This can be difficult to accept because our popular understanding of negotiation is heavily influenced by visible displays of strength. We associate victory with extracting concessions, imposing terms, or demonstrating that the other side needed the agreement more. Those outcomes are satisfying when leverage permits them. When it does not, behaving as though the imbalance does not exist is not strength. It is a failure to understand the negotiating environment.

A smaller party cannot manufacture leverage simply by becoming louder. What it can do is understand its leverage more precisely. Even highly asymmetric relationships usually contain dependencies in both directions. A large customer may account for a disproportionate share of a supplier’s revenue, but replacing a reliable supplier may carry switching costs, operational disruption, reputational consequences, or execution risk. An employer may possess considerably more institutional power than an individual executive, while still placing substantial value on that person’s relationships, knowledge, or ability to execute. Scale changes the negotiating position, but it rarely eliminates interdependence entirely.

This is where preparation becomes more important than posture. The weaker party needs an unusually clear understanding of its alternatives, its non-negotiable interests, the other side’s incentives, and the consequences of failing to reach an agreement. It also needs the discipline to distinguish between concessions that are uncomfortable and concessions that fundamentally damage the value of the relationship. Treating every concession as defeat can be just as dangerous as accepting every demand.

The more difficult insight is that success in an asymmetric negotiation should be measured against the realistic alternatives available, not against the outcome we would have preferred under equal bargaining power. If the credible alternatives are materially worse, preserving the most important economic or strategic interests while conceding elsewhere may represent an excellent result. It may not look impressive from the outside, but negotiation is not theatre. The objective is not to produce the appearance of strength. It is to improve your position relative to what would otherwise have occurred.

That does not mean weaker parties should become passive. Quite the opposite. Limited leverage makes judgment more important. Patience can create options. Information can reveal dependencies that were not initially obvious. Coalitions can alter bargaining power. Time can change incentives. Credible alternatives can be developed rather than merely wished into existence. Even the more powerful party has constraints, and understanding those constraints is often where negotiating leverage begins.

There is also a reputational dimension that aggressive negotiators sometimes underestimate. Power can extract concessions in a particular negotiation, but relationships exist beyond a single transaction. If counterparties begin to view commitments as unreliable or negotiations as unnecessarily punitive, they adapt. They diversify, demand protections, develop alternatives, or eventually leave. Exercising leverage and preserving leverage are not always the same thing.

For leaders, this creates an important distinction between symbolic victory and substantive success. Symbolic victory is visible. It produces headlines, applause, or the satisfaction of having refused to yield. Substantive success is often quieter. It protects the interests that matter most, preserves optionality, limits unnecessary damage, and leaves the organization stronger than the alternatives would have.

Sometimes the best negotiator does not leave the room having won everything.

Sometimes they leave having understood exactly what could be won, what had to be protected, and what was never worth fighting over in the first place.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

chazz.ca

“Do your best, and let your character do the talking.”

At the time, it sounded like simple guidance about personal responsibility. As the years have passed, I have come to appreciate that it was also remarkably practical business advice.

One of the first lessons you learn as an entrepreneur is that competence does not guarantee acceptance. You can invest years developing expertise, work tirelessly for your clients, and build a reputation for integrity, yet still encounter people who decide they have already formed an opinion before you have spoken a single sentence. Throughout my career, I have experienced this in different ways. Sometimes it has been because of how I sound. Sometimes because of how I look. Occasionally, it has simply been because I came from somewhere else.

Earlier in my career, I spent far too much time trying to understand those reactions. Like many business owners, I believed that every point of friction represented a problem to solve. If someone misunderstood me, perhaps I needed to explain myself more clearly. If someone held an unfavourable opinion, perhaps I simply had to work harder to change it.

Experience has taught me otherwise.

Business is ultimately an exercise in allocating finite resources. Time, attention, capital, and emotional energy are all limited. Every hour spent trying to convince someone who has already decided against you is an hour not invested in serving people who genuinely value what you bring to the table. That is not simply inefficient. It is strategically unsound.

This principle extends far beyond personal experience. Every organization faces the temptation to broaden its appeal in the hope of satisfying everyone. Products become overloaded with features that few customers requested. Marketing messages become increasingly generic in an attempt to offend no one. Policies multiply because every exception creates another rule. In trying to accommodate every possible preference, organizations often lose the clarity that made them valuable in the first place.

