Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
There are endless books out there about how to negotiate, and they are improving over time. In general, I think they still suck. (But if you want to suggest some to me, I'll read them. That should be obvious by now, right?)
There are several major components to successful negotiation. The first and most important issue to be resolved is whether you should be negotiating with this person at all.
Rule #1: Do not negotiate with people you know you cannot trust. You can pretend you are negotiating if you like, and absolutely you should act unilaterally to get what you need and to get out of having to interact with this person at all. But if you cannot trust them -- if you ask them whether they like broccoli and they lie to you -- do not negotiate.
The second issue to be resolved is whether you should be negotiating about this issue.
Rule #2: Do not negotiate with someone over something they have no interest in.
Interest should be interpreted widely -- stakeholder. If you need their money for what you want to do, they are interested, even if they have zero inclination to do what you want them to do. This definitely calls for strong negotiation skills. If what you want to do will impact them, they are interested -- at a minimum, you should let them know what's going to happen so they can adapt to it. But if you don't need their resources, it won't have any impact on them, and they could not care less about what you propose to do, you should not be negotiating with them about that issue. Do not waste their or your time or energy.
The remaining two rules involve how to tell whether you are done negotiating.
Rule #3: A successful negotiation is one which ends when everyone likes the solution better than any alternative solution anyone involved can think of.
This is a much more demanding criterion for success than is typically used. But if you do it this way, your enforcement costs will be effectively zero. Everyone will be pulling in the same direction -- no sabotage, no dropping the ball except out of honest forgetfulness, accident or unforeseen circumstance.
Rule #4: Negotiations can be reopened whenever new information is acquired by any participant that changes their assessment of the solution.
This can happen in several ways: a participant may be unable to fulfill their commitment (two broken legs means they won't be mowing the lawn this week), may realize the deal is worse than they thought (they did not realize the lawn tractor was broken, leaving them with a rusty push mower and three quarters of an acre), or a participant can realize there is A Better Way (the landscape guys down the street are running a deal this season on mowing). Negotiation can be expensive and contentious; people tend not to want to reopen a decision. That is not wise. While some decisions cannot be easily reversed (selling a house you bought three months ago), a lot of them can. And the bad will that results from insisting on a decision that is worse for a participant than they (or anyone) realized is not going to lead to good, cheap negotiation in the future.
Allocating Money, Time and Other Family Resources
Copyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created June 28, 2006 Updated June 28, 2006