Heads I Win, Tails I Win (and the Same to You)

Negotiation is such a fundamental “threshold” skill that it’s nearly impossible for you to succeed long-term without developing skills in this area.  Unfortunately, many people get the wrong idea about what negotiation is and how works.

The distaste that some people feel for the concept of negotiation results from seeing negotiation as “win/lose” (I win, you lose) or “lose/win” (I give up rather than make an enemy out of you) rather than “win/win” (we both come out of the negotiation with our needs met).  In addition to moral or ethical qualms, the reality is that we leave someone unhappy, and that person is unlikely to forget.  We will have to deal with the leftover negativity at some future time.  “Win/win” approaches aren’t just nice, they’re necessary for our long-term relationships and performance.

But how is it possible to negotiate and have both parties win?

Understanding “win/win”

Negotiation isn’t simply about compromise (let’s just split it 50-50).  While sometimes a compromise solution in which each party gives a little bit is acceptable, often a compromise turns into “lose/lose.”

Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project point out that in many negotiations the participants see a “fixed pie,” but that it’s often possible to “expand the pie.”

They tell the story of “the proverbial sisters who quarreled over an orange.  After they finally agreed to divide the orange in half, the first sister took her half, ate the fruit, and threw away the peel, while the other threw away the fruit and used the peel from her half in baking a cake.”

In other words, “common sense” would suggest the orange could only be split in such a way that the parts added up to 100%, but this particular orange could have been split 100-100, not 50-50...because the two sisters had different yet complementary interests!

The “win/win” concept of negotiation emphasizes that preserving the relationship is an important goal in most negotiations, and that’s particularly crucial when the other participant in negotiation happens to be your boss.  You might be able to force your desires through his or her resistance, but you have to expect him or her to remember that in the future.  “If you wrong us,” Shylock says, “shall we not revenge?”

Win/win isn’t only ethically superior, it’s more practical as well.

“Hard” vs. “soft” styles

You can make a lifetime study of negotiation, and it will benefit you in every area of your life.  It’s worth adding to your list of areas for personal and professional development, because you will ultimately find yourself in continual negotiation situations.  Negotiation styles are sometimes divided into “soft” and “hard,” but that’s not a very meaningful distinction.

The Fisher/Ury Getting to Yes techniques are sometimes referred to as “soft” because they involve collegiality and teamwork.  But even in a “hard” negotiation program such as Roger Dawson’s excellent The Secrets of Power Negotiating, you’ll find his commitment to “win/win” negotiation, “a) Never narrow negotiations down to just one issue.  b) Different people want different things.”




Some key principles of win/win negotiation


As you study negotiation skills, you’ll find that different authorities have certain specific detailed and tactical suggestions.  However, some general principles of effective negotiation are common to the various styles and strategies.

1. Do your homework.

Before negotiating anything with anybody, there are a couple of things you should do.
First, analyze your own goal, making sure that you focus on your interests (the reasons you want what you want) instead of only your positions (the specifics for which you’re asking.  The position of the sisters was that each wanted the orange.  To find the underlying interests, you focus on why.  Why do you want the orange?  What exactly would you do with it if you had it all?  What would not be useful or necessary for you?

Second, determine your bottom line.  What do you need--and what is the best you can do assuming that the negotiation goes nowhere?  You need to know this so you’ll know when you’re getting results...and so you won’t take an offer that’s less than what you’d get if there is no deal.  Fisher and Ury call this your “BATNA”:  your “best alternative to a negotiated agreement.”   Roger Dawson calls it “walk-away power.”

Third, put yourself in the shoes of the other person and do the same thing.  The more you understand the interests and goals of the other participant--and their own BATNA or walk-away options, the easier you’ll find it to locate win/win options.

2. Listen—for the real issues.

Being a good listener is a valuable negotiation technique for several reasons.  First, your understanding of the other person grows, which helps you in working toward the best outcome.  Second, when you listen, you automatically validate the other person, lowering their stress and emotions, and create a climate in which better results can occur.  Paraphrase what you’re being told to make sure you understand it fully.

3. Be persistent and patient.

You want to negotiate in order to achieve results for both parties.  Surrendering and giving in are examples of lose/win, not win/win strategies.  Keep your dignity and your personal strength intact by refusing to yield to hardball tactics and pressure.  One reason to study such tactics yourself is that it becomes easier to counter them in practice.

Being in a hurry to reach a deal often gives you a worse deal than you’d get with patience.  If a particular round of negotiation isn’t panning out successfully, maybe it’s time to walk away for now, think about what you’ve learned, and try again later.

4. Be clear and assertive.

You’ve heard it said, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”  That’s true even in cases where the other person isn’t necessarily hostile or negative to your interests.  If you don’t ask, there is a good chance the other person doesn’t even know what it is you want--and if he or she doesn’t know, how can you expect him or her to read your mind?  One of the most interesting elements of preparing well for a negotiation is how often you get your needs met without actually encountering the resistance you expected!


5. Allow face-saving.

When a negotiation or conflict situation ends up making one person be “in the wrong,” don’t be surprised if that person feels negative about it.  Being embarrassed or humiliated is not a positive emotion.  When you must show your boss that he or she is incorrect, or has made a mistake, or has make a bad decision, you not only have to get the situation corrected, you have to resolve the emotional issues in a way to allow your boss to “save face.”

Some techniques for face-saving include the “third party appeal,” in which you don’t say, “I’m right, you’re wrong,” but instead find a neutral third party (such as a reference book) that you’ll use to resolve the issue.  Another valuable technique is privacy.  It’s easier to admit to one person that one is wrong than admit it publicly to everyone.  (And never gloat afterward!)  A third is to find a way to allow the person to be partially right, or to allow yourself to be partially wrong.  (At least you can always allow for the possibility of improvement.)

You negotiate every day of your life and with all the people in your life.  Don’t wait until you are in a major conflict situation with the power dynamic stacked against you to develop this skill.



From Managing UP: 59 Ways to Build a Career-Advancing Relationship With Your Boss, by Michael and Deborah Singer Dobson (AMACOM, 2000). Copyright © 2000 Michael and Deborah Dobson. All Rights Reserved.

War and Peace

This is the third and final part of my blog series on conflict resolution. The first article defined the conventional conflict resolution space, and the range of options available. The second discussed what happens when conflict breaks the boundaries of the box. In this installment, let’s look at war (and peace) in more detail.

If you're in an office or an organization in which people have points of view — and who among us isn't? — you may feel you live in a warzone each and every day. Some people feel that way when they get home. War is, unfortunately, an all too common experience. Violence can take a lot of forms other than the physical, and psychic violence has been known to cause deep wounds.

So let's look at the personal by way of the political. How do official wars work, and what can we learn that might be useful to us in our day-to-day lives?

In the second part of this series, we established that the first element that leads to war is that each side has a need or desire so overwhelmingly important to them that they are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve their goal, even committing violence if necessary. The second element is that the two sides haven’t been able to negotiate a win/win resolution to the conflict.

What about peace? Well, peace is always achievable if you’re willing to surrender to what the other side wants, and you can’t do that if the stakes are high enough and the issue vital enough.

Peace, you see, isn’t the alternative to war. It’s the goal of war. If you win, you get an acceptable peace. If you lose, the other side gets an acceptable peace. (It’s also possible for both parties to lose.)

The alternative to war is negotiation, a resolution to the conflict that meets the fundamental needs of both parties.

To have a war, you need a situation intolerable to both sides that can’t be (or at least hasn’t been) resolved in a mutually satisfactory manner by negotiation. As a result, both parties to the conflict firmly believe they are right and justified in trying to resolve the conflict with force.

A war, according to the military theorist and historian Karl von Clausewitz, is the process of using force to impose your will on your adversary. You win a war by breaking the enemy’s moral will to resist, and thus gain the ability to force your will upon them. That leads us to three important ideas.

1. The loser, not the winner, decides when the war is over
2. The war ends when the loser’s moral will to resist is broken
3. The winner wins by imposing his or her will on the loser, thus resolving the conflict

A war isn’t like a football game. You don’t decide who wins by how many points you get on the scoreboard, or whether your army kills more than the other side. In Vietnam, the US won virtually every major battle. Far more Vietnamese (North and South) died than did Americans. However, the conflict was about whether the government of North Vietnam would extend its rule over South Vietnam. They did. That means they won, and we lost.

Body counts don’t determine outcomes, at least not all by themselves. What often matters more is will. It was more important to the North Vietnamese that they won than it was important to the United States that we won, and that was enough.

Did US antiwar protests and pressure make it easier for the North Vietnamese to win? Well, yes, but that’s the point. If the US population as a whole had believed the stakes were high enough and that the price was worth it, the outcome in Vietnam would have likely been different. If the military strength and will of the South Vietnamese to self-determination under their government had been greater than the North Vietnamese drive for unification under their government, the outcome would likely have also been different.

War is a political act, or, according to von Clausewitz, “the continuation of diplomacy with the addition of other means.” This is often misquoted as “war is diplomacy by other means,” and the difference is instructive. Diplomacy is part of the process: we seek United Nations approval even as the tanks roll and the missiles fly. We may break off diplomatic relations, but through back channels dialogue goes on.

The aftermath of war is often as important as the war itself in deciding the ultimate outcome. The fundamental Allied goal of World War II was to stop the aggression of Germany and Japan, and especially the atrocities they committed against their captive populations. Both Germany and Japan were devastated, but that wasn’t enough to ensure that the Allied objective had been met. After all, both nations could rebuild. If nothing changed, it was altogether likely we’d be fighting World War III against the Axis in a generation or so.

One possible solution was to finish the job militarily: destroy each nation so thoroughly they’d never be able to rebuild. ("Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell," Admiral Bill Halsey, USN.) Another solution was to rebuild the countries to remove their incentive to commit war. Both ideas received serious consideration among the Allied powers.

In the end, the choice was to remove their incentive to wage war. In Europe, the Marshall Plan was every bit as much a part of World War II as the combat portion. In Japan, the shogunate of Gen. Douglas MacArthur forced major cultural changes upon the Japanese. Both nations are now peaceful, and war with either Axis power is highly unlikely. The German economic engine is today a force for stability in Europe, and Japan has achieved a version of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere by economic means that it failed to achieve by military means.

Military victory alone is usually not enough. In the American Civil War two issues were at stake: whether the southern states could unilaterally terminate their membership in the United States, and whether the Union could continue to be half slave and half free. (Southern apologists still argue that the conflict was solely about “state’s rights” and not about the institution of slavery, but the chief right in question was the right to keep slaves, as a quick perusal of the South Carolina Declaration of Secession will show.)

The United States won on the first issue. The southern states were brought forcibly back into the Union. On the other issue, it was a mixed decision. Slavery was outlawed, but the move toward full citizenship for the former slaves was derailed in the infamous Presidential election of 1876 (in which a disputed Florida vote count—among other factors—resulted in the election of a president who had lost the popular vote). Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow laws flourished for nearly a hundred more years.

In that sense, both sides lost. The South lost its bid for independence, and the North lost the battle against slavery and racism.

In our current adventure in Iraq, there are two important questions. First, was this war necessary? In other words, was there, from the US perspective, an intolerable situation that could not be resolved through negotiation? Yes, argued the Bush Administration. If we did not act quickly and decisively, it would be only a matter of time before Iraqi nuclear missiles were heading our way.

This turned out not to be the case, as we all now know. The rationale for war has shifted several times since. And even if Iraq had turned out to have weapons of mass destruction, it’s not nearly certain that negotiation was doomed to failure. War might have been inevitable, but hurrying into it is no virtue. As Colin Powell informed the President’s advisors before the war began, when it comes to Iraq, “You break it, you bought it.”

“If war is part of policy, policy will determine its character,” wrote von Clausewitz. In World War II, the doctrine of “unconditional surrender” supported the policy aim of eliminating the Axis powers’ ability to wage war. This had the advantage of military simplicity.

When the objective is more nuanced, however, military options are restricted to those that help achieve the political goal. Should we befriend the conquered civilians or terrorize them so they’ll more easily bend to our will? It depends on the objective.

What were the Bush objectives in Iraq? According to the Bush White House website’s “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq,” one goal was to achieve “an Iraq that is peaceful, united, stable, democratic, and secure, where Iraqis have the institutions and resources they need to govern themselves justly and provide security for their country…integrated into the international community, an engine for regional economic growth, and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region.” There are short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals to be met, but that’s the desired ultimate outcome.

The Iraqi insurgents saw the goal pretty much the same way, but their definition of “peaceful, united, stable, democratic, and secure” was a little bit different. There is, after all, nothing more peaceful than a dead enemy.

