Book: Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In Author: Roger Fisher & William Ury (Harvard Negotiation Project) In one line: Stop haggling over positions - negotiate on the merits, so you reach wise agreements efficiently without wrecking the relationship.
1 · Negotiate on the merits
Positional bargaining - stake a stance, defend it, trade concessions - produces bad deals slowly and strains relationships. Principled negotiation is the alternative: judge the outcome by interests and fair standards, not by who is more stubborn.
2 · Interests, not positions
A position is what someone says they want; interests are the needs, fears and desires beneath it. Behind opposed positions usually sit shared and compatible interests - reconcile those and the deal opens up.
3 · Know your BATNA
Your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement is your walk-away power. Never accept a deal worse than it - and the better your alternative, the more leverage you carry into the room.
Most people negotiate by taking a position and defending it, conceding grudgingly until someone caves. Fisher and Ury call this positional bargaining, and it fails on three counts: it produces unwise agreements, it is inefficient, and it endangers the relationship. Going soft to keep the peace leaves you exploited; going hard to win leaves both sides exhausted and resentful. The usual advice - be tough, or be nice - just picks a losing side of a false choice.
Their answer, developed at the Harvard Negotiation Project, is principled negotiation, or negotiation on the merits. The idea: decide issues by their substance rather than through a haggling contest over what each side will and will not do. Be hard on the problem and soft on the people. Look for mutual gains wherever possible, and where interests conflict, insist the result rest on some fair standard independent of the will of either side.
The method rests on four principles - people, interests, options, criteria - plus one source of real-world power, the BATNA. Together they replace the tug-of-war of wills with a joint search for a wise outcome. The book is short, practical, and deliberately general: it is meant to work for a landlord and tenant, a diplomat and a rival, or a couple deciding where to live.
Separate the people from the problem
Negotiators are people first - with egos, emotions and misperceptions. Attack the issue, not each other. Handle perception, emotion and communication directly and early, so friction between people never contaminates the substance. Put yourselves side by side, facing the problem together.
Focus on interests, not positions
Ask why and why not behind each stance to reach the real needs. Two sisters quarrel over one orange; one wants the peel for baking, the other the fruit to eat. Splitting it in half leaves both with less; naming the interests gives each all they need.
Invent options for mutual gain
Before deciding, brainstorm many possibilities without judging them. The two enemies are the fixed-pie assumption and the hunt for a single right answer. Separate inventing from deciding, look for shared gains, and expand the pie before dividing it.
Insist on objective criteria
When interests genuinely clash, don’t let it become a contest of will. Anchor the outcome to a fair standard - market value, precedent, expert opinion, cost, law. Reason together over which standard applies, and stay open to reason; yield to principle, never to pressure.
Know your BATNA
Your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement is what you will do if you walk away. It is your true measure of any deal and your source of power. Improve it before you negotiate, know theirs, and never accept terms worse than it.
Positional bargaining fails
Arguing over positions locks ego into stance, so retreat feels like losing face. It is slow, it breeds anger, and with more parties it gets worse. Recognising the pattern is the first step to leaving it.
Deal with emotions and perception
Acknowledge feelings as legitimate, let people blow off steam without reacting, and put yourself in their shoes. Look for a gesture that costs you little but means much to them. Perception is the problem as much as the facts.
The orange: interests behind positions
The classic example - two people, one orange, one wants peel, one wants fruit. Opposed positions (I want the orange) hid compatible interests. Most negotiations have more shared or simply different interests than directly opposed ones.
Expand the pie, don't split it
The fixed-pie mindset assumes your gain is my loss. Inventing options for mutual gain - dovetailing different interests, trading on what each values more - often creates value that plain compromise destroys.
Fair standards end the will-contest
Deciding a used-car price by market value or a lease by precedent turns my will against yours into what is fair here. It protects the relationship and yields agreements each side can defend to their own constituents.
BATNA over a bottom line
A rigid bottom line is arbitrary and can block a good deal; a clear BATNA is a real, comparable benchmark. It stops you accepting too little and stops you rejecting terms better than your alternatives.
Negotiation jujitsu
When they attack or dig in, don’t push back and don’t defend. Deflect the force: reframe an attack as an attack on the shared problem, treat their position as one option, ask questions, and use silence. Redirect to interests and criteria.
Guard against dirty tricks
Meet hardball tactics - deception, good-cop/bad-cop, escalating demands - by naming the tactic and negotiating the rules of the game itself, on the merits, before continuing on the substance.
The Problem - why positional bargaining, soft or hard, gives poor results.
The Method - the four principles, one chapter each: people, interests, options, criteria.
Yes, But… - handling harder cases: when they are more powerful (use your BATNA), when they won’t play (negotiation jujitsu), and when they fight dirty (dirty tricks).
Closing - the method restated, plus common questions on fairness, power and getting started.
Name and improve your BATNA before you enter. Know your best walk-away option and strengthen it - it sets the floor no agreement should fall below, and gives you calm confidence.
Ask “why” behind every position. Surface the real interests - theirs and yours - instead of trading demands. List them; the most powerful interests are basic human needs.
Separate the people work from the substance. Acknowledge emotions, check your perceptions, and attack the problem side by side rather than each other.
Brainstorm options before deciding. Put several possibilities for mutual gain on the table with judgment suspended, then choose - never invent and evaluate at once.
Agree on a fair standard first. Settle which objective criterion applies - market value, precedent, expert opinion - then let the answer follow from it, not from willpower.
When attacked, reframe rather than counter-attack. Treat the assault as an attack on the shared problem, ask questions instead of asserting, and steer back to interests and criteria.
Name dirty tactics out loud. If they use tricks, raise the tactic explicitly and negotiate the process before returning to substance.
“Separate the people from the problem.”
“Focus on interests, not positions.”
“Invent options for mutual gain.”
“Insist on using objective criteria.”
Be hard on the problem, soft on the people.
Your BATNA - the best alternative to a negotiated agreement - is the standard against which any proposed agreement should be measured.