1

Getting to Yes

Authors: Roger Fisher and William Ury

Book Sharing from Ms. Mai Le

Engineering Manager at KMS Technology Vientnam

www.kms-technology.com

Why this book?

About the Authors

• Roger Fisher: Williston Professor of Law and Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project

• William Ury: Director of the Negotiation Network at Harvard University and Associate Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project

Table of Content

• The Problem

• The Method

• Yes, But…

• In Conclusion

• 10 Questions People Ask

THE PROBLEM

Positional Negotiation

• Produces unwise agreements

• Inefficient

• Endangers an ongoing relationship

• Gets worse with many parties involved

• Soft/Hard positional negotiation

Principled Negotiation

• People: Separate the people from the problem

• Interests: Focus on interests, not positions

• Options: Invent options for mutual gain

• Criteria: Insist on using objective criteria

Positional vs Principled Negotiation

Soft Hard Principled

• Participants are friends • The goal is agreement

• Make concessions to cultivate the

relationship • Be soft on the people and the

problem • Trust others • Change your position easily • Make offers • Disclose your bottom line • Accept one-sided losses to reach

agreement • Search for the single answer: the

one they will accept • Insist on agreement • Try to avoid a contest of will

• Yield to pressure

• Participants are adversaries • The goal is victory

• Demand concessions as a

condition of the relationship • Be hard on the problem and the

people • Distrust others • Dig in to your position • Make threats • Mislead as to your bottom line • Demand one-sided gains as the

price of agreement • Search for the single answer: the

one you will accept • Insist on your position • Try to win a contest of will

• Apply pressure

• Participants are problem-solvers • The goal is a wise outcome

reached efficiently and amicably • Separate the people from the

problem • Be soft on the people, hard on

the problem • Proceed independent of trust • Focus on interests, not positions • Explore interests • Avoid having a bottom line • Invent options for mutual gain

• Develop multiple options to

choose from; decide later • Insist on using objective criteria • Try to reach a result based on

standards independent of will • Reason and be open to reasons;

yield to principle, not pressure

THE METHOD

1. Separate the PEOPLE from the problem

• Separate the relationship from the substance; deal directly with the people problem

• Prevention works best

• Side-by-side search for a fair agreement

Deal with people problem

• Perception – Put yourself in their shoes – Discuss perceptions explicitly – Look for facts inconsistent with their perceptions – Give them a stake in the outcome by participating in the process – Face-saving: make proposals consistent with their values

• Emotion – Make emotions explicit, acknowledge them as valid – Allow the other side to let off steam – Don't react to emotional outbursts – Use symbolic gestures

• Communication – Listen actively and acknowledge what is being said – Speak to be understood – Speak about yourself, not about them – Speak for a purpose

2. Focus on INTERESTs, not Positions

• Interests define the problem • How to identify interests

– Ask "Why?“, "Why not?" – Realize that each side has multiple interests – The most powerful interests: basic human needs

• Talk about interests – Make your interests come alive: be specific – Acknowledge their interests as part of the problem – Put the problem before your answer – Look forward, not back – Be concrete but flexible – Be hard on the problem, soft on the people

3. Invent OPTIONS for Mutual Gain

• DIAGNOSIS: 4 major obstacles – Premature judgment

– Searching for the single answer

– The assumption of a fixed pie

– Thinking that "solving their problem is their problem.“

• PRESCRIPTION – Invent first, decide later

– Broaden options

– Search for mutual gains

– Make their decisions easy

Conduct Brainstorming

• Before brainstorming – Define your purpose – Choose a few participants – Change the environment – Design an informal atmosphere – Choose a facilitator

• During brainstorming – Seat the participants side by facing the problem – Clarify the ground rules, including the no-criticism rule – Brainstorm – Record the ideas in full view

• After brainstorming – Star the most promising ideas – Invent improvements for promising ideas – Set up a time to evaluate ideas and decide

