48 pages • 1 hour read
Getting to Yes
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Preface-Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Problem”
Preface to the Third Edition Summary
Decades ago, bosses made decisions and underlings obeyed. In today’s fast-changing, “flatter” Internet-based world, every project calls on a wide variety of people to participate, and simply giving orders no longer works. Negotiation, once the province of experts, is now a skill required in everyone’s lives. Where such talks were formerly a win-lose proposition, today they only work if both sides win. A “negotiation revolution” now teaches these principles worldwide.
As the world gets more connected, and long-separated populations begin to meet in a human “family reunion,” conflicts can boil over, and the need for resolution is greater than ever. Though conflict has become a “growth industry,” it highlights important problems in business, democracy, and justice. These can now can be resolved more effectively through wise negotiation.
The book’s third edition offers a few minor enhancements to its theory, along with several examples of conflict resolution from more recent history.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Don’t Bargain Over Positions”
Most people negotiate by taking a position and then compromising it. Sometimes this works, but the more strongly one holds to their initial position—“$37.50. That’s the highest I will go” (4)—the harder it is to back down without losing face.
In 1961, trying to head off a dangerous nuclear arms race, the US and Soviet Union refused to budge over how many inspections might be involved. They failed even to define what an inspection would consist of.
In Iraq, farmers leased land and planted crops, but oil was discovered there and they were told to leave. A negotiator prevented bloodshed by getting the oil company to wait several weeks until the harvest was complete. Many farmers worked for the oil company, which also permitted them to plant crops between the oil derricks. Thinking carefully about each side’s needs led to a solution that otherwise might have been lost amid frozen positioning and posturing.
In positional bargaining, each side takes an extreme stand and then hopes they can keep some of that position. This process takes time; it becomes a battle of wills that embitters both sides and damages relationships. Things get worse when many people are involved: One nay vote can torpedo an entire agreement.
Instead of positional bargaining, some people use a “soft” approach that’s respectful toward the other side and makes concessions to maintain harmony. Among friends, this can lead to a friendly, if somewhat sloppy, agreement. With strangers, this technique may encourage a “hard” approach, by which outsiders take a tough stand and refuse to settle unless the other side makes concessions. The soft bargainer loses: “If your response to sustained, hard positional bargaining is soft positional bargaining, you will probably lose your shirt” (10).
All negotiations involve two levels: the substantive part—what is to be decided—and the procedural part, how the negotiation will be conducted. The procedural negotiation is a “meta-game” that shifts and changes with every move made by either side.
Instead of using soft or hard bargaining techniques, it’s better to use a system called “principled negotiation or negotiation on the merits” (11). This can be used in nearly all situations. It contains four elements:
People: Separate the people from the problem.
Interests: Focus on interests, not positions.
Options: Invent multiple options looking for mutual gains […] .
Criteria: Insist that the result be based on some objective standard (11).
Disentangling people and their emotions from the issue makes it possible for both sides to work together as a team and tackle the problem, not each other. Emphasizing interests points the discussion at what each side really wants and needs rather than their arbitrary positions. Thinking up lots of options helps ease pressure and increase cooperation. When discussions become stuck, the use of an external, fair standard takes the onus off the negotiators and shifts it onto an objective, neutral norm.
A negotiation takes place in three stages: analysis, planning, and the negotiation itself. In each stage, the four principles should be kept in mind. The result will likely be a settlement that’s wise, efficient, and friendly. These principles are fleshed out in the chapters that follow.
Preface-Part 1 Analysis
The opening sections briefly describe the challenges of negotiating in the modern age and outline a four-part system for successful bargaining.
Two significant changes have happened since the book’s original edition was published. The first is the leveling, or flattening, of authority in Western societies, which makes decisions much more open to debate. The second is a shift from win-lose negotiating to a win-win approach.
Institutional flattening arose because globalization and technology increased complex interactions among much larger numbers of interested parties: “[W]e often have to rely on dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals and organizations over whom we exercise no direct control. We simply cannot rely on giving orders” (x). To conduct business or govern nations, the number of negotiations nowadays can extend into the hundreds. A single objector can scuttle a carefully worked-out agreement.
The second change, win-win bargaining, challenges the age-old belief that, to get what one wants, one must deceive, intimidate, and steamroll the other side. This approach sometimes works, especially when dealing with strangers and/or the occasional clash between large, widely separated populations, but it fails when the people involved are closely connected—within cities, along borders, and in complex business processes.
With a win-win approach, the aim is not to dominate or defeat other negotiators, but to work with them to find options that can provide both parties with what they want. In the past, nations that wanted another country’s resources would invade and take them; today, it’s usually cheaper simply to buy them. During the 1600s and 1700s, nations believed that economic gains were obtained at the expense of other countries; that system was called mercantilism. It was largely replaced, during more recent centuries, with a philosophy of mutual trade. However, until the 1980s, bargaining techniques still relied on the old methods of intimidating, forcing concessions, and achieving a victory over the other side.
Modern technologies can often be modified to increase production efficiencies, expand resources, and generate enough for both sides in a dispute. This simply wasn’t possible in the past, when innovation was extremely slow and hard to share. Today, Inquiring Into the Other Side’s Needs is possible, as one can share resources. It behooves negotiators to “[i]nvent multiple options looking for mutual gains” than to try to stare down the other side and risk battle (11).
Negotiating for mutual gain capitalizes on people’s ability to help one another. Where positional bargaining often ends up ruining relationships, the book’s principled negotiating techniques respect the needs of different parties and emphasize The Importance of Disengaging From Strong Emotions.
The goal no longer is to take from others but to produce with them.
In the old days, clans, tribes, and nations thought of each other as threats. Today, using respectful negotiating, they can see each other as friends and allies.
Unlock all 48 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: