<story><title>Never Negotiate Piecemeal. Here’s Why</title><url>http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/03/10/never-negotiate-piecemeal-heres-why/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nostrademons</author><text>You could look at this by viewing negotiating as a way of arriving at a globally optimal solution that maximizes everyone&apos;s happiness, rather than as a way to allocate surplus that&apos;s inherently zero-sum.&lt;p&gt;When you negotiate piecemeal, there&apos;s little room for prioritization.  There&apos;s give &amp;#38; take on each individual issue, and one person is the winner and one person is the loser on that particular issue, and you don&apos;t have the flexibility to make sure you win on the issues you care about and lose on the ones you don&apos;t.&lt;p&gt;When you treat the agreement as a whole, you can look at it as an effort in prioritization.  Each side will care more about certain issues.  You want each side to win on the issues they care about, and lose on the ones that they don&apos;t.  The negotiation, then, is just a way of teasing those priorities out effectively and making sure that everybody&apos;s needs can be met at once.</text></comment>
<story><title>Never Negotiate Piecemeal. Here’s Why</title><url>http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/03/10/never-negotiate-piecemeal-heres-why/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lionhearted</author><text>Wow, what a great piece. Lots of good advice. Made me cringe in recollection at a few times in my life.&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough though, my most adversarial negotiation of my life went like this (caught partner embezzling funds after he&apos;d had a personal finance crisis)... interestingly, that one was wound down by email and fax with entirety of the agreement like this, and was the most successful. I didn&apos;t get this point back then (I still screw it up, actually, by trying to proactively &quot;fix&quot; things and oftentimes taking things at face value that are just leverage/negotiating moves). Yet -- I got lucky. My ex-partner&apos;s father was a lawyer, so we just faxed/emailed drafts back and forth.&lt;p&gt;That one came out OK, good outcomes even. Many other situations I had a much better position and better odds, but did poorly since I compromised/conceded/&quot;helped&quot;/&quot;fixed&quot; too early and set an expectation that things would continue that way.&lt;p&gt;Hmm. Expectations are a funny thing.&lt;p&gt;This is a really great article. Anyone who thinks it&apos;s not relevant to them should read it twice, since it covers a hell of a lot of life. Brilliantly put piece.</text></comment>