Strong businesses make difficult choices.

They decide who they serve exceptionally well. They accept that not every customer is the right customer. They recognize that attempting to eliminate every source of criticism is neither realistic nor desirable because doing so often requires compromising the very qualities that distinguish them in the marketplace.

The same principle applies to individuals.

If someone chooses to judge me because of my background or my appearance, that is ultimately a decision I cannot control. What I can control is the quality of my advice, the consistency of my work, and the integrity with which I serve my clients. Those are investments that compound over time. The others rarely produce a meaningful return.

My mother never suggested that character would convince everyone.

She simply understood that, in the long run, it would attract the people who mattered most.

Looking back, I think that was less a lesson about character than it was a lesson about strategy.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

chazz.ca

The reason is rooted in the extraordinary diversity of human behaviour. Consumers do not evaluate products and services through a common lens. Their decisions are influenced by different experiences, priorities, values, financial circumstances, and perceptions of risk. What motivates one customer may be entirely irrelevant to another. Business leaders frequently overestimate how representative their own thinking is, assuming that the market shares their priorities simply because those priorities appear self evident. In reality, every market consists of numerous segments, each defined by distinct needs, motivations, and expectations.

This principle sits at the heart of modern marketing strategy. One of the earliest concepts introduced in graduate business education is market segmentation, not because it is academically interesting, but because it reflects the way successful organizations actually grow. Sustainable businesses rarely begin by attempting to dominate an entire industry. They establish credibility within a narrowly defined segment, develop a deep understanding of that customer’s needs, and build systems capable of delivering consistent value. Only after earning trust within that niche do they expand into adjacent markets.

History offers countless examples of this progression. Many of today’s most recognizable brands did not begin with extensive product portfolios or broad customer bases. They built their reputations by solving a specific problem exceptionally well for a clearly defined audience. As their expertise deepened and customer confidence grew, so too did their ability to expand. Their growth was driven by depth before breadth, specialization before diversification.

The same principle applies equally within professional services. While almost everyone requires some form of financial planning, insurance protection, legal advice, or accounting support, the circumstances that shape those needs vary considerably. A young family purchasing its first home approaches financial security very differently than a business owner preparing for succession or a professional nearing retirement. Their concerns, vocabulary, decision making processes, and perceptions of value differ in meaningful ways. Attempting to communicate with each of these groups through a single, generalized message rarely produces meaningful engagement because the conversation lacks sufficient relevance to any one audience.

For many organizations, narrowing their focus feels counterintuitive. It creates the impression that opportunities are being excluded rather than created. Strategically, however, the opposite is true. Clearly defining the market you intend to serve allows every aspect of the business, from marketing and product design to client experience and operational processes, to become more deliberate. Resources are allocated more efficiently, expertise develops more rapidly, and relationships become stronger because clients recognize that their unique circumstances are genuinely understood.

Ultimately, sustainable growth is rarely the product of pursuing the largest possible audience. It is the result of becoming indispensable to a carefully chosen one. Organizations that understand this distinction stop competing for attention through increasingly broad messages and instead compete through relevance, expertise, and trust. In an environment where consumers are overwhelmed by choice and information, businesses that speak with precision will almost always outperform those attempting to speak to everyone.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

chazz.ca

It is an uncomfortable observation, but one that becomes difficult to ignore once you have spent enough time leading teams, building businesses, or managing long-term professional relationships. In the beginning, relationships are often built around optimism. Someone is looking for an opportunity, a role, a partnership, or simply a chance to prove themselves. Conversations are collaborative. There is flexibility, patience, appreciation, and an assumption of good intent on both sides.

Then reality arrives.

Pressure builds. Expectations evolve. Small frustrations accumulate. Misunderstandings that could have been resolved early become layered with emotion and interpretation. And gradually, relationships that once felt constructive begin operating defensively. The same people who once approached situations with understanding can suddenly become transactional, adversarial, or even litigious.

What makes this dynamic particularly interesting is that most of these situations do not begin with malicious people. More often, they begin with poor communication and unmanaged emotion. Expectations are implied rather than discussed. Temporary frustrations become permanent conclusions. People stop trying to understand each other and instead begin building cases against one another, mentally or otherwise.

