
Never Negotiate Piecemeal. Here’s Why - dwynings
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/03/10/never-negotiate-piecemeal-heres-why/
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nostrademons
You could look at this by viewing negotiating as a way of arriving at a
globally optimal solution that maximizes everyone's happiness, rather than as
a way to allocate surplus that's inherently zero-sum.

When you negotiate piecemeal, there's little room for prioritization. There's
give & take on each individual issue, and one person is the winner and one
person is the loser on that particular issue, and you don't have the
flexibility to make sure you win on the issues you care about and lose on the
ones you don't.

When you treat the agreement as a whole, you can look at it as an effort in
prioritization. Each side will care more about certain issues. You want each
side to win on the issues they care about, and lose on the ones that they
don't. The negotiation, then, is just a way of teasing those priorities out
effectively and making sure that everybody's needs can be met at once.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Surely this:

> _a way of arriving at a globally optimal solution_ //

has very little direct relationship with this:

> _the flexibility to make sure you win on the issues you care about and lose
> on the ones you don't_ //

This is the statesmanly way to do things. But generally speaking what one
cares about and what is "globally optimal", lets say most beneficial for both
parties, is seldom coterminous.

~~~
nostrademons
That's where you trust that both parties will fight hard for what they most
want. If you fight as hard as you can for your terms, and they fight as hard
as they can for their terms, then presumably all the issues will be laid out
on the table and the agreement simply won't get signed unless it's as good as
it can be.

It's the same reason that adversarial systems law, economics, international
relations, etc. tend to work. People have more information about their own
desires than that of others, so if you task each person with looking out for
his own interests but ensure that they also respect the clearly-expressed
interests of others, you end up bringing as much information to bear as you
can.

~~~
wisty
It's also why systems like law, economics, and international relations fail.
People don't care about issues which only marginally effect them, so they
don't bother.

Take pork barrelling (edit - I used a different example, but it would derail
the thread). Nobody (at least, nobody who's notable for anything _except_
being anti-pork) fights to limit it, because no-one loses a huge amount. But a
small minority of wealthy vested interests do stand to gain a lot.

But your point is basically correct - the systems _mostly_ work, because
people's big issues get dealt with.

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MattRogish
Yes, it's called "bundling".

[http://businessnegotiationservices.com/bundling-in-
negotiati...](http://businessnegotiationservices.com/bundling-in-negotiation/)

I highly recommend _everyone_ learn the basics of negotiation. This isn't
rocket science and is one of a set of well-known techniques.

Go buy "Getting to Yes". It's a great primer to negotiation.

[http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-
With...](http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-
Without/dp/0143118757/)

~~~
philbarr
That book looks great. And cheap too, which is the way I like it.

I wonder if this "bundling" technique could be used in salary negotiations?

I used to work for a small dev shop (~30 devs) where we each had a personal
review with the manager at the end of the year. The idea was you would review
your performance - but everyone knew it was just waiting until the end of the
meeting so he would tell you what your pay rise was, and you would try and
haggle for more. I'm sure the scenario is familiar to many here.

Nobody ever got more than the manager's initial offer, and looking back on it,
the reason was because he had a checklist of items that he would go through
with you. It was _impossible_ to excel at every single item, and those you did
excel at he always managed to find a flaw with or find something you could
improve on. By the time it came to the pay increase talks he had successfully
removed any negotiating power you had, and you felt you had to accept the
measly increase. He was excellent at this. People would walk in the room all
fired up about what they'd done that year and how much they should get, and
walk out depressed. Then we'd all go to the pub at lunch and whine about it.

The only time I ever got a decent pay rise was when I woke up hungover one
Sunday morning and, with a flash of inspiration, thought, "hang on, I bloody
well deserve an extra 20%! I don't care if it's nowhere near my personal
review time." So on the Monday I requested a meeting with him and demanded a
40% pay rise and told him why. He didn't have chance to pick me apart, and
eventually had to settle on just negotiating me down to 20%.

That was complete chance though, I don't think I can use getting drunk all
Friday and Saturday as a successful negotiating trick in the future.

------
lionhearted
Wow, what a great piece. Lots of good advice. Made me cringe in recollection
at a few times in my life.

Interestingly enough though, my most adversarial negotiation of my life went
like this (caught partner embezzling funds after he'd had a personal finance
crisis)... interestingly, that one was wound down by email and fax with
entirety of the agreement like this, and was the most successful. I didn't get
this point back then (I still screw it up, actually, by trying to proactively
"fix" things and oftentimes taking things at face value that are just
leverage/negotiating moves). Yet -- I got lucky. My ex-partner's father was a
lawyer, so we just faxed/emailed drafts back and forth.

That one came out OK, good outcomes even. Many other situations I had a much
better position and better odds, but did poorly since I
compromised/conceded/"helped"/"fixed" too early and set an expectation that
things would continue that way.

Hmm. Expectations are a funny thing.

This is a really great article. Anyone who thinks it's not relevant to them
should read it twice, since it covers a hell of a lot of life. Brilliantly put
piece.

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nutjob123
A good point was made however I really don't like these blog posts which
attempt to be a "negotiating for dummies" style resource. Negotiating is a
well understood field and there are many textbooks and academic resources for
people who would like to learn more. Normally these resources are meant for
lawyers but the explanations about why people negotiate following certain
patterns should be accessible to most people.

