I just finished reading Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In the 1981 book on negotiation by Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton.

The first thing you have to get past with this book is that since it was originally written in 1981, many of the references and examples are dated. In terms of the jist of the book itself, it discusses the concept of negotiation in terms of a mutual beneficial for all parties.

In other words, it’s the win-win strategy. This win-win model has been mentioned many time in real life and you’ve probably come across people who love using this cliche too.

I’ve heard some pro sports general managers commenting on the win-win strategy as being a fair one that they are happy with when making a trade with another team ie. if they make a trade that makes sense in the long term for both teams, both teams are more likely to want to make another trade in the future. This is as opposed to a situation where one team ends up getting fleeced in the deal and are therefore hesitant to ever deal with the opposing GM again.

Personally, I’d think that most GMs of teams and people in general would be more worried about negotiating fairly and winning the deal at the end of the day since they might not be in the job long enough to be around for future deals…

Overall, I found the book harder to read than I did Start With NO. When I say harder, I mean only in the sense that I had a hard time wanting to read every word on every page of this book and found myself skimming it mostly. I think in hindsight I should have read it second and read Start With NO first since that’s the order in which they were written and also because Jim Camp – the author of Start With NO – makes (uncomplimentary) references to Getting To Yes and structures his thoughts in opposition to it.

Still, I’m glad I read it but would have to say that I think I sit closer to Jim Camp’s methods and thoughts on the subject of negotiation than I do with the authors of Getting To Yes. Perhaps back in the early 1980s the concepts that Getting To Yes made sense and were relevant but I think a lot has changed since then and part of that involves a change in how people think and deal with other people too.

Plus, the world has gotten a lot smaller than before, people seem to have shorter attention spans and many people do often only look out for themselves which sometimes means you not only have to be wary of this, but also take it into account when dealing with people like this.

Would I recommend reading Getting To Yes? Sure, if you have the time.

Having said that, the first line of the Conclusion section states “There is probably nothing in this book that you did not already know at some level of your experience” so perhaps even the authors knew they weren’t onto something new!