Your Negotiation Roadmap: A Parable
A quick word first
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Lost in a storm
Many years ago, a military patrol was caught by a fierce blizzard in the Swiss Alps. The soldiers were lost and frightened, but one of them found a map tucked in his pocket. After consulting it, the men built a shelter, planned their route, and then waited out the storm. When the weather cleared three days later, they made it back to the base camp.
Their commanding officer, relieved that his men had survived the ordeal, asked how they found the way out. A young soldier produced the life-saving map, and the officer studied it carefully. He was shocked to see that it was a map of the Pyrenees Mountains that border Spain and France-not the Alps!
This story, attributed to Hungarian biochemist and Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Gyorgi, dates back to the 1930s. It is often cited in serious research on organizational learning and is widely regarded as true. Whether or not the tale is apocryphal, how could the wrong map save climbers lost in the Alps? There are three explanations, and they are as relevant for negotiators as for anyone caught in the wilderness.
First, the map rekindled the soldiers’ confidence. It released them from the paralysis of indecision and impelled them to take action. The men didn’t bicker or wander aimlessly. Instead, they shielded themselves against the storm and waited for the best time to make a move.
Second, the map provided direction, impetus. Heading exactly the right way proved less important than simply getting moving. That isn’t always prudent, of course. If we’re lost and sit tight, others may come to our rescue. In negotiation, by contrast, we have to rely on our own wits and initiative to get where we want to go. A bias for action almost always beats being passive.
Most important, the map sharpened the soldiers’ awareness. It gave them a template from which they could work. Once they were underway, portions of the map may have conformed to specific areas the soldiers encountered. Mountains have common characteristics, after all: steep headwalls, brooks, and more gentle inclines. But peaks are also distinctive in other respects. When the drawing no longer fit the scene, the men had to reconsider their position and find some other part of the map that seemed more plausible.
That constant vigilance enabled them to improve their mental model of the actual world they were traversing. This ongoing re-orientation required keen attention to their surroundings. Their survival depended on a willingness to abandon earlier assumptions and accept new realities.
Navigating by sight
Confidence, direction, and vigilance: summon that trio, and you have hardy companions when stakes are high and outcomes in doubt, whether traversing mountains or negotiating agreements.
The soldiers’ map was wrong, but not that wrong. A map of the Sahara or of Lake Erie would have done the soldiers no good. To be useful, the map had to correspond roughly to reality. If it weren’t plausible, the men wouldn’t have had confidence in themselves. And it had to be appropriate to the context, or it wouldn’t have provided initial direction. But it also had to be the right scale. A fine-grained map probably would have left them worse off. Overwhelmed with topographical details, they could have argued in circles about where to start rather than focus on where they needed to go.
When you’re formulating negotiating strategy, of course, you can’t pull a printed map out of your pocket. You have to draft one yourself. Even when you’re on familiar ground and prior experience suggests a particular path, guard yourself against a been-there/done-that mindset. The terrain may have changed since your last time around.
Traditional cartographers used sextants, surveyors’ transits, and altimeters to mark out territory. If you’re a dealmaker, you need a provisional sense of three features of the negotiation landscape.
The first is a clearheaded view of where you think you are at present—that is, a reckoning of your needs, priorities, and trade-offs—as well as your fallback options if the negotiation becomes stalemated.
The second is an estimate of your counterpart’s circumstances so that you can gauge what might prove workable for both of you.
A third element of mapping negotiation entails cataloging key factors that you don’t know at the outset, so that you’re alert for surprises as the process unfolds. (We’ll dig into that important task in upcoming articles.)
In mapping negotiation, U.N. diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi says that we must constantly use our eyes.
“Keep an open mind and be ready to change and adapt to the situation,” he advises. “Don’t ask reality to conform to your blueprint but transform you blueprint to adapt to reality.”
Housekeeping
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