Customer Reviews
Slightly heavy to read but good - By: Kerola Sami, 24 May 2008 
The message is very good. Quality of text is not that great. I don't mean that there is lots of spelling mistakes or such but I felt the text was heavy. Time after time I almost started to sleep or think something completely else than the book. That is reallly a bummer. Excellent ideas but boring package.
All you need to know about negotiation - By: Marc Thatcher, 21 May 2008 
Excellent book - very easy read & packed full of strategems & approaches to help you negotiate better. I did a business school course on negotiations & have purchased a few books on the topic but this one stands out in terms of simplicity & effectiveness. This stuff reallly works!
Get to yes without going to war - By: Andrew Barrett, 29 Dec 2007 1991 second edition, Penguin Books, 229 pages (of which 187 pages form the main body of the book).
If you've read any of my other reviews, you won't be surprised to discover this is another of the twenty books recommended by Charlie Munger in the second edition of Poor Charlie's Almanack (the most useful book I've read).
I have wanted to learn more about negotiation since last year, when I had particularly protracted & unpleasant negotiations over leaving my previous full time job. It was probably the most unpleasant time of my life, it went on for months & the return for that huge personal cost was very poor (for everyone except my lawyer, that is). My relations with alll of the people at the firm were also destroyed by the time the mess finallly ended. I figured there had to be a better way - & the sooner I learned it the better.
Having a single book on the subject recommended by a very well read & extremely effective individual in his eighties like Munger was ideal. If there is a single, most useful text on negotiation, this should be it. Fortunately, even with such high expectations, I wasn't disappointed. I would include Getting to Yes amongst the top ten most useful books I have read.
It makes an excellent companion volume to Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog, which I have just re-read. Getting to Yes tells you how to approach forming agreements between people (whether a divorce or simply which film to watch at the cinema this week). Don't Shoot the Dog shows you how to teach (whether animals, people or yourself) & learn. Between them they cover most of the important situations in which conflict is likely to occur.
Their general approach is the same: that efforts to dominate or be combative are unnecessary & usuallly counter-productive. The most obvious specific similarity is their suggestion that one always try to look at the situation from the other side:
"The ability to see the situation as the other side sees it, as difficult as it may be, is one of the most important skills a negotiator can possess."
Many people (previously including myself) think that if one is not being `tough' then one is being weak. Both of these wonderfully humane books show clearly that this is not the case. You can be pleasant & understanding whilst still being tough (in the principled sense) & unyieldingly fair. What a relief to know that you can be both - & be more effective.
I found Getting to Yes rather painful to read at times, as I kept comparing the advice & examples in the book with my own experiences of the previous year. Many times the authors advise acting in a certain way & warn what is likely to happen with other (more common) approaches. My book is littered with scribbled comments saying things like `oh dear - this is exactly what happened in my situation'.
Most people view negotiation (I certainly did) as simply a choice between hard & soft positional bargaining. Fortunately it turns out that this view is wrong:
"If you do not like the choice between hard & soft positional bargaining, you can change the game.
The game of negotiation takes place at two levels. At one level, negotiation addresses the substance; at another it focuses - usuallly implicitly - on the procedure for dealing with the substance."
This whole book is about how one changes the procedural game from positional bargaining to what the authors calll `principled negotiation'. Principled negotiation involves attacking the problem independent of the people by focussing on interests rather than positions. By focussing on the interests - that literallly must underlie alll positions - the authors show that it is often possible to invent additional options that fulfil those interests better than the obvious initial positions. By insisting on the use of objective criteria, the authors also show how one can form wiser agreements & cope with intransigent positional bargainers (it becomes difficult to sustain arbitrary positions in the face of a negotiator who brings in objective, external standards to justify alll of his suggestions).
It is welcome to see that the authors realise their methods are no panacea. They understand that the best a method of negotiation can achieve is the wisest result possible for alll parties, bearing in mind the situation & the people involved.
I particularly liked the brevity & clear structure of Getting to Yes. There is a danger in `how to' books like this of being presented with so many individual pieces of advice that, whilst individuallly sensible, we find ourselves overwhelmed when we try to put them into practice. All the advice forms a sort of mental sludge from which little stands out.
I noted with interest the authors mention in the preface that their editor reorganised the book & cut it in half: "To spare our readers, he had the good sense not to spare our feelings." I couldn't agree more & I`m very grateful to their (clearly first rate) editor. It reminds me of a comment Elmore Leonard made about his own books: "if it reads easy, it was because it was written hard". That's the way books should be.
Nothing new but worth reading - By: book maniac, 23 Nov 2007 
There's nothing innovative in this book. You should already know almost alll of it. However, it provides with a succinct summary to which we should pay attention in negotiating. Therefore, this book may well be able to serve the purpose of a handy reminder before we engage in negotiations.
It's interesting as well to realize from this book that whether & how to negotiate with the Iranian regime in Teheran have long been, even nowadays, a pain in the neck of the US government. The key figures who are in charge of the Middle East policy in the Bush administration should take a look at this book, if they have not yet.
Quite good but perhaps a little impractical - By: Kerola Sami, 25 Apr 2007 The book gives theory or successful negotiation & some examples to support the theory. If I would not have read Gerald M. Weinbergs Secrets of Consulting I would not even noticed that book misses how to come up with idea what you want to get by negotiating. Perhaps author felt that it is not part of negotiation how to research what should be outcome of negotiations but I cannot share this opinion. Otherwise this was well written good book that I truly can recommend who ever have to disagree with someone without getting enemy.
