Become a (negotiation) jujitsu master

Adapted from “Can You Break the Cycle of Bad Communication?” by Susan Hackley, Managing Director, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

“What happened?”
“How did a pleasant discussion turn sour?”
“Why did the deal unravel at the last minute?”

If you’ve ever come away from a negotiation asking questions like this, poor communication may be to blame, write Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton in their landmark book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (2nd Ed., Penguin Books, 1991)

The authors warn readers not to fall into the common negotiation trap of action and reaction: “If the other side announces a firm position, you may be tempted to criticize and reject it. If they criticize your proposal, you may be tempted to defend it and dig yourself in… In short, if they push you hard, you will tend to push back.”

To head off this cycle, the authors promote a method they call negotiation jujitsu. As in the “martial arts of judo and jujitsu, avoid pitting your strength against theirs directly; instead, use your skill to step aside and turn their strength to your ends.” Negotiation jujitsu means breaking the vicious cycle of escalation by refusing to react. Resistance should be channeled into activities such as “exploring interests, inventing options for mutual gain, and searching for independent standards.”

How can negotiation jujitsu work in practice? In the 1990s, a technology start-up was seeking $10 million in financing from the Soros organization. Initial negotiations led to a stalemate. Nine months later, the Soros group returned to the table and said it was ready to make a deal. The start-up proposed financing at a price of $1.25 per share; the Soros group countered with a price of $0.50. At this point, the start-up’s partners said to each other, “Here we go again. They’re not serious. Let’s move on to other funders.”

Instead of giving up, a negotiator at the start-up decided to “look behind” the Soros group’s position. Realizing that Soros doubted his company would achieve its ambitious business plan, he proposed breaking the financing into four stages of $2.5 million each, with performance targets at each stage. As a start, he proposed, the Soros group would invest $2.5 million at its preferred $0.50 price. Then, if the start-up met its targets, the Soros group would invest its next $2.5 million at $1.00, followed by investments at $1.50 and $2.00 when subsequent milestones were met. Thanks to this exercise in negotiation jujitsu, the financing deal went through.