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> One thing I learned in a class on negotiation was that many people look at negotiation as a one-time thing. Examples like buying a car happen for most buyers
by jka 5y ago
> One thing I learned in a class on negotiation was that many people look at negotiation as a one-time thing. Examples like buying a car happen for most buyers once every 5 to 10 years. It is also a negotiation that most often happens with a new sales agent / sales manager combo for every transaction.
You may have been implying this already, but just to reinforce the message: it's an asymmetric event frequency.
For the buyer, it occurs once every few years. For the seller, it's occurring on a weekly or perhaps daily basis.
That means that the seller is fairly likely to know most of the common weaknesses and opportunities for buyers, and the ways in which those buyers communicate (or fail to communicate) them. Sellers can choose to do what they want with that information advantage.
To me the question is a broader one: why are Alice and Bob accepting to enter into some byzantine challenge where they have to co-operate in order to receive a larger amount of pizza? And why is there an entire book for sale on the topic, when at first-glance it seems to closely (~80%) resemble what can be defined as the prisoners' dilemma within a paragraph?
I think Alice and Bob should publish the ridiculous situation they've been faced with at the pizza restaurant and find somewhere else to go to eat, and I don't think they require a book to teach them that.
- vineyardmike 5y agoI can’t quite tell if you’re missing the point. The pizza analogy is just some simple case that’s easy to explain in a paragraph. The book is on negotiations, so they need some easy case to negotiate. I’ve had to negotiate for my team at work before and one common thing I hear at private discussions with other parties when in planning for the meetings is that it’s backwards and toxic to have business politics and they want to leave the team over it. this feels like you’re take - and it misses the point that today, you have to accomplish some task. Even if you’re against politics at work, you’re beholden to them once they start. Tomorrow is for deciding if you should accept reality or make changes. And some things aren’t likely to go away.
- jka 5y agoGenerally I think my perspective on the issue is that a lot has been written already, and that people have a tendency to rewrite and bring-to-market content that is a rehash of existing knowledge, as opposed to gathering people together towards consensus (and expansion, and critique) of existing best-known information. Perhaps writing books is an expression of that; and perhaps my frustration is because I wonder whether we could do better in the digital age. In the context of workplace politics: again, these are all patterns that have been repeated for generations. Perhaps it's possible to document and make those patterns public, and then help people to view and decide upon the kind of workplace(s) they'd like to contribute to.