SPEED REVIEWS - JANUARY 2014
Reviews by Chris Murray
By Michael Wheeler
MIX AGILITY AND CREATIVITY INTO NEGOTIATION
Harvard Business School professor and negotiation
expert Michael Wheeler gives ample praise to the groundbreaking book on negotiation
by Roger Ury, Getting to Yes. He extolls the book for changing the attitude of
negotiation from adversarial to what has become known as "win-win"
negotiation (although ironically, this specific term is not in the book). And
he believes that contrarian books that advocate a more adversarial approach are
"forgetting that what goes around comes around."
However, as Wheeler notes in his new book, The
Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World, he does
have a major concern with Ury's text that can be summarized simply as:
"It's not that simple." Wheeler believes that the rules and
methodologies of win-win negotiation presented by Ury and scores of others
since the publication of the book ignore the complexity and ambiguity of real-life
negotiations. Even a core concept such as BATNA (Best Alternative to a
Negotiated Agreement, meaning your walk-away backup) assumes a clarity and
rigidity that in truth is hard to find in negotiations. You might have a line
drawn at a certain price when you're buying a house, Wheeler says, but what if
you find the perfect house that may be just above the allocated budget. That
happened to friends of the authors, who stuck to the plan and let their dream
house go. Today they might drive wistfully by that house, only four blocks away
from the house they did buy, and wonder, "Did we do the right thing?"
The Art of Improvising
Instead of an inert approach to negotiation,
Wheeler argues for a more dynamic - that is, constantly changing - approach
that more accurately reflects the fluidity of real-life situations.
Specifically, he writes, "effective negotiation demands rapid cycles of
learning, adapting and influencing." Learning means paying attention to
changes during the negotiation in such things as the scope of the issues under
discussion, the best means for resolving them, and the nature of the
relationship between negotiators. While Wheeler acknowledges that such learning
may take place in many negotiations, it often happens by happenstance. He
advocates, instead, deliberate and active learning - that is, deliberately
being tuned outward on what is happening in the negotiation instead of inward
on solidifying your position and forming your responses. "Your counterpart
may be only in midsentence, but you're already scripting what to say when she's
done - if you let her get that far," Wheeler explains. "While you're
busy stifling feelings, weighing options, or interpreting something said
earlier, the interaction can run away from you."
Paying heed, as Wheeler calls the kind of focused
attention that "goes well beyond active listening," is how jazz
musicians stay in sync with their fellow musicians. Because they are constantly
focused on what the others are doing and not what they are doing, they can
easily shift and adapt to someone else's lead. In negotiation, paying heed
"involves turning off one's inner dialogue and absorbing what is happening
in the here and now."
Anyone who's listened to a jazz group knows that
while the soloist is playing, the other musicians continue to support and
enrich the music with their contributions. This is known in jazz as
"comping" - accompanying or complementing what the other players are
doing. There is an art to comping in music and an equal art, Wheeler writes, in
comping during negotiations. "Even while your counterpart is speaking, you
should lean into the conversation and shape his or her behavior," he
explains. "The questions that you pose or even a nod of your head can
encourage constructive statements and keep the other party from painting
himself into a corner." Skillful comping can be
"transformational," Wheeler writes. "Even if they talk far more
than you do, you may guide the conversation by supporting their best ideas and
reshaping other ones. In the end, they may feel that you accepted their
proposal when you deftly got them to voice much of what you wanted."
The Art of Negotiation is
packed with specific methodologies - the deal triangle that lays out your
baseline, your opponent's baseline and constraints is one potent example - and
illustrated with numerous stories. Wheeler has not written a manifesto but a
practical toolkit for those looking to master the frustrating ambiguity of
real-life negotiations.
THE BUZZ
Notability: 4
Readability: 4
Takeaways: 5
Innovation: 4
Readability: 4
Takeaways: 5
Innovation: 4
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