Getting to Yes

Decades ago, bosses made decisions and underlings obeyed. In today’s fast-changing, “flatter” Internet-based world, every project calls on a wide variety of people to participate, and simply giving orders no longer works. Negotiation, once the province of experts, is now a skill required in everyone’s lives. Where such talks were formerly a win-lose proposition, today they only work if both sides win. A “negotiation revolution” now teaches these principles worldwide.

As the world gets more connected, and long-separated populations begin to meet in a human “family reunion,” conflicts can boil over, and the need for resolution is greater than ever. Though conflict has become a “growth industry,” it highlights important problems in business, democracy, and justice. These can now can be resolved more effectively through wise negotiation.

The book’s third edition offers a few minor enhancements to its theory, along with several examples of conflict resolution from more recent history.

Most people negotiate by taking a position and then compromising it. Sometimes this works, but the more strongly one holds to their initial position—“$37.50. That’s the highest I will go” (4)—the harder it is to back down without losing face.

In 1961, trying to head off a dangerous nuclear arms race, the US and Soviet Union refused to budge over how many inspections might be involved.