William Ury

Works

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, 1981
Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People, 1991
The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes, 2007

In Tactics of Organizational Politics

Ideas

Separate the people from the problem. Negotiators are people first, and the relationship tends to become entangled with the substance. Fisher and Ury advise dealing with perception, emotion, and communication directly and separately from the substantive issues, for example by discussing each side's perceptions and helping the other side save face.

Focus on interests behind positions. A position is what a party says it wants; an interest is the reason it wants it. Their example is the Sinai in 1978: Israel's interest was security and Egypt's was sovereignty, and an agreement that met both interests became possible once the talks moved below the opposed positions.

Insist on objective criteria. Negotiate on some basis independent of the will of either side, such as market value or precedent. The parties search for criteria jointly, keep an open mind about which apply, and yield to principle and never to pressure.

BATNA. A party's best alternative to a negotiated agreement is what it can obtain without negotiating. Knowing and improving it protects against accepting an agreement that should be rejected and is the main source of negotiating power when the other side is stronger.

Negotiation jujitsu and the one-text procedure. When the other side insists on bargaining over positions, Fisher and Ury advise declining to push back against them and redirecting attention to interests and options. One method is the one-text procedure, in which a third party drafts a single text, asks each side for criticism, and revises it round after round; their example is the United States drafting the Camp David texts between Egypt and Israel in 1978.

Go to the balcony. Facing a difficult counterpart, Ury advises not reacting on the spot: step back mentally, as if onto a balcony overlooking the negotiation, keep your own interests and alternatives in view, take a pause when needed, and avoid deciding under pressure.

Build them a golden bridge. Make it easy for the other side to say yes by removing the obstacles to agreement: involve them in shaping the solution, offer choices, attend to intangible interests such as recognition and dignity, and help them save face so that agreeing does not look like giving in.

Yes! No. Yes?. A positive no has three parts: a yes to one's own underlying interests and values, a firm no to the request, and a yes that proposes another way forward and keeps the relationship intact. The book organizes this into stages of preparing, delivering, and following through.

What it explains

Ury explains how to stay steady and keep a negotiation moving when the other side is difficult: refuse to react, then make agreement easy and face-saving for them. His positive no shows how a refusal can protect one's interests while leaving a door open.

Tactics that draw on William Ury (8)

In Thinking Tools

Known for

A negotiation adviser and author with a doctorate in social anthropology from Harvard. Getting to Yes, written with Roger Fisher, teaches bargaining over interests instead of positions and gave negotiation the term BATNA, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement; Getting Past No adds going to the balcony, stepping back from the exchange before reacting. Both are practitioner books.