Getting to Yes Turns 40
A quick word first
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This year marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Getting to Yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in by Roger Fisher and William Ury.1 Other excellent books on negotiation had appeared earlier, starting in the early 20th Century with Mary Parker Follett’s prescient works on dynamic leadership and creativity. In 1965 Richard Walton and Robert McKersie published A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiation with insights that remain broadly relevant to negotiations across the board.
But Getting to Yes had an impact far beyond any prior books—and, for that matter, any negotiation book written since. It remains the best seller in the field by a large margin and has been translated into dozens of languages.
Breaking new ground
The book’s key contribution was advancing a general theory of negotiation, one that applies to both deal making and dispute resolution, from buying a car to seeking peace in war-torn regions. The model laid out four steps.
1. Separate the people from the problem. The meaning of this precept is often misunderstood. It wasn’t meant to suggest that negotiation should be depersonalized. Far from it. The text, in fact, puts building relationships and dealing with emotional issues as a top priority. Focus on that from the outset, the authors advised. And disentangle interpersonal aspects from the substantive issues (e.g., dollars and cents, rights and liabilities).
2. Focus on interests, not positions. Lobbing demands back and forth can turn negotiation into a contest where making a concession may seem like an act of weakness. Deadlock can result if no one budges. And even if somebody finally blinks, and the parties come to agreement, their strained relationship may hamper implementation.
3. Invent options for mutual gain. Fisher and Ury’s most important contribution was highlighting how negotiation can be a problem-solving process in which parties make creative trades given their different needs and priorities.
Earlier books like Robert Ringer 1974 Winning Through Intimidation and Herb Cohen’s 1980 You Can Negotiate Anything extolled a take-no-prisoners approach. For many readers, Getting to Yes’s emphasis on “mutual gains” was an attractive, refreshing alternative.
Many people associate the book with introducing “win-win” negotiation, though actually the authors deliberately avoided using that term. In a recent conversation, William told me that he and Roger want to purge the notion of winners and losers in negotiation. They worried that people would be skeptical enough about the mutual gains idea. Being explicit about win-win might look like pie-in-the-sky.
4. Insist on using objective criteria. Separating interpersonal issues from substantive ones, focusing on interests (not positions), and seeking mutually beneficial solutions made a compelling case for a new way of understanding and conducting negotiations. The authors’ fourth step, about objective criteria, raised some eyebrows.
Fisher and Ury urged readers to agree on standards—and not self-serving ones—to guide the process and justify the result. Perhaps the word “insist” had a belligerent tone that contrasted with the collaborative nature of much of the rest of the book. Moreover, reasonable people can have legitimate differences over whether fairness matters in negotiation. And if it does, agreeing on what is fair.
Person A and Person B work hard on a project that pays off handsomely. A says, “We each put a ton of time into this. We should split the proceeds 50/50.” B replies, “But it was my idea.” Then A counters, “Yeah, though I was the one who found our buyer.”
Yes, it’s better for parties to debate underlying principles than issuing threats and accusations. But objectivity is often in the eye of the beholder.2
The impact of Getting to Yes
Notwithstanding the book’s virtues (especially, its fresh outlook and accessibility) its success signals there must have been something in the early in the 1980’s that drew people to negotiation. Maybe it was the political divide, the visibility of not-in-my-back-yard battles, a sense that we in the U.S. were becoming too litigious. Perhaps that and much more. I leave the question to sociologists and historians.
Negotiation centers were also popping up at universities. The Program on Negotiation drew on faculty from Tufts, MIT, Harvard, and other Greater Boston schools. Similar programs developed at Northwestern, Stanford, and Pepperdine, just to name a few institutions.
At the beginning of the 1980’s professional schools of law, business, and government rarely offered negotiation course. Somehow ten years later, most of them did, sometimes as electives, sometimes required. Companies large and small began to provide negotiation training for their employees. Conflict resolution sessions even worked a way into some public school curriculums. And many books on negotiation followed, as well. Some in the spirit of Getting to Yes, others decidedly different.3
Would all this have happened if that book never had been written. Absolutely. I’m sure of that. But my guess is that the book shaped and accelerated much of these ventures by linking theory and practice, and legitimizing general strategies meant to apply in a wide variety of contexts.
Talk about shelf life. Forty years. Four decades. And the book is still having impact. An admirable legacy!
Postscript
Later this week I’ll release a new podcast, featuring my recent conversation with William Ury, who shares how Getting to Yes came to be. Among the things I didn’t know was that he and Roger had written an earlier book about international negotiation that sold only a handful of copies. But then William had an idea . . .
Housekeeping
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Bruce Patton came on board several years later as co-author of the second edition.
The second edition of Getting to Yes digs deeper into objective criteria in an added section, “Ten Questions People Ask About Getting to Yes.” The first three are questions about fairness and principled negotiation.
Exhibit A would be Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know, by Jim Camp, self-described on the book jacket as “America’s number one Negotiation coach.”