ALUMNI FIELDNOTES: The Negotiation Doctor

6 Tactics for Building Win-Win Partnerships - Wendy R. Sanhai, EMBA ’09

Nanoscience, the study of very small particles, has great potential to improve health care. These tiny molecules can be incorporated into many therapies, such as cancer drugs, which may result in the need for smaller doses for patients, and may decrease negative side effects due to less exposure of toxic chemicals to normal tissue.

But turning early-stage innovation into a product approved by the Food and Drug Administration requires more resources and expertise than most organizations can muster on their own.

“As a research scientist, I could work on a cancer treatment compound for many years, and I would be lucky in my lifetime if I ever saw that developed into therapy for a patient because it just takes so very long,” says Wendy R. Sanhai, EMBA ’09, a former FDA official who’s led the development of global initiatives in nanomedicine, pediatric safety, cancer and heart disease treatments, and other public health challenges.

In her current role as a Medicines for Malaria Venture board member, Sanhai and her colleagues pursue scalable solutions for a disease that already has many therapeutic options on the market. Rather than working alone, Sanhai and her colleagues have learned to rely on the power of negotiation and partnerships to assemble diverse teams and point them in the same direction.

“My strength is science,” Sanhai says. “But I learned negotiation and partnership building as critical parts of successful business development and making advances in science.”

She enrolled at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business to learn hard business skills that would complement her scientific background, which includes a clinical fellowship at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, a PhD in clinical biochemistry and structural biology from the State University of New York at Buffalo, School of Medicine, and a bachelor’s in chemistry from the University of Florida.

Finance and accounting skills have proved valuable for Sanhai. But she also has grown to appreciate the soft skills included in her program. “My executive MBA taught me a lot of things,” she says. “But the things most valuable, on a personal level, have been developing leadership and negotiation skills and team building.”

A partnership with the FDA and nine academic institutions in the Houston area stands as a testament of Sanhai’s ability to navigate complex, sometimes contentious negotiations. Using her platform at the FDA, she worked for more than two years with representatives from these institutions and other stakeholders to forge a public-private partnership to move the field of nanotechnology forward.

“They ultimately saw that each one of them could not do it by themselves,” she says. Sanhai shares five negotiation lessons learned during the process, which apply in nanoscience and beyond.

1. Know Yourself

Sanhai’s work in nanoscience started with another cross-agency partnership involving the National Cancer Institute in Maryland.

When the institute initially reached out to the FDA for collaboration in developing the business plan for the launch of its Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory, it met resistance.

“FDA scientists are busy,” says Sanhai, who had just arrived in the FDA’s Office of the Commissioner as a senior scientific adviser. “They would be contributing to the NCI effort in addition to their day jobs, and although they were interested in moving science forward, they were already over-committed.”

Some people hide from stretch assignments, but Sanhai took a closer look at the scientific goals and potential benefits to patients and saw an opportunity aligned with her passions. Rather than avoid the potential hassle, she volunteered to serve as the FDA’s chair of the nanotechnology steering committee under the Interagency Oncology Task Force.

“I realized early in my career that it wasn’t so much the practice of medicine that stimulated me,” she says. “It was the science of medicine—how you solve problems.”

Successful negotiators need mastery of tactics, she says. But they also need introspection and awareness of their values, so they can save their energy for the causes that matter most.

“My true north, my sole compass, has always been public health and serving patients,” Sanhai says. “I don’t always negotiate well for myself, but I can negotiate for others.”

2. Build Your Brand

Sanhai knew her efforts would fall flat without support from her colleagues, so she focused first on building the project’s brand within her own organization.

“I had to build both internal and external networks and market the initiative to the FDA in a proactive way,” she says. “I had to make the case to the entire agency to help them understand the importance of being pro-active in the field of nanotechnology.”

This required negotiation with senior leaders and managers beyond the reach of her formal authority. “So much of what was needed was lateral and upward influencing,” Sanhai says. “We had to help FDA scientists understand their role in the health care ecosystem and convince them to become vested partners in moving the field of nanoscience forward.”

3. Complete Your Puzzle

Solving big problems requires collaboration with diverse stakeholders. So after finding her allies within the FDA, Sanhai had to look outward to other organizations.

“It’s like completing a puzzle,” she says. “People are bringing pieces, and if you have one or two missing pieces, then it’s not a full picture.”

She discovered tremendous intellectual capital and other investments being made in nanotechnology research at several academic institutions in Houston. So she reached out to colleagues at the Alliance for NanoHealth and academic institutions in the region to create an “umbrella of collaboration” to benefit public health.

Sanhai says the process required respect for the contributions of each stakeholder. “Even though they’re bringing different knowledge to the table, their knowledge is no less valuable than the knowledge you’re contributing,” she says.

4. Speak the Right Language

A global mindset also helps. Sanhai was born in Trinidad with relatives all over the world, so she appreciates cross-cultural differences. “You cannot go into a new country or new environment with a know-it-all attitude,” she says. “Bully tactics don’t work in many situations, and you have to respect that.”

As she forged large-scale public-private partnerships, Sanhai applied a principle from author Stephen Covey: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

She says sector and functional boundaries work the same way as geopolitical boundaries. “I learned early in my career that biologists don’t always speak the language of engineers, and accountants don’t always speak the language of marketing experts,” she says. “So when you come from different disciplines, you have to remain humble and keep an open mind.”

5. Find Common Ground

Everybody wants something, regardless of cultural and professional differences. Successful negotiators find out what their counterparts want and deliver it without losing sight of their own interests.

“You look for common ground,” Sanhai says. “You try to build bridges between where you are and where you’d like to be.”

The common ground within the FDA was the pursuit of knowledge and the agency’s mission of promoting and protecting public health. “It was about moving science forward, and they were all scientists,” Sanhai says.

When she reached out to other stakeholders in private industry, academia and other professional organizations, she had to appeal to them from both a scientific and a business perspective.

She came prepared to answer questions such as: “How can the pursuit of scientific advances in nanotechnology drive the business forward?”

6. Lay Your Cards on the Table

While hardball negotiation tactics may have their place in high-stakes scenarios that don’t require long-term relationships—like war or hostage situations—sustainable partnerships rarely benefit from deception, manipulation and bullying.

Sanhai says scientific and business collaborations usually work best when both sides remain upfront and honest.

“Making it a competition rather than collaboration usually backfires,” she says. “If you approach many of these negotiations as more of a partnership—trying to see where you can find win-win opportunities—those are the cases that are more successful.” /DJ/