Quickthink

From time to time, we find ourselves in the middle of serious bargaining. It can be a bit of a shock if we don’t do this much. That shock comes from the realization that we are playing a game with words and gestures instead of having a conversation.

So what happens? Well, at some point, one of the parties makes an offer. And the reaction is usually “You can’t be serious!” This is an attempt to get the other side to “bargain against himself”.  To get that person to make yet another more attractive offer before the bargaining can begin in earnest. You got it. You should never, ever do this. You end up with getting a worse deal than if you insist on a counter-offer.

Well, guess what. That is exactly what the republicans are doing now with respect to negotiations over the so called “fiscal cliff”. President Obama made an offer to the republicans on how to go foward. BI tells us the republican reaction with this title

BOEHNER: I Looked At Geithner And I Said, ‘You Can’t Be Serious?’

Well, Obama is serious. This time — unlike before — he is refusing to bargain against himself. Paul Krugman lays out the details with a cautionary point. It could be that the republicans cannot and therefore will not make a counter-offer. That would be interesting. Let’s see what happens.

Conflict management is an odd phrase. Instinctively, we think that when we have conflict, things are already out of control. How could one manage something that is already out of control? And so, on more than one occasion, I have heard otherwise very smart people talking about how to eliminate conflict. It is a silly thought. We can eliminate conflict no more than we can eliminate rain or sunshine. Nor do we want to eliminate conflict. It has its purposes. But I can sympathize with the idea that we don’t want to lose control.

So can you maintain at least some control even in the midst of a conflict? Yes. But to do that, you need to work on more than one issue at the same time. You need to maintain self-control and you need to maintain strategic control.  It takes some practice to keep an eye on both at the same time. And even the most skilled negotiator loses it from time to time. Oops.

I won’t write about self-control issues here except to say that anger management is a skill set worth cultivating. I will write a bit more about strategy in conflict. Developing a working strategy to deal with conflict requires some decision making about what is critical. Why? Because while we may want to protect the crown jewels at all cost, we may not want to kill ourselves fighting for the fake earrings that Aunt Sally gave last Christmas (of if you are a male, perhaps that clip is not worth dying for). We tend to think of them instead as “bargaining chips”.

Ah!! Bargaining? Can one bargain one’s way out of conflict? Usually not until some of the heat goes out of the fire that is driving it. It is a mistake to try too early. And it is a mistake to further escalate (turn up the heat) assuming that the other side will eventually give up or plead for peace. That often produces the opposite reaction. And so what next? Further escalation? Sadly, yes.

Blight and Lang argue that we should take this lesson from the Cuban missile crisis and they have a point. I think the Vietnam war provides a similar lesson. US escalation after escalation produced more resolve rather than weakening. And perhaps this is a lesson that we should apply in Afghanistan. Turning up the heat against the taliban is not likely to break their will to fight. To achieve that, we want to turn down the heat so that they begin to see bargaining as a more attractive option.

So how do you turn down the heat? You turn down the heat by taking emotion out of the equation. This can be achieved in a number of ways. But you don’t achieve it by pushing the other side into a corner.

FOLLOW -  Of course, the wars fought against Napoleon, the US civil war, and the two great wars of the 20th century produced final results after extreme escalation. Are these counter-examples, where turning up the heat broke the will of the other side?

Well, they are examples of how one can achieve military victory by turning up the heat. But military victory is not usually the goal in conflict management, rather it is a special case. And btw, this is why I do not think it is wise to use sports analogies in conflict management discussions. Sporting events are rather like military engagements in that they produce winners and losers, though with less pain and suffering.

We just completed two days of basic negotiation training at Marju Unt’s Estonian Euromanagement Institute, and as always, it was interesting. One thing that came out is that some folks have a hard time just saying “no”, or using trade lingo “refusing to bargain”.

A quick tip - you don’t have to start negotiating just because the other side wants that. There are times when you should just say “no”. This can be done nicely, but the “no” has to be clear. Why? Because even if you open the door just a crack, it is hard to close it again. And off you go, perhaps giving concessions that you know are not in your interest to give, just to end the damned process.

So be bold! Know where your “no’s” are. Bill Ury is right — there is power in a positive “no”. And saying “no” at the right time and in the right way can enhance rather than damage relationships.

The first presidential debate was odd. Not because Mitt Romney did what he does. But because President Obama seemed uninterested in the process. How could you be uninterested just at that moment?

Maureen Dowd offers a plausible explanation. She argues that

(a) distaste for salesmanship … caused Obama not to sell or even explain health care and economic policies; and … that (same) distaste … caused him not to sell himself and his policies at the debate.

