Getting to Yes: Invent Options for Mutual Gain [ARR]

Annie's Reading Room

In last week’s Annie’s Reading Room, we reviewed how to manage emotions and set the stage for a successful negotiation with a pretty meaty post about understanding each side’s interest. While that is a necessary step in the negotiation process, our problems aren’t yet “solved.” To get to that point, we need to first generate some creative options for discussion.

Invent Options for
Mutual Gain 

“This task is pretty challenging as there can seem to be no way to split the pie that leaves both parties satisfied. Often you are negotiating along a single dimension, such as the amount of territory, the price of a car, the length of a lease on an apartment, or the size of a commission on a sale.

All available answers appear to lie along a straight line between their position and yours and the only creative thinking shown is to suggest splitting the difference.

In most negotiations there are four major obstacles that inhibit the inventing of an abundance of options: 1) premature judgment; 2) searching for the single answer; 3) the assumption of a fixed pie; and 4) over thinking that “solving their problem is their problem.” To overcome these constraints, you need to understand them.”

Diagnosing the problem

Premature judgment: Exhibiting premature judgment would be just the opposite of ‘inventing an option’ for mutual gain. In other words, proposing an option that could be termed “conventional” or “half-baked” would not be very useful for either side. “Well, duh,” you say.

Searching for the single answer:  If the first impediment is premature criticism, the second is premature closure. By looking from the outset for the single best answer, you are likely to short-circuit a wiser decision making process in which you select from a large number of possible answers.

The assumption of a fixed pie: Negotiation can appear to be a fixed sum game.

Thinking that “solving their problem is their problem”:  Emotional attachment on one side (your side) of 

an issue makes it difficult to achieve the detachment necessary to think up wise ways of meeting the interests on both sides. It can also seem disloyal to your own side to think up ways to satisfy the other.

Prescription

So now that you have diagnosed the obstacle, here are some prescriptive “cures.”

To invent creative options you will need to 1) separate the act of inventing options from the act of judging them; 2) broaden the options on the table rather than look for a single answer; 3) search for mutual gains; and 4) invent ways of making their decisions easy.

Details on how to do these coming up next week!