~~~
erikb
Can you give some free entry points in this topic? I have a book (Shells
Bargaining for Advantage), but the scientific papers I read where all not
worth the read,at least in time spent vs content learned.

~~~
Jach
Learning some basic game theory (lots of online sources accessible from
Google) will probably go at least as far. The prisoner's dilemma is also a
nice metaphor for a lot of human behavior. In various experiments, even
without iterations and such, humans tend to cooperate with each other. But if
you're ever dealing with a lawyer, a sociopath, an economics professor, or
anyone else really who's determined to optimize their share of the chips on
the table, you need to know how they will think and game theory's a nice way
of letting you know, which lets you know how you should reply so that you're
not made into a sure loser.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Isn't that like learning fluid dynamics as a precursor to learning to swim? It
should get your there with a deal of hard work but there's better ways to do
it.

Now once you've got the basics and want to understand more fully the how and
why of swimming/negotiating then learning fluid dynamics/game theory may
provide some insight but I very much doubt that knowledge of either is really
going to give you much edge over someone who concentrates on learning the
practice itself.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> I very much doubt that knowledge of either is really going to give you much
> edge over someone who concentrates on learning the practice itself.

But then you get an insight and create these:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimfin> \- and win without much effort.

It of course wouldn't help you much in a swimming contest, where the priority
is for the whole game to look 'fair' to viewers, not to Just Win. But in real
life, you're not always artificially limited by a set of rules that disallow
using advanced knowledge for your advantage.

------
jayzee
I do agree that negotiating while considering the entire scope can be useful
and beneficial to both parties, but it can be counter-productive to disclose
your priorities. If one of your priorities is not a priority for me, I can
still pretend that it is a priority for me, and give-in after a lot of tough
back-and-forth. Then I can use that as leverage as we go down the list.

I feel that you should test the other side's priorities before you disclose
yours. You would not want to trade an elephant for a pawn.

------
recroad
tl;dr Don't negotiation point by point, get all the points first, prioritize
them, and then negotiate.

~~~
lotharbot
The specific reasoning is key: if you negotiate point by point, each issue
becomes a compromise, regardless of importance. It's better to be able to hold
fast on important issues, give in on issues the other side thinks are far more
important than you do, and compromise on the rest.

~~~
erikb
Kudos for saying better in 3 sentences what the whole article meant to teach.
I totally misunderstood the blog post. Understanding the article as you
explain it, I have to agree with it.

~~~
PakG1
Curious if you could explain how you did understand the blog post? This is
recently quite an interesting topic for me, why when one person feels like
they've communicated as simply as they can, still can get misunderstood by
someone else who is probably also actually quite intelligent.

