Bargaining with the Devil When to Negotiate, when to Fight

By Robert Mnookin

Presented by Prof David Venter Vlerick Leuven Gent Business School

We Read for You: August 2012

Your partner in world-class business learning

Ponder the following post 9/11 dilemma:

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The book represents Robert Mnookin’s journey in his quest to answer this vexing question

Is negotiation always the best answer?

The protagonists argue:

ALWAYS be willing to negotiate

ALWAYS seek a solution by way of PROBLEM-SOLVING – explore the interests of the parties with reference to a just solution or conflict

You have NOTHING TO LOSE!

Negotiation does not imply GIVING UP EVERYTHING IMPORTANT

THE CONCESSION: your willingness to sit down with the other party to explore a possible deal preferable to your BEST ALTERNATIVES

The antagonists argue:

NEVER negotiate with the devil

Do not SELL YOUR SOUL (Faust)

The devil is CLEVER AND UNSCRUPULOUS – you are seduced with what you desperately desire, sacrificing your integrity as you are lead down the garden path

“I have been charged by the president to make sure that none of the tyrannies of the world are negotiated with. We do not negotiate with evil: we defeat it“- Dick Cheney

Transcend black-white thinking

WHITE BLACK

Register a plea to think beyond categories

Proponents and opponents are both correct depending upon the example they choose

Are these two of the greatest heros?

Churchill

May 1940

Dark times for Britain

France on the verge of capitulation

The USA very reluctant to become involved

Mussolini offers to mediate between Britain and Nazi Germany

Five days of internal discussions and testing of arguments

Churchill decrees not to negotiate with Hitler – the devil

Nelson Mandela

27 years of incarceration

ANC committed to armed struggle

Secret negotiations with the apartheid regime

“I decided it was time to initiate negotiations and I did so without asking because I knew what the answer

would be.“

Both decisions perfectly defensable and in hindsight sensible

How to make wise decisions when there are no categorical answers?

The book offers a framework

A wise decisional process involves three challenges:

A just ‘’cost-benefit-analysis”

Avoiding psychological and emotional traps

Weighing ethical and pragmatic arguments

Who was right?

Which interests are at stake?

What are the alternatives if you do not negotiate?

Are there negotiation outcomes that meet the interests of both parties better than their best alternatives?

How strong are the chances that an agreement could be implemented?

What are the costs of negotiating?

Is your best alternative legitimate and morally defensible?

A cost-benefit analysis – Mr Spock’s five questions

Which interests were at stake? For the US: defend human lives and avoid future

terrorist attacks

For theTaliban: stay in power and maintain Islamic law

The alternatives to negotiating? For the US: military intervention

For the Taliban: guerrilla warfare

Were there negotiation outcomes that could satisfy the interests of all the parties that were preferable to their best alternatives?

The Clinton administration made every attempt to close the training camps and negotiate extradition, but the Taliban were unable to deliver

Applied to Afghanistan: negotiate or fight? The Mnookin‘s analysis

How good were the chances an agreement could be implemented?

Bin Laden’s influence over the Taliban was larger than the inverse

What would the cost be of negotiating?

Mnookin saw a high cost – the Taliban were no innocent party; they tolerated and suppoted Islamitische terrorists. The Clinton administration had publicly warned the Taliban that they would be held responsible for terrorist attacks. The credibility of the US vis a vis terrorist groups was at stake. Negotiation under such circumstances could create a dangerous precedent.

Was America’s best altenative legitimate and morally defensible?

Yes, according to Mnookin. Bin Laden had declared war on the US, a military response was therefore legally justified

MNOOKIN ADVISED NOT TO NEGOTIATE!

Applied to Afghanistan: negotiate or fight? The Mnookin‘s analysis

Applied closer to home

You are the CEO/founder of a high tech organisation. You entered into a joint venture for five years with a Japanese firm to produce your medical prosthesis and distribute it on the Japanese and Asian markets

You explicitly excluded China from the agreement - your partner could not sell any competitive products in China

You discover that your partner went behind your back and sold a comparable product in China

On confronting your partner, you receive a laconic reaction devoid of an excuse. He sees nothing wrong in stealing your know-how. He denies contravening the agreement, stating you do not understand the Chinese market, and fail to appreciate that the royalties you require are too high and should be renegotiated ....

You are shocked and feel threatened

Your instinct entices you to fight and to take

your partner to court

But is this a just financial, rational decision?

Have you been confronted with the devil?

Who is the devil?

Your natural reaction

Our dualistic desision-making system:

Analytic reasoning

Concious, analytic, systematic - rational

Intuitive reasoning

Automatic, self-evident, instinctive – trigger-based

Survival

Our reasoning and the ‘Devil’

Amygdala – An almond shaped cluster of small structures in the area of the lymbic system that plays an important role in regulating emotions such as anger, anxiety, love and grief.

