"Yes, but...": What if they won’t play? [ARR]

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What do you do if the other side is being hard headed and simply repeats their stated position and digs in. If pushing back does not work, what does? How can you prevent the cycle of action and reaction? DO NOT push back. Refuse to react. 

Time for negotiation jujitsu, as promised!

Jujitsu is an oriental martial art which avoids pitting your strength against your opponents directly. Instead, you use your skill to step aside and turn their strength to your ends.

What does this look like in practice?

Negotiation Jujitsu

Typically, an attack will consist of three maneuvers: asserting a position forcefully, attacking ideas, and attacking you. Let’s look at how to handle each of these.

Don’t attack their position, look behind it. When the other side sets forth their position, neither reject it nor accept it. Treat it as one possible option. Look for the interests behind it, seek out the principles it reflects, and think about ways to improve it. To direct their attention toward improving the options on the table, discuss with them hypothetically what would happen if one of their positions was accepted.

"What if they won't play?"

Don’t defend your ideas, invite criticism and advice. Instead of asking the other side to accept or reject an idea, ask them what’s wrong with it. Examine their negative judgments to find out their underlying interests and to improve your ideas from their point of view.  Another way to channel criticism in a constructive direction is to turn the situation around and ask for advice. Ask them what they would do in your position.

Reset an attack on you as an attack on the problem.  When the other side attacks you personally – as frequently happens – resist the temptation to defend yourself or to attack them. Instead, sit back and allow them to blow off steam.

Ask questions and pause.  Those engaged in negotiation jujitsu use two key tools. The first is to use questions instead of statements. Statements generate resistance, whereas questions generate answers. Also, silence is one of your best weapons. People tend to feel uncomfortable with silence, particularly if they have doubts about the merits of something they have said.

Consider the one-text procedure

Multiple parties need some way to simplify the process of decision making without diminishing the quality of the outcome. The one-text procedure serves that purpose by bringing in a neutral third party who asks the right questions to unveil the principles of each party. Then, a solution is drafted by the third party and critiqued by the parties. This procedure is followed until a final agreement is reached and no more edits can be made.

Next week we review the second to last chapter and the final “Yes, But.” What if they use dirty tricks?

Getting to Yes: "Yes, But..." [ARR]

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We have been learning so many good techniques, but in the process of negotiating, you are bound to run into people who don’t “play nice.” Thus begins the first of three chapters with the overarching theme of…

"Yes, But…"

What if they are more powerful?

Of what use is talking about interests, options, and standards if the other side has a stronger bargaining position? What do you do if the other side it richer or better connected, or if they have a larger staff or more powerful weapons?

Protect yourself

In response to power, the most any method of negotiation can do is to meet two objectives: first, to protect you against making an agreement you should reject and second, to help you make the most of the assets you do have so that any agreement you reach will satisfy your interests as well as possible.

The costs of using a bottom line. Having a bottom line makes it easier to resist pressure and temptations of the moment. However, the protection afforded by adopting a bottom line involves high costs.  It limits your ability to benefit from what you learn during negotiation. By definition, a bottom line is a position that is not to be changed. To that extent you have shut your ears, deciding in advance that nothing the other party says could cause you to raise or lower that bottom line.

A bottom line also inhibits imagination. It reduces the incentive to invent a tailor-made solution that would reconcile differing interests in a way more advantageous for you and them.

Is there an alternative?

"Yes, But..."

Know your BATNA. If you’ve been around the business-world block, you’ve probably heard the acronym  BATNA, or, your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.  The reason you negotiate is to produce something better than the results you can obtain without negotiating. That’s your BATNA. That is the standard against which any proposed agreement should be measured.

The insecurity of an unknown BATNA. In most circumstances, the danger is being too committed to reaching agreement. Not having developed any alternative to a negotiated solution, you are unduly pessimistic about what would happen if negotiations broke off.

Formulate a trip wire.  This is to give you early warning that the content of a possible agreement is beginning to run the risk of being too unattractive. A trip wire should provide you with some margin in reserve. If after reaching the standard reflected in your trip wire you decide to call in a mediator, you have left him something on your side to work with.