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ChuckMcM
_"And most of us start with zero training."_

I take from this that my life is atypical since both I and my three daughters
took up negotiation training at about the age of 3 and worked hard to improve
our skills from then on :-)

I liked the article, its true life is negotiation be it with your spouse, your
partners, your kids, or even the taxi driver. I think a good take away is that
if you have never considered all the negotiating you do, you might think about
picking up a couple of books on it.

I can recommend "Getting to Yes" [http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-
Negotiating-Agreement-With...](http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-
Agreement-Without/dp/0140157352) as a great place to start.

------
verelo
I have a bunch of negotiating heading my way and i think this is some advice
that will really help. We have a lawyer and now i think about it, that is how
i recall him working...although i just thought that was how he worked.

Who would have thought problem solving skills would hold us back?

------
erikb
I really don't like these "do this way ALWAYS" or "NEVER EVER do that"
advices. In my eyes it will not help the reader. A good plan is not one that
magically pops up in your head, but one that you refined many thousand times
through sweat and experience. The upper bound (in terms of success) of most
strategies is much higher then most people think. Just choose one that makes
you feel comfortable. If people want to negotiate piecemeal, they SHOULD! If
they do that often and work out how to act in different occuring situations
(good and bad ones will come with EVERY strategy), then their plan will
gradually improve.

I claim that the worst strategy, but with very well worked out details and
executed by a practitioner with a lot of experience and who is well shaped for
that strategy, will beat most people applying the best strategy. Of course
with 26 years in age, I can't say that my theory is true or not. But my
experiences until now support that theory. What do you think?

~~~
mwd_
Can you think of an important, common situation where it is definitely better
to negotiate piecemeal? Maintaining leverage and being able to trade off
concessions in different areas is very important in a wide variety of
situations. "Never do X" advice can be useful as a heuristic when it pays off
in the average case.

One probably could develop his own good negotiating techniques over time, but
that would only come after being destroyed repeatedly by highly-skilled
negotiators. I think it's way better to shorten that process by learning from
others.

~~~
erikb
The funny thing about your request is, that one of the most well known books
about negotiation called "Bargaining for Advantage" by G. Richard Shell (was
talked a lot here and on other Start-Up/Tech related sites some time ago)
starts with an example where it turned out bad for him, to negotiate the
package and not point by point.

In the introduction (not to find in the amazon preview, sadly) he bargains
with a class mate of one of his children or a neighbors daughter or something
like that. She wants to sell fruits in different boxes, he of course not
wanting to be impolite but not in need of fruits, orders the cheepest. And
then without closing this one point, started by his wife he asks the girl if
she can take care of the family pets, while his family is on a trip. So the
girl says "Of course, but then you buy the big box, right?"

Is that good enough an example?

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mathattack
Absolutely true. I learned this in an academic setting, after which it seemed
so obvious. Very time efficient, and increases the chance that both sides
leave happy.

------
jamesaguilar
It's weird to me that this guy is jokes so much about Stuart's Jewish parents.
Aren't we past that by now?

~~~
mdda
Maybe Stuart told him how his parents felt.

------
cheatercheater
In my latest contract, I negotiated in a kinda-piecemeal way. I was going to
be hired by this big company, and got a fairly shitty contract: they never
worked with contractors and got a contract from their parent company. It had
unpassable clauses geared towards fucking me over, such as a clause that
disabled you from handing over debts to collection agencies. The whole thing
had in total about 20 problems I needed to address. I first negotiated the
rate. Next, I wrote the CEO with the 16 least important problems. Once he
parsed that and agreed to everything (because they weren't things important
for him anyways) I wrote him with the outstanding big problems. He admitted to
that all, after some argumentation. Finally, one issue was outstanding. I
pressed on and he wrote the following to the middle manager: _He beat me to a
pulp, just agree to everything he wants_. Finally, after the contract was
signed, I made sure to remind the guys of some things that are implied by the
local law that they would have to honor in the end. Doing things this way
saved me a lot of trouble and won me a big fat wallet.

------
EGreg
Very good advice! I like it.

------
Create
this is old hat. 13th century, Florence.

now, its just called double-entry bookkeeping system. works for money, and
low-and-behold business deals. some people look at their whole life from this
perspective.