It is an archaic part of the brain.

Emotional highjacks.

Fight or flight (survival).

Be proactive not reactive!

Do not take revenge, go for what you wish.

Our instinctive reaction!

Negative traps – pro fighting

Tribalism

Group identity – we are what we think

Demonising

The other side not only does bad things, but is bad

Dehumanisation

The other side is inferior, not even human (racisim)

Moralism

Convinced of your own view, you are absolutely correct

Zero-sum assumption

Everything that accrues to the other party must necessarily be bad for you; everything the other party wins you lose

Call to action

Missionary leader

Universalism All people are equal

Contextual rationalising

Every behaviour can be unpacked, understood and forgiven based on the external factor

Rehabilitation Everyone can change and deserves a second chance

Shared mistakes and responsibilities Everyone needs to take note of their share of guilt

Win-win The pie can always be enlarged

Reconciliation A negotiated solution is always better

Peace call The leader calls for conflict to be prevented

Positive traps – negotiation

The power of NO!

Positive traps accompany the anguish of not damaging the relationship, not falling into conflict

How do you say no, do you create a boundary that facilitates saying yes, despite what is truely important

What is the “underlying yes”

What do you not want?

What do you then truely want?

Avoiding the traps

Each trap clouds our judgement about our negotiation partners

Most of us have a preference for one of the traps in the series

Our preference is a function of our personal style, rooted in the soils of our deepest identity and our world view

A fighter against unfairness in a hard world in which everyone takes advantage of everyone else at the slightest opportunity

There is something good in everyone, this we should focus on

We must move beyond the traps in order to arrive at a well-founded analysis

The NQ® (Negotiation Intelligence) model

Unlock positions

Unlock value

Unlock a safety kit

The master key

Knowledge

Skills

Attitude

Mr Spock on the Joint Venture

Interests and possible areas of confluence: definitive tangents

Alternative: a lawsuit

In China very difficult,

In Japan tedious with many risks,

In California unlikely as this organisation has never operated there

The clash between utilatarianism and identity

What if your analysis tells you to negotiate, but this is inconsistent with who you are; that for which you stand?

You are torn between principles and pragmatism

Natan Sharansky, a Russian Jew was confronted with a dilemma

He stood accused of treason – framed deliberately

He was a member of the Zionist movement – his crime

In exchange for a confession and rejection of the Zionist movement, he was

offered joining his family after a short imprisonment

For nine years, despite forced labour, he persistently refuses to negotiate

with the ‘Devil’

The Spock analysis is not simple, but the basis of his unflinching behaviour

was “a feeling that as long as you continue to say no, you are a free person“

– with his mathematical brain he rationalised....

Sharansky vs the KGB

Killing Kasztner

Rudolf Kasztner

Jewish leader in occupied Hungary in WWII

He chooses to negotiate with Adolf Eichmann (SS colonel) to save Jewish lives

After excrutiatingly difficult negotiations, he “buys” 1648 lives from the Nazi’s

He returns to the war zone to negotiate a new deal with SS officer Becher at the end of WWII

He relocates to Israel and is convicted of Nazi-collaboration – did he sell his soul to the Devil?

The conviction is overturned, but he is murdered by an extremist

A wise but painful choice?

Neurologists increasingly understand how emotional decisions are arrived at

Often based on intuitive processes (short cuts) – we see something happen, hear something happen and immediately arrive at a conclusion

Short cuts: the biggest enemy of negotiation and conflict Thinking styles can be an impediment (convergent thinking) Leads to assumptions and „self fulfilling prophecies“

Should we throw intuition overboard? No, it’s an important source of information But, intuition must be subjected to analysis to prevent it being

a trap

If a contrast remains, a painful decision has to be made

A strong preference for pragmatism: a painful choice

Painful, because unfairness demands more than utilitarianism – it cries out for satisfying resolution

Choosing for pragmatism represents a choice between seeking compensation for the past and preparing for a better future

To move ahead you need to often give the Devil something that the Devil does not deserve – an offer on the altar of pragmatism can be a bitter pill to swallow

Thus:

Must you always negotiate? – No, but more often than you think or wish

The book provides no answer, but – more meaningfully – a set of questions to ponder to enhance your insight and ultimate choice

Mnookin advises to always involve an extreme person in the decision-making process

Maintain a strong preference for negotiation to protect against falling prey to the different traps. You thus shift the responsibility for proof to those who do not wish to negotiate, but fight – compelling them to justify their stimulus for fighting

IBM – Fujitsu: Theft of an “operating system“?

Other masterly examples

San Francisco Symphony Orchestra labour dispute

Divorce involving children and accrual

Three family members and an inheritance

I wish you well in your endeavours to disempower the Devil!