Is there a purely military solution to Iraq? When Gaius Julius Caesar defeated the Gauls at Uxellodunum in 51 BC, he cut off the hands of all the defeated soldiers and scattered the victims throughout the country. His goal was to pacify the Gauls, who had repeatedly fought Roman domination. Although Caesar had previously shown mercy to his defeated enemies (at least by the standards of the day), he understood that he had to send a lesson that would stop further uprisings. It worked; there were no more revolts against Roman rule.

As awful as chopping off tens of thousands of hands sounds, there is some logic to it. If you want to pacify the enemy for once and for all, it often takes an action of this horrific magnitude. Sherman’s march to the sea and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima are more modern examples.

In the same sense that a surgeon does you no favor by cutting with a dull knife, a leader who commits his or her nation to war had better be absolutely clear about what has to be done to achieve the goal. If you don’t want to chop off hands, pillage the landscape, or vaporize cities, you’d better not go to war in the first place. If you go to war because the other alternatives seem even worse, you can’t afford to shrink from the actions necessary to win.

The reverse is true as well. If violence is bad, then counterproductive or unnecessary violence is clearly worse. Some acts (see: torture memo) seem expedient and even courageous at the time, the mark of a leader willing to do what it takes. A little perspective, however, reveals the underlying flaw. War exists across a wide spectrum of activities — diplomacy, nation building, foreign aid, economic sanctions, and more. The military portion is often a small part, and not infrequently the highest and best purpose of the military is to sit around and look tough in hopes of discouraging the opposition.

War is about force, but force isn’t automatically the same thing as violence. A lawsuit, for example, is a way to settle a conflict by force. If the two sides settle, the court doesn’t have to act. If neither side can reach an acceptable settlement, then the court imposes a solution by using the force of law. There’s economic warfare, in which the power of one economy is used to dominate and subjugate other nations.

Here's one more option for a different kind of war. A London-educated Indian lawyer named Mohandas K. Gandhi reinterpreted von Clausewitz in a new light. The situation for Indians in the British raj was, as far as he was concerned, unacceptable, nor did it seem to yield to negotiation, fulfilling the basic requirements for war. Violence had been tried many times, but the superbly trained British forces had regularly defeated numerically stronger Indian armies ever since the Battle of Plassey (1757), when fewer than 1,000 British troops defeated an army of over 50,000 Indians through a combination of political intrigue and a fortuitous rainstorm.

The first step to imposing your will on your adversary is to deprive them of their weapons. The British had more and better weapons than the Indians. The British also considered themselves morally and racially superior, and Gandhi saw in that an opportunity. If the Indians fought, the British could shoot them. But if the Indians ostentatiously eschewed the use of violence, it would become progressively more difficult for the British to use their military might. World opinion and their own sense of moral superiority both worked against the British. By refusing to use the relatively few guns on the Indian side, Gandhi forced the British to put aside a far greater number of guns.

But make no mistake: this was war. The British had no intention of abandoning the “jewel in the crown.” It took force—in this case moral force—to bring them to the negotiating table.

A black pastor in Montgomery, Alabama, took Gandhi’s lessons to heart. White southern segregationists were happy to use violence to maintain the status quo, and believed they were morally right in so doing. If southern blacks attempted to use violence to improve their position, they would surely lose.

As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., began to apply the techniques of Gandhi’s nonviolence in the struggle for civil rights, the white segregationists responded violently. However, as the pictures of that violence spread, moral outrage cost the segregationist cause far more than their guns, dynamite and dogs achieved. Ultimately, moral force trumped physical force, and the legal structures of segregation fell.

Nonviolence and peace aren’t synonyms. Neither Gandhi nor King were willing to accept peace on any terms other than their own, and both ultimately won victory for their cause—even though both paid for that victory with their own lives.

The nonviolence strategy works better for the side that wants a change in the status quo. In the Israeli-Palestine conflict, regardless of your personal opinion of who’s right and who’s wrong, the Palestinians are the side that wants change (their own nation, the destruction of the “Zionist entity,” or simple self-determination) and the Israelis are the side that wants status quo (nationhood, secure borders) — and the Israelis are militarily far more powerful.

By using violence against Israel, regardless of whether that violence is justified or unjustified, the Palestinians ultimately weaken their chance of success. Israel can point to Palestinian acts in support of their own behavior, and as noted, they have greater military might. If the Palestinians adopted the methods of Gandhi and King, they would neutralize a lot of Israel’s military advantage, and ultimately be more likely to achieve their goals.