One of the harder lessons in leadership is realizing that being technically correct does not automatically preserve relationships. A decision can be operationally reasonable, legally defensible, and financially necessary while still creating resentment if people feel unheard, embarrassed, or cornered in the process. At the same time, individuals often underestimate the long-term consequences of escalating conflict too quickly. Not every disagreement needs to become a battle. Not every misunderstanding requires destruction.

Some of the strongest professional relationships are not the ones that avoid conflict entirely. They are the ones that survive conflict because both sides understand the value of perspective, restraint, and communication. Mature relationships are built not on permanent agreement, but on the ability to navigate difficult moments without immediately reaching for the harshest possible outcome.

That principle extends far beyond business. It applies to partnerships, friendships, families, and organizations alike. In many cases, the original issue is not what ultimately destroys the relationship. It is the way people choose to behave after the issue appears.

The disagreement eventually ends. The paperwork gets filed away. Emotions cool. But reputations tend to last longer than the conflict itself. And in both business and life, people rarely forget how others chose to conduct themselves when things became difficult.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

chazz.ca

In practice, the difference between courage and excuses is not about effort. It is about intent. Excuses optimize for short-term relief. They reduce friction, simplify decisions, and create a path that is easier to execute and easier to explain. Courage does something else entirely. It commits to building something better than what is immediately required, even when the return is uncertain and the justification is harder to communicate. That distinction is subtle, but it compounds over time.

In business, you see this in how organizations respond to pressure. When margins tighten, the instinct is to cut. When competition increases, the instinct is to lower price. When expectations rise, the instinct is to standardize. Each of those decisions can be defended. Each can be framed as rational. But taken together, they often lead in the same direction, toward average.

Courage moves in the opposite direction. It shows up in the decision to maintain standards when it would be easier to reduce them. It shows up in the willingness to invest in clarity, service, and structure when the immediate incentive is to move faster and cheaper. It shows up in being transparent about how things work, even when opacity would create a short-term advantage. These are not always efficient decisions. They are directional ones.

The underlying question is not whether there is a valid excuse available. There almost always is. The question is what you are building toward. If the purpose is narrow, short-term, and transactional, then the easier path will usually make sense. It will produce results that can be measured quickly and defended easily. If the purpose is broader, longer-term, and tied to reputation, then the decision framework changes. You begin to evaluate choices not just on immediate return, but on what they signal and what they reinforce over time.

This is where most people struggle. Not because they cannot see the difference, but because they do not define the purpose clearly enough to guide the decision. Without that clarity, excuses become indistinguishable from strategy.

In my own work, this shows up in how I approach conversations with clients. It is easier to simplify, to generalize, or to move quickly past complexity in order to get to a decision. It is harder to slow down, to explain tradeoffs properly, and to ensure that what is being decided is actually understood. One approach closes faster. The other holds up better.

Over time, the market tends to sort this out. Not immediately, and not always cleanly, but consistently enough to matter. The people and organizations that choose the easier path often find themselves competing on the same terms as everyone else. The ones that choose the harder path, repeatedly and deliberately, begin to operate in a different category. That separation is not accidental. It is built through decisions that are difficult to justify in the short term but obvious in hindsight.

Courage in this context is not abstract. It is operational. It is the willingness to choose the path that aligns with what you are trying to build, even when there is a well-reasoned excuse not to. And in an environment where excuses are abundant, that choice becomes the only reliable way to create something that stands apart.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

chazz.ca

It’s a reasonable question. It’s also the wrong place to start.

I don’t spend much time thinking about competitors when I present. Not because they don’t matter, but because they are rarely the deciding factor. Pricing only becomes central when everything else is unclear. When the value isn’t defined, when the risk isn’t understood, and when the outcome hasn’t been made concrete, the only thing left to compare is the number.

That’s when price starts doing too much work.

In most real decisions, especially in commercial contexts, people are not simply buying a product or a policy. They are making a judgment about risk, reliability, and whether the person in front of them understands what is actually at stake. That judgment is formed long before the final number is discussed. By the time pricing comes up, the decision is already moving in a direction.

This is where many people misread the situation. They assume resistance is about cost, when it is often about clarity. If the difference between options is not well defined, then price becomes the easiest proxy. It feels objective. It feels measurable. But it is usually standing in for something else that was never fully addressed.

Lowering the price in that moment does not solve the problem. It confirms it.

Because now the conversation is anchored in comparison rather than understanding. And once you enter that frame, it is difficult to get out of it. You are no longer being evaluated on what you bring, but on how you stack up against alternatives that may not even be equivalent.

