Engineering Negotiation — how Googlers and Wharton Alumni Negotiate

Photo by Jeb Buchman on Unsplash

There are two kinds of people, 1) winners take all and 2) everybody else.

Thank God, we live in the age of information, perhaps the next most significant period after “The Axial Age.”

This fact balanced the game for everybody else… now, at least we can know that we are at a disadvantage vs. the winners take all, but even better, some tools can help us get more.

The purpose of this article is to introduce you to the toolkit used by Googlers and the Wharton Alumni to get more from pretty much everything.

Like the saying goes:

Life is a negotiation.

Maybe the most challenging negotiation will be vs. your own motivation, but assuming that you win that battle, you could start looking like a winner take all for some other people… at the end, everything is relative to the object’s mass and speed. Isn’t it?

Of course, all these ideas come from a book. Written by Stuart Diamond, a Pulitzer-winner journalist and professor at Wharton, he defines a comprehensive approach towards engineering the art and science of negotiation in his book “Getting More: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life.”

There are plenty of resources about the techniques and strategies and how to apply them, so in this article, I’ll let you know which key ideas helped me get more:

1. Avoid getting emotional. Basically, emotions blind you; there is no room for charity or hate in a negotiation.
2. Don’t negotiate with the janitor. Want to close a deal? He might love your product, but doubtfully he’ll have the authority to buy it.
3. Do your homework. Understand the interests and motivations of every party, what is in their heads?. Apply all your theory of mind capabilities and run expansive thought experiments
4. Don’t forget your goals. You might get some collaterals… cool. But why are you here? What must need to happen?
5. You’re a human, not a company. When Disney bought Pixar, the negotiation was done between Bob Iger and Steve Jobs. The final outcome is between you and the person in front.
6. Respect hierarchies and positions. If you’re the underdog, be the underdog. If the other party needs to be superior to be comfortable, let him remember idea 4.
7. Increase the pie. Can you give the other party something additional that might not cost you much? Use it and trade it for more! Have tickets to see the Warriors? and the son of your counterpart is a fan? Offer them!
8. Don’t try to get the whole pie at once. Instead, let it get divided gradually.
9. Negotiating with a rock? Understand what are its’ standards… or if he has made any exceptions in the past?
10. Candor is king. Be transparent during the whole process and never try to manipulate the other party.

Hopefully, these tools will help you get more, and as the title suggests… it doesn’t mean that using them will make you get everything.

Want to go deeper without reading +500 page? This article makes the job

Have You Read This Harvard Negotiator’s Handbook? Getting More by Stuart Diamond

Want to go full winner take all? Here is the link for the book:

Getting More: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life

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cover of the book