• Consider brainstorming with the other side

Broaden options

• Circle charts

• Look through the eyes of different experts

• Invent agreements of different strengths

• Change the scope of a proposed agreement

Look for mutual gain

• Identify shared interests

• Dovetail differing interests

• Ask for their preferences

Make their decision easy

• Whose shoes? Focus on one person

• What decision? Give an easy decision

• Make offers, consider consequences

4. Insist on using Objective CRITERIA

• Commit to reaching a solution based on principles

• Develop objective criteria – Fair standards: market value, scientific judgment,

professional standards, moral standards, tradition…

– Fair procedures: “one cuts, the other chooses”, “taking turns”, “drawing lots”, “letting someone else decide”…

• Negotiate with objective criteria – Frame each issue as a joint search for objective criteria

– Reason and be open to reason

– Never yield to pressure, only to principle

YES, BUT…

Yes, But…

• What if they are more powerful?

• What if they won’t play?

• What if they use dirty tricks?

1. What if they are more powerful?

• Negotiate on merits, develop your BATNA to increase your negotiating power

• 2 Objectives – Protect you against making an agreement you should reject – Make the most of the assets you do have

• How – The cost of using a bottom line – Develop your BATNA – Judge every offer against your BATNA – Consider of exposing our BATNA – Consider the other side’s BATNA – Formulate a trip wire

2. What If They Won’t Play?

• Center on what you do – principled negotiation

• Focus on what they may do – negotiation jujitsu

• Focus on what a third party can do – one-text procedure

Negotiation Jujitsu

• Do not push back – sidestep their attack and deflect it against the problem

– Treat their position as an option, ask for reason behind

– Invite criticism and advices on your ideas

– Recast an attack on you as an attack on the problem

– Use questions instead of statements

– Use silence

One-text procedure

• Use of mediator

• Mediator works with 2 sides, prepare drafts from their interests until no more improvements can be made, provide the final one-text, leave option of Yes and No to related parties

3. What if they use dirty tricks?

• Recognize the tactic

• Raise the issue explicitly

• Question the tactic’s legitimacy and desirability

• Use principled negotiation: people, interest, options and objective criteria

• Turn to your BATNA and walk out as last resort

• Don’t be a victim: be prepared to fight dirty bargaining tactics

Some common tricky tactics

• Deliberate deception: phony facts, ambiguous authority, dubious intentions

• Psychological warfare

– Stressful situations

– Personal attacks

– The good-guy/bad-guy

– Threats

Common tricky tactics (cont.)

• Positional pressure tactics – Refusal to negotiate: talk about their refusal to negotiate, insist on

using principles – Extreme demands: ask for principled justification of their position

until it looks ridiculous even to them – Escalating demands: call it to their attention, take a break, insist on

principles – Lock-in tactics: depends on communication -> interrupt the

communication – Hardhearted partner: get agreement to the principles involved in

writing, speak directly with the “hardhearted” partner – A calculated delay: look for objective conditions that can be used to

establish deadlines – “Take it or leave it”: consider ignoring it first, introduce more

solutions, if you use this tactic, let them know what they will have to lose if no agreement is reached and look for a face-saving way

IN CONCLUSION

• You knew it all the time

• Learn from doing

• “Winning”

Take-away Slide

• Principled Negotiation – People: Separate the people from the problem

– Interests: Focus on interests, not positions

– Options: Invent options for mutual gain

– Criteria: Insist on using objective criteria

• Develop your BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Alternative) to increase negotiating power

• Don’t be a victim of dirty bargain tricks

10 QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK

10 Frequent Questions

1. Does positional bargaining ever make sense? 2. What if the other side believes in a different standard of fairness? 3. Should I be fair if I don’t have to be? 4. What do I do if the people are the problem? 5. When does it make sense NOT to negotiate? 6. How should I adjust my negotiating approach to account for

differences of personality, gender, culture and so on? 7. How do I decide things like: where should we meet? Who should

make the first offer? How high should I start? 8. Concretely, how do I move from inventing options to making

commitments? 9. How do I try out these ideas without taking too much risk? 10. Can the way I negotiate really make a difference, if the other side

is more powerful? How to I enhance my “negotiating power”?

More questions?