That is not a strong position to operate from.

The more effective approach is to change the frame before price becomes the focal point. That means being precise about what matters, what the real exposure is, and what the cost of getting it wrong looks like. It means helping the other side see the decision in context, not as a line item but as part of a larger set of consequences.

When that is done well, pricing still matters, but it is no longer the only thing that matters. It becomes one factor among several, not the deciding one by default.

This is not about avoiding the question. It is about answering a better one first.

Because the issue is rarely where you sit relative to everyone else. The issue is whether what you are offering is understood well enough that the comparison even makes sense.

In most cases, it doesn’t.

And when it doesn’t, focusing on price is not just incomplete. It’s a signal that the conversation has been framed incorrectly from the start.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

chazz.ca

But there’s a friction point where this mindset hits a wall. That wall is Equity Theory.

Equity Theory suggests that we don’t just value our outcomes in a vacuum. We value them relative to the effort and outcomes of those around us. We’re constantly running a subconscious equation. Is the ratio of my inputs and outputs equal to the ratio of yours?

When that equation doesn’t balance, the internal locus of control starts to feel like a liability.

If you believe you’re the primary driver of your success but you see someone else getting more for less, the cognitive dissonance is jarring. You start to question the fairness of the system. This is where high performers often stumble. They spend so much energy trying to control their internal variables that they become hyper-sensitive to the perceived inequity of external rewards.

The danger isn’t the unfairness itself. It’s the shift in where you place your focus.

When you feel under-rewarded relative to a peer, your brain offers two exits. You can either reduce your input to match the perceived output or you can try to change the outcome through external complaining. Both of these moves shift your locus of control from internal to external. You’re no longer driving. You’re reacting to the passenger in the next car.

In a professional environment, fair is a moving target. If you rely on a perfectly equitable environment to maintain your drive, you’ve actually outsourced your agency. You’ve given the system the power to dictate your effort levels.

The goal shouldn’t be to find a perfectly equitable situation. The goal is to acknowledge the inequity and choose to maintain an internal locus regardless. You don’t work hard because the reward is perfectly proportional to your neighbor’s. You work hard because you’ve decided that your inputs are the only thing worth measuring.

Don’t let a perceived lack of equity turn your internal locus into an external one. The moment you start adjusting your effort based on what someone else is getting, you’ve lost the lead.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

chazz.ca

That with enough time, enough information, and enough analysis, the “best” answer will reveal itself.

It sounds reasonable. It’s also not how decisions actually get made.

In practice, most decisions stop at the point where they feel acceptable. Not perfect. Not optimal. Just good enough to move forward.

That’s not laziness. It’s how the system works.

The cost of continuing to search eventually outweighs the value of a better answer. At some point, more thinking doesn’t improve the decision. It just delays it.

So people stop.

What’s interesting is not that this happens. It’s that people still tell themselves a different story.

They describe their decisions as if they were the result of careful optimization. As if every option was considered and the best one selected.

But if you look closely, that’s not what happened.

A threshold was met. And once it was met, the search ended.

The problem is not that people settle.

The problem is that they settle without realizing where that threshold is.

Because once you stop looking, whatever information got you there starts to matter more than it should.

The first number you saw. The first explanation that made sense. The option that felt familiar.

Those aren’t always the best signals.

They’re just the ones that showed up early.

That’s where most decision errors come from.

Not from a lack of intelligence, but from a lack of awareness about how the decision was made.

People think they’re evaluating.

They’re often reacting.

Strong operators don’t try to eliminate this. You can’t.

They just make the process visible.

They know they’re not searching for perfect answers. They’re watching for the moment something crosses the line into “good enough.”

And then they pressure test that moment.

Why this option?

Why now?

What got ignored along the way?

Because once you can see the threshold, you can control it.

And once you can control it, you stop mistaking the first acceptable answer for the right one.

Most decisions don’t fail because people didn’t think enough.

They fail because people didn’t understand when they stopped thinking.

That’s a different problem.

And it’s the one that matters.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

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Not reckless decisions. Not obviously bad ones. The kind that feel reasonable in the moment. The kind that you can justify.

Good enough.

This week during one of our Thursday initiative sessions, my team pushed hard on a set of questions that come up more often than people realize. Not just about life insurance types, but about what sits underneath them. Buy sell agreements. Key person coverage. What actually happens when something goes wrong inside a business.