If you’re against this war (or, as the bumper sticker has it, already against the next war), talk is cheap. What you need is to apply moral and political force, and to do that, you have to think like a general. Gandhi and King led forces into battle, both physical and moral, and if you want to achieve your goals, so do you. A mere protest march is unlikely to achieve anything more than moral satisfaction to the marchers, but if you get enough of the people (or the right people) on your side, the equation changes.

Nicolo Machiavelli famously advised, “A Prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline.” Singing you “ain’t gonna study war no more” won’t achieve your goals. The more you’re against war and violence, the more you need to understand it. You must counter (physical) force with (moral) force, and you must be willing to impose your will upon your adversaries. Sentiment and good thoughts aren’t a substitute for meaningful action.

Squeamishness isn’t principle. A meat-eater cannot morally despise the butcher. When it comes to war, averting your eyes and avoiding understanding isn’t pacifism. Sometimes justice matters more than “peace at any price.” When conflict can be resolved by negotiation, everyone wins. When negotiation fails, you can surrender or you can fight. If you fight, you have to fight in a way that helps you achieve your goals; otherwise, you're probably going to make things worse.

Going to war is always a bad idea, although it may not always be the worst idea.

If possible, negotiate your way out.

If not possible, plan to win.

When Conflict Breaks the Box

In my previous blog entry, “The Rules of Conflict,” I identified the conflict resolution styles that are inside the box: smoothing, withdrawal, compromise, forcing, and negotiation. Sometimes, sadly, conflict breaks the bounds, and turns into war.

Not all war is violent. If you’ve ever been in a bad work situation, there’s war all around you, even if nobody’s getting killed. (Fired, maybe.)

But if you extend the “concern for my needs” line high enough, forcing can turn violent, and eventually becomes a war. War is an extreme form of conflict resolution, but it’s still part of the grid.

So, let’s define war. Why go to war? The first reason why people sometimes choose war (the violent or nonviolent kind) is that their perceived need is so overwhelmingly important that they must achieve it, no matter what the cost. Conflict avoidance isn’t an option, and withdrawal or surrender is morally repugnant.

What can possibly be that important? Well, perhaps the other side is committing genocide against my people, or invading my nation. Perhaps the other side is threatening my religion or my fundamental values or poses a long-term threat to the security and welfare of my nation. Here’s a list of common reasons offered by those who support any given war. Which reasons (or cases) do you think justifies war?

Traditional Reasons for Going to War

1. We have been attacked militarily (Pearl Harbor).
2. We have been violently attacked through a proxy force (9-11, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand).
3. We believe we are in imminent danger of being attacked (the Cuban Missile Crisis).
4. We believe there is a long-term military threat that will be substantially easier to eliminate at the present time (the suspected Iraqi WMDs, the Iranian nuclear program).
5. We believe our national security interests are threatened (Vietnam).
6. We believe our national economic interests are threatened (“gunboat diplomacy” in Central America).
7. We believe our national economic or security interests can be advanced through military action (the creation of Panama, annexation of the Phillippines).
8. We believe our moral, political, or religious ideals are at stake (supporting anticommunist forces in Nicaragua, stopping potential genocide in Kosovo, or any of the Crusades).
9. We believe we are being subjected to intolerable pressures, laws, or demands. (Revolutions and revolts against existing power structures.)

No one agrees in all cases. Some people find no justification for war under any circumstances; others allow limited circumstances, opposing most but not all wars; still others set a threshold for military action at a much lower level.

Others agree on principles, but disagree on cases. The United States was born out of a Reason #9 scenario, but four score and seven years later opposed the Confederate states when they tried the same thing. Individual cases matter far more than general principles.

The reason for going to war matters, but it's not enough. Going to the extreme on the "forcing" axis doesn't make sense if other options remain. While smoothing/conflict avoidance and withdrawal/surrender are out, two other strategies remain: compromise and negotiation.

Is compromise possible? If we’re disputing ownership of territory, perhaps we can split the difference and both walk away with part of what we want. If the issue is genocide, compromising is much less of an option.

That leaves negotiation, the search for a win/win answer.

