Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Getting to Yes, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Effective Negotiation
Negotiation as the Pursuit of Interests
The Value of Working Relationships
Power Imbalance
Preparation and Flexibility
Summary
Analysis
The authors admit that differences in power and resources can significantly influence negotiation. When they are less powerful than the opposition, negotiators should prioritize refusing unwise resolutions and using the power they do have as effectively as possible to satisfy their interests.
One of the main difficulties with principled negotiation is that it presumes something of an equal power dynamic. Fortunately, it also helps create an equal dynamic, since it asks people to consider the objective principles of a situation rather than resolving disputes based on who can coerce the other into an agreement (as in positional bargaining). Still, in unbalanced situations wherein one party can afford to ignore the other’s interests—or even get away with positional bargaining—the underdog party needs some effective way to even out the power differential and, if possible, shift the discussion back to principles.
Themes
The authors explain that people often care so much about reaching a resolution that they accept unfair agreements that they later regret. To avoid this kind of poor decision-making, it is helpful to explicitly choose a bottom line (like a minimum or maximum price).
People tend to reach hasty decisions because they do not define the value of reaching an agreement before entering the negotiation. Manipulative negotiators often expect and try to exploit this lack of preparation, but smart underdogs have to be willing to walk away when necessary. In fact, this ability to walk away is often their greatest source of power in a negotiation.
Themes
However, bottom lines can also be dangerous. First, they prevent people from adapting when they learn new information during a negotiation. Additionally, bottom lines can lead people to focus solely on money rather than creatively fulfilling their interests by inventing solutions (like selling for less, but with more favorable conditions in the contract). Sellers often also set their bottom lines too high because of wishful thinking: they refuse very good offers because they want an impossible price.
Bottom lines are like the positional bargaining of pre-negotiation preparation: because they are so rigid, they limit a negotiator’s perspective rather than expanding it. At the same time, they serve the invaluable function of helping people articulate the value of reaching an agreement and how much they stand to lose by walking away. Principled negotiators need a way to define this value without getting fixated on a specific number.
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The best alternative to choosing a bottom line is planning what to do if negotiations fail. For instance, if a family does not get a good offer for their house, what will they do with it? Is this better or worse than the best offer they have? In other words, they should determine their “Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement,” or BATNA for short.
Like a bottom line, a BATNA helps negotiators recognize the true cost of walking away from negotiations. But it allows them to weigh two concrete, realistic options against each other, rather than forcing them to compare an agreement to an imaginary bottom line.
Themes
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Like setting a bottom line, identifying a BATNA helps negotiators recognize if an offer is truly worth accepting or not. But unlike a bottom line, a BATNA is not rigid or based on a single dimension. If negotiators fail to identify their BATNA, they end up making decisions in the dark, without understanding “the consequences of not reaching agreement.”
Comparing an offer to a bottom line often turns into a question of over/under, usually on a single quantifiable factor (like money). The BATNA expresses “consequences of not reaching agreement,” because it defines how much (or little) a negotiator has to lose by walking away. In turn, this expresses how much negotiating power a party has—someone with a poor BATNA will accept far less than someone with a great one.
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In some cases, people wrongly weigh the value of reaching an agreement to all the alternatives they have. But they can only choose one of these alternatives, so it is essential to compare the agreement to the best alternative. More often, people are desperate to make an agreement because they are overly pessimistic about their alternatives, which they have not thought through. Accordingly, people should always examine alternatives before the negotiation, not after.
Quality trumps quantity: the BATNA must be specific in order to be realistic. People can only choose one course of action, so it is not helpful to have many different options (especially if they are all bad ones). According to their extensive experience, the authors suggest that people are more likely to underestimate their BATNA than overestimate it—in other words, they are in a better bargaining position than they imagine, and they would know the truth if they had prepared beforehand.
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The authors also suggest that people come up with a “trip wire,” or an idea of an imperfect agreement that is still somewhat better than the BATNA. People can be relatively certain that an offer better than their “trip wire” is worth accepting, but they can also know to seriously think through any offer that seems reasonable but is worse than it.
The “trip wire” is like a flexible, noncommittal version of a bottom line that negotiators can prepare beforehand. People should not aim for their “trip wire” but rather view it as a dividing line between proposals that are definitely worth accepting and those that require further reflection.
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Next, the authors give tips for “making the most of your assets.” First of all, people’s greatest asset is not their money or power—it is their BATNA, which explains the cost of not making an agreement. For instance, a poor souvenir seller actually has more negotiating power than a wealthy tourist, because they can sell the same souvenir to someone else and know the object’s actual production cost. Similarly, if a company builds a factory right outside a city’s limits, the city has power over the company because its BATNA is expanding the city limits to make the factory pay property taxes.
Although it may be counterintuitive, in a negotiation, the party that can mobilize greater resources does not necessarily have the upper hand. Because both sides have to agree to some course of action in order for the negotiation to be successful, whoever has less to lose by walking away has more power. Of course, this makes knowing one’s BATNA beforehand all the more important.
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For BATNAs to be useful, negotiators have to actively plan them out. This means brainstorming all their alternatives, building on a few to make them as clear and concrete as possible, then identifying the single best one and weighing it against every negotiated offer. Having a solid BATNA also puts negotiators in a better position because they can afford to walk away. It can be useful to point this out to the other side.
As with negotiated agreements themselves, the more specific and actionable the BATNA, the more useful it will be. Planning out a BATNA helps negotiators both clarify their negotiating position and prepare themselves to actually walk away from negotiations and take their BATNA if necessary. It is perfectly legitimate to bring up one’s BATNA in a negotiation, just as it is reasonable to mention one’s interests or emotions. Of course, it must be presented as a matter of fact and absolutely not as a threat intended to compel agreement from the other side.
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Finally, negotiators should examine the other side’s BATNA. In some cases, people can change the other side’s calculation by acting to make this BATNA impossible. But when both sides have good BATNAs, it can be better to not negotiate at all.
Just like with emotions and interests, negotiators should imagine the other side’s BATNA in order to get a more accurate picture of the balance of power at play in the dispute. The authors also note that BATNAs are not fixed: it is possible to improve one’s own BATNA or worsen the other side’s (and not always by playing dirty). This means that examining and planning out a BATNA should be a continuous process throughout a negotiation, not a one-time inquiry at the beginning of it.
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The authors summarize their argument: when negotiating with a more powerful opponent, people should do anything possible to make principles and merits the basis of the negotiation. By developing an attractive BATNA, people lower the cost of walking away from unequal negotiations.
Although negotiation situations are often deeply unequal, the authors point out that they are usually not as unequal as they may look from the outside. It’s important to recognize that underdogs have several tools at their disposal to even out power imbalances. Unsurprisingly, the most valuable of these is principled negotiation itself, as power is irrelevant to principles—all that matters is what is morally right, fair, and reasonable.
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