Stephen A. Schwarzman is the Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Blackstone. Blackstone is the largest private equity firm in the world. In his autobiography, Stephen details many elements of Blackstone's operations, including how to effectively negotiate business deals: What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence

Contractors work through hundreds of deals each year, including negotiating to win new work, joint ventures, recruiting key talent, successions, and mergers and acquisitions. Private Equity is playing a larger role in the construction industry and there are many lessons that can be learned from their playbooks, such as how they make deals and how to quickly improve business results. 

• Speed is a competitive advantage.
• Speed is a capability that can be built.
• All deals require a moment of trust.
• Trust is built with consistency over time.  
• Tempo is speed over time and is the ability to consistently move quickly.

The contractors that can quickly adapt to the changing landscape will be the ones most successful dealing with the COVID interruptions to work and likely post-COVID recession. Be calm and deliberate, but when it's time to move, move aggressively.  

Additional Book Resources

• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It 
• Start with No: The Negotiating Tools That the Pros Don't Want You to Know
• The Private Equity Playbook: Management's Guide to Working with Private Equity
• Mergers & Acquisitions from A to Z, Fourth Edition