Making the most of your assets

Protecting yourself against a bad agreement is one thing. Making the most of the assets you have to produce a good agreement is another. How do you do this? Again, the answer lies in your BATNA.

The better your BATNA, the greater your power. People think of negotiating power as being determined by resources like wealth, political connections, physical strength, friends, and military might. In fact, relative negotiating power of two parties depends primarily upon how attractive to each is the option of not reaching an agreement.

Develop your BATNA. Generating BATNAs requires three distinct operations: 1) inventing a list of actions you might conceivably take if no agreement is reached; 2) improving some of the more promising ideas and converting them into practical alternatives; and 3) selecting, tentatively, the one alternative that seems best. 

Consider the other side’s BATNA. The more you can learn about their alternatives, the better prepared you are for negotiation. Their BATNA may be better for them than any fair solution you can imagine. If both sides have attractive BATNA’s, the best outcome of the negotiation – for both parties – may be not to reach agreement.

When the other side is powerful

If the other side has big guns, you do not want to turn a negotiation into a gunfight. The stronger they appear in terms of physical or economic power, the more you benefit by negotiating on the merits.

I’m particularly looking forward to next week’s chapter.

Question: What if they Won’t Play?

Answer: Use Negotiation Jujitsu

Getting To Yes: Insist on Using Objective Criteria [ARR]

I don’t know if you have been thinking this while reading these posts, but I’ve been thinking, “Yes. That’s all well and good but at the end of the day, the two parties still have interests that conflict!” This chapter, Insist on Using Objective Criteria, will address that.

Deciding on the basis of will is costly.  If trying to settle differences of interest on the basis of will has such high costs, the solution is to negotiate on some basis independent of the will of either side – that is, on the basis of objective criteria.

The case for using objective criteria. You want the rent to be lower, the landlord wants it to be higher. Why not insist that a negotiated price, for example, be based on some standard such as market value, replacement cost, depreciated book value, or competitive prices instead of whatever the seller demands?

Principled negotiation produces wise agreements amicably and efficiently. People using objective criteria tend to use time more efficiently talking about possible standards and solutions versus defending their position.

Insist on Using Objective
Criteria

Fair standards. Of course, in order to use objective criteria, you need to have objective criteria! Like most things, it is beneficial to prepare in advance. Develop some alternative standards before the negotiation begins and think through their application to your case. An agreement may be based upon:

Market Value                     What a court would decide

Precedent                           Moral Standards

Scientific judgment              Equal treatment

Professional standards         Tradition

Efficiency                            Reciprocity

Costs

You can use the test of reciprocal application to tell you whether a proposed criteria is fair and independent of either party’s will. For example, if a real estate agency selling you a house offers a standard form contract, you would be wise to ask if that is the same standard form they use when they buy a house.

Fair procedures. To resolve a conflict, you can either use fair standards or fair procedures. For example, when two children split a piece of cake, one cuts and the other chooses.  As you consider procedural solutions, look at other basic means of settling differences: taking turns, drawing lots, letting someone else decide, and so on.

Now that we have the objective criteria – let’s use it! But how do you go about discussing them with the other side?

There are three basic points to remember:

1. Frame each issue as a joint search for objective criteria
-Ask “What’s your Theory?”  If you are interested in purchasing a house and the seller names their price, ask them, “How did you arrive at that figure?”
-Agree first on principles. Each standard the other side proposes becomes a lever you can use to then persuade them. Your case will have more impact if it is presented in terms of their criteria.

2. Reason and be open to reason as to which standards are most appropriate and how they should be applied
-Throwing around the phrase, “It’s a matter of principle” when you disagree with your negotiating partner, is not what is meant by principled negotiation.  A principled negotiator is open to reasoned persuasion on the merits; a positional bargainer is not.

3. Never yield to pressure, only to principle
-Pressure can take on many forms: a bribe, a threat, a manipulative appeal to trust, or a simple refusal to budge. In all these cases, the principled response is the same: invite them to state their reasoning, suggest objective criteria you think apply, and refuse to budge except on this basis.

Next week, we will look into the chapter called “Yes, But” which reviews how to apply these principles when unexpected curve balls are thrown your way.