And what stood out wasn’t a lack of options.

It was how often decisions are made around what feels sufficient today, rather than what actually holds up over time.

Most people don’t think they’re making short term decisions. They think they’re being practical. They think they’re being efficient. They think they’re avoiding unnecessary cost or complexity.

But when you step back, many of these decisions are simply a trade. Immediate comfort in exchange for long term exposure.

A cheaper structure. A smaller amount. A simplified agreement. A decision made without fully mapping what happens if a partner dies, if a key employee disappears, or if the business itself is forced into a position it was never designed to handle.

At the time, it feels like optimization.

Later, it becomes constraint.

I’ve seen situations where two business owners believed they had things “covered” because they had insurance in place. Same product category. Same basic intent. Yet when something actually happened, one structure worked exactly as intended, and the other didn’t come close.

The difference wasn’t luck.

It was design.

The uncomfortable reality is that most people are not making decisions based on outcomes. They’re making decisions based on identity and timeframe.

If you see yourself as someone who avoids overpaying, you’ll naturally lean toward minimizing cost. If you see yourself as someone who keeps things simple, you’ll strip out complexity, even when that complexity exists for a reason.

And if you’re focused on the next year, you’ll consistently underweight what happens in year ten.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that. But every decision carries a structure behind it. And that structure determines how it behaves under stress.

Choice isn’t just about selecting an option. It’s about selecting a future set of consequences.

In business, and in planning, the real question isn’t whether something works today.

It’s whether it still works when something breaks.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

chazz.ca

Who is actually driving your day?

In environments where everything is measured, where there are targets, KPIs, and expectations, it is very easy to start believing that your outcomes are being dictated by external factors. The market is slow. Leads are weak. Pricing is off. Timing is bad. Over time, it begins to feel like you are reacting to circumstances rather than shaping them.

I’ve seen this mindset up close.

I once had an employee who, almost every chance he got, would tell me how hard the last few years had been. Every conversation seemed to come back to the same point. If things kept going the way they were, he didn’t think he would make it. There was always a sense of pressure, of things being overwhelming, of the situation being out of his control.

And on the surface, it sounded reasonable. Business can be difficult. Markets shift. Results fluctuate.

But underneath it, there was something else.

There was no real plan.

No structured thinking about what the next week needed to look like, let alone the next month. No clear prioritization of where effort should go. No adjustment in approach, just a repetition of the same patterns with the hope that the outcome would change. It wasn’t that the role was too complex. It was that he was experiencing it without any framework to manage it.

So everything felt heavier than it actually was.

When you operate that way, the day starts to control you. Every task feels urgent. Every setback feels personal. Every slow period feels like a signal that something is wrong. Without a plan, there is no reference point. There is no way to measure whether you are on track or off track. There is only the feeling of pressure.

And that feeling compounds.

The reality is that most performance driven roles are not won or lost in a single moment. They are shaped by a series of small, consistent decisions. Which calls get made first. Which conversations are handled properly instead of quickly. Which opportunities are followed up with intention instead of assumption. These are not dramatic shifts, but they create direction.

That direction is what people often mistake for momentum.

The difference between people who feel constantly behind and those who seem to move forward is not usually effort. It is structure. It is the ability to step slightly outside of the day and decide how it is going to be used before it starts using you.

That means thinking ahead, even in simple terms. Not five years out. Not even one year out. Just enough to understand what the next few days need to look like to produce a different outcome next week.

Because if nothing changes in how you are operating today, nothing meaningful changes in what you produce tomorrow.

At some point, the shift has to happen from reacting to deciding.

And that shift is not loud. It does not feel dramatic. It is just the quiet decision to stop letting the day happen to you and start shaping it, even in small ways.

Over time, those small decisions separate people.

Not instantly, not visibly at first, but consistently.

The gap between reacting and deciding starts small, but it compounds. And eventually, it becomes the difference between someone who feels like they are constantly trying to survive their numbers…

and someone who is actually driving them.

Chazz Okparanta

I am a Canadian business owner with a longstanding interest in leadership, strategy and decision making. I write about business, risk, leadership and the systems and incentives that shape how people and organizations make decisions.
Chazz.ca is my personal writing project and a place to explore ideas drawn from experience, education, reading and conversations with people building and leading organizations.

chazz.ca