitators only, so students perform rather than peek, and each chapter starts you at that program’s gentlest on-ramp.
• The scorecards match the live programs. The four-part, 25-percent-each rubric a student meets in each chapter is the same shape they will be scored on in the live exercise.