Thinking books · Conflict & negotiation · Fisher, Ury & Patton, 1981
Getting to Yes — the big ideas
The standard method for negotiating without treating it as a contest of will.
Free — no account needed to read
The big ideas
Separate the people from the problem. Attacking a position while being hard on a person collapses into the person defending themselves rather than the position.
Focus on interests, not positions. A position is what someone demands; an interest is what it serves. Positions conflict far more often than interests do.
Invent options for mutual gain before deciding among them — combining generation and judgement is why negotiations produce two bad options.
Insist on objective criteria so the outcome rests on a standard rather than on who can hold out longest.
Know your BATNA — what you will do if there is no agreement. It is the only real source of leverage and it is built beforehand, not at the table.
Practise it — no need to have read it
Take a disagreement you are in. Write both positions. Then ask "why?" of each until you have both sets of interests.
A hint: Look for an interest you share. There almost always is one, and it is usually unstated.
Where it shows up in real life
- Salary
- Client scope
- Disagreement with a co-founder or partner
Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.
Thinking methods from this book
- Positions and interests — Getting underneath what each side is demanding to what each side needs.
- Know your walk-away — Deciding what you will do if there is no agreement, before you negotiate.
The thinking it builds
- Argumentation — Build and evaluate arguments
- Decision Thinking — Make better decisions under uncertainty
- Questioning — Ask better questions