This does not take away from one of Obama’s strengths. He is a man of substance. He wants to get the right answers. And that is highly valuable, especially in contrast to political opponents who often seem more interested in winning than getting policy right.

But if Obama gets the right answers, he wants that to be enough. The problem is that this leaves a major portion of the leadership equation out of the process. At the end of the day, leadership is about connecting with followers. Building the leader/follower relationship. To do that, when you attend a highly publicized key event, you need to show that you are engaged. That you care about the process - not just the result. Neglect that part of leadership at your peril.

How good are you at persuasion? Most of us don’t think about this very much. We are too busy doing things. And when we find ourselves in argument, it feels foreign. Strange and emotional. It can easily devolve into conflict.

One reason is that we are not that good at persuasion. We think it is the same as reasoning. Ooops. No way, dude. Reasons give argument its bulk. But they are not what make it effective in changing people’s minds. Something more is needed.

One way to think about that is to contrast two different mental processes that lead us to conclusions. The first is reason. Reason uses logic to build an argument. It works from components and is dispassionate. The second is intuition. It works from context and it is passionate. Which is more important? According to Jonathan Haidt, intuition is the elephant and reason is the rider. Intuition has the power. Reason facilitates.’

So how to engage intuition? Intuition is visual rather than literal. It needs images. And where do we find images? In stories. Stories give the context for intuition to work. And stories lead us to conclusions. They are powerful tools.

The recent disaster in the NFL gives us a nice case study in how a negotiation can go seriously off the rails. Everyone agrees that the NFL’s lock out of its referees and hiring of emergency “scab” replacements has caused a gigantic mess. The mess got a lot bigger the other day when a bad call on the final play of a game determined the result — the wrong way. This is now damaging the credibility of the league. So how did we get here?

According to NYT, greedy owners are to blame. Well, maybe so. But the set of relationships that keeps the NFL together has been fraying for a while. I would not be surprised if something breaks altogether.

QUICK FOLLOW - The powers that be saw the gorilla come out of the closet and presto! Like magic we have a deal to bring the refs back to the playing field. Funny how things like this happen.

Reader alert! Dense Argument Ahead!

Maureen Dowd has a great line about Mitt Romney today in her NYT oped. She writes

Romney seems to be forever on a journey out of vagueness, an endless search for identity.

Forever on a journey out of vagueness? Brilliant. And the phrase might apply more broadly than to poor old Mitt. Perhaps it even is a universal description of how it feels to be trapped in youth. When you feel childhood fading away and you need a new focus. You need an anchor that tells the world who you are. But just who are you? Well, at that moment, it is too early to tell. And it can be painful to realize that as a young person, you don’t yet have a worthy story to tell. And Mitt may feel as well that his life so far is not the story he wants to tell. So he adjusts the story for the sake of his ambition. For what he could become.

So what does one normally do? One goes looking for anchors. Role models. That is what I did when it hit me that at some point I would need to become a man. I became fascinated by the life stories of great men. Lincoln’s story appealed, though it was rather bloody. Churchill too, with his amazing ups and downs. Both had tremendous strength of character. And there was Joyce and an endless array of writers. Less resoluteness but more entertaining. Finally, there were my own forebears. I thought deeply about their stories, wondering what I could and would carry further.

Taking these stories in helped me quite a lot in those days. But it was not enough. Why not? Because you can never take over the life stories of others. At some point you need to make a pivot. At some moment in time, you need to move from looking for an anchor to being an anchor.

To see this more clearly, we might consider the “reward” we get from great adventure stories. After the monsters are slain and the hero returns home, his or her experience radiates through time, inspiring us. But being inspired by heroism is not quite the same as being heroic ourselves. To become the hero, you need to earn the title by creating the story and making it your badge. Which, BTW, is why Mitt is a bit odd. He wants the hero role, but can’t seem to tell the hero story.

Here is the kicker. In this type of story, “earning” is more valuable than “having”. Using Pressfield’s vocabulary, we cannot kill the monster once and for all. We do it in each moment as we build our evolving story. The more we do, the more we earn the title. Consider this rant from Pressfield

Everything wasn’t always a “business.” We didn’t always look at the world in terms of return on investment, quarterly profits, or net worth. We didn’t follow Presidential elections based on how much money a candidate raises per month or define the American dream based purely on the pursuit of Ayn Randian self-interest.

We admired people for what they did. Not how much money they made.

Hold onto that idea of “self-interest” for a moment. We have more to say about what the “earning” story is about.

It is an old, old story. In zen tradition, for example, one earned enlightenment as part of a heroic story. When one hears the beautiful final verses from the ten bulls

Barefooted and naked of breast, I mingle with the people of the world.
My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, and I am ever blissful.
I use no magic to extend my life;
Now, before me, the dead trees become alive.

one should recall that these words are possible only after the hero goes through an incredible series of adventures. The story is less about the fact that he has a certain presence than how he earned it. The comment to the above verse says this more clearly

Inside my gate, a thousand sages do not know me. The beauty of my garden is invisible.

Of course it is because it comes from within - not just for show. Going further,

Why should one search for the footprints of the patriarchs?

One need not chase any longer when one already has become what is needed.

I go to the market place with my wine bottle and return home with my staff. I visit the wineshop and the market, and everyone I look upon becomes enlightened.

We might think of enlightenment in this context as an activity, not just a good feeling. These days, we use a different vocabulary. We speak of “building engagement”. You can do this when you are an anchor. Less so when you are searching for an anchor. And the critical first step to become an anchor is to make the decision that it must be done. With that decision in hand, everything else becomes possible. Indeed, making that decision earns a certain reward in itself, being part of a story. Not making the decision guarantees a certain youthful vagueness.

In light of the above, consider Mark Ruxin’s definition of “taste” and how taste differs from “interests”

Taste … cuts to the core of a person’s evolving identity – his past, present and future. Interests can be more casual and transactional – stuff you might have, not the person that you are.  But taste implies a commitment of time and thought and, beyond defining who you are, it can inspire others.

I am most amused by the distinction. I agree with Ruxin that media these days, including web platforms, is mostly about cultivating interests rather than taste. In the end, it is a bit like eating cardboard instead of food. But there is a deeper issue here.

As you may recall, the great Roger Fisher advised negotiators to find common “interests” rather than to negotiate from fixed positions. Fisher made a worthy contribution by opening a discussion about how effective communication builds joint opportunities. But I was never overly fond of the word “interests”. As Ruxin argues, the word has a certain tenuous quality. We look elsewhere for strength and clarity.

And “self-interest”? Remember Pressfield’s rant? Well, by now I hope that you will agree that this also has a rather tenuous value. While we all are self-interested to a degree, how much we “feed the monkey” is not the stuff of great life stories. And if you want to get deeper into that thought, go back to Pressfield. He has something to say to you.

Bargaining is a form of negotiation. But not all negotiation is bargaining. We do quite a bit of negotiating both before and after we bargain. How should that work? Good question. It depends on the context. But there are plenty of stories out there about what does not work. Steve Blank offers this one - called “unrequited love”. It is a good one.

We just finished the third and final day of our negotiation skills training class and I am pooped. But I am also excited because we had a very nice group over that the Estonian Euromanagement Institute. At the end of the day, we asked them what things they valued most from the day. Here they are

1. Bill Ury’s “yes, no, yes” construction. If you don’t want to come to the course, but want to know more about this, buy Bill’s book called “The Power of  a Positive No“.

2. The meta schematic. This maps (1) crisis versus safety and (2) things versus relationships. Sorry, you can only get this from the course.

3. Agenda Control tools - Again this is a course exclusive.

We finished the second day of negotiation training yesterday and spent the day discussing negotiation strategy. It is a challenging topic because negotiating brings into play so many unknowns. But if you don’t have a strategy in the first place, it is like trying to walk through a mine field blindfolded.

One of the core ideas of strategy building is to confront the worst case. Will you bump into Godzilla when you turn the corner? And what then? The odd thing is that we often put Godzilla there ourselves  inadvertently, and then forget about it.

Using Bruce Schneier’s model, in the normal course of things, we accept models of seeing risks that have internal contradictions. And it hurts facing up those contradictions. So we usually don’t do it until we hit a crisis point. Godzilla suddenly shows up demanding our attention.

Not all of us live this way. And we admire those who take huge risks for the public good. It is right that we do that.  People like journalist Marie Colvin accept the risks associated with their jobs as normal. They have their eyes open. And why live with the risks? They are passionate about the value of their work. BTW, Marie was just killed in Syria. It is sad. But it is not a sad story. She was much to brave a person for us to think of her story as just sad.  Inspiring, I would say.

FOLLOW -  if there is a moral to this post, it is that the value of our strategic choices depends at least in part on our appetite for risk. That, in turn, hinges on whether we feel connected to a great purpose. The greater the purpose, the more risks we gladly take. But in our day to day lives, it can be challenging to see the great purposes that are in fact driving us. So we react, rather than create.