“Win/win” is an idea that sounds impractical, no matter how desirable it might be. How can both sides win? Harvard negotiation experts Roger Fisher and William Ury in their seminal work Getting to Yes tell the story of the two sisters fighting over the last orange. They decide to settle the argument by compromise, cutting the orange down the middle and each taking half. One sister is hungry. She peels her half, eats the fruit, and throws the peel away. The other sister, however, is baking. She takes her half, peels it, throws the fruit away and carries the peel into the kitchen to grate for her recipe.

Interests are different from positions. The position is what we’re asking for. (“I want the orange,” or “I want to eat Thai food.”) The interest, on the other hand, is why you want it. (“I need some grated orange peel,” or “I can’t eat fish.”)

You can’t negotiate positions. You get the orange, you don’t get the orange, or you cut it up and each take a piece. Interests, on the other hand, aren’t necessarily reciprocal. If you want the fruit and I want the peel, we can split the orange and each get 100 percent of what we want. If you want to buy something from me, you want my stuff more than you want to keep your money. I want your money more than I want to keep all my stuff. We both win. That's SideWise thinking.

Unfortunately, negotiation is more difficult when the parties don’t trust each other. In American politics, one side proposes something that sounds reasonable on the surface (a restriction on handgun ownership by felons, or providing vouchers that enable poor children to attend better schools), but the other side angrily rejects it as being a stalking horse for a hidden agenda (gun confiscation, the destruction of the public school system). Neither side believes the other is being honest about the goal, and negotiations that might possibly have produced good outcomes instead fail miserably.

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,” Michael Corleone said (quoting his father) in The Godfather II. Most people interpret that as making sure you keep an eye on them. That’s not a bad reason, but it begs the question of why they should let you get close in the first place.

The real reason to keep your enemies close is to build the relationship. It may be unrealistic to think all war can be avoided, but certainly some wars can be. Settling issues short of extreme means is challenging, but it has been done before. Let's keep trying.

The Rules of Conflict

Conflict isn’t automatically negative, although it certainly can be.

Conflict can also be an opportunity for greater understanding, a way to resolve problems, or in some trivial cases, something to be ignored or dismissed.

Conflict involves actual or perceived clashes of needs, wants, values, and interests, and ranges in intensity from polite conversation all the way to war. Conflicts can cause varying amounts of damage, and may be resolved well or poorly.

Project management is a field where conflict is inevitable and common. Stakeholders have needs, wants, values, and interests. Resources are limited. Your goal is to manage inevitable conflict in the most effective way possible.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) identifies various strategies for managing conflict: smoothing, withdrawal, compromise, forcing, and confrontation. Of these, according to PMI, confrontation (I think “negotiation” is a better word) is the strategy normally preferred by project managers.

I think that’s dangerously misleading. In fact, every single one of these strategies has a time and place for which it is the best solution. Two variables should influence your decision. First, how important is achieving your goal to you? If life and death are at stake, your goals are very important to you. If the question is where we’re going to have lunch today, your goals may matter a lot less.

The second question is a little more subtle: how important is the other person’s goal to you? If the conflict is with someone you care about, making them happy may be very important to you. Keeping customers, bosses, and co-workers happy is normally worth some minor concessions on your part. Other times, what the other person wants may not matter to you.

If you plot the PMI categories on a grid, you get the picture above. Let's look at the categories that fall inside the box.

• Smoothing. Sometimes winning isn’t the issue. You’re having Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family, and someone brings up one of those appropriate dinner table conversation topics—like abortion. No matter how passionate your beliefs, this isn’t the time and isn’t the place, so you avoid the conflict by changing the subject.

• Withdrawal. Sometimes, as noted, the other person’s needs are more important to you than your own, and you can withdraw or surrender. If you really hate Thai food that much, let’s go somewhere else, even though it’s my favorite cuisine. Conversely, if we’re going out to dinner with a large group and I’m the only one who likes Thai food, I know I’ll be outvoted, so I surrender to the majority graciously.

• Compromise. Or maybe you don’t like Thai food and I don’t like sushi, so we compromise and decide to go to an Indian restaurant instead. If we both like Indian food well enough, even though we each might like our own choice better, we can have a nice dinner anyway. But if neither of us like Indian, we’re making two people unhappy instead of making only one of us happy, so compromise isn’t always a winning solution.

• Forcing. I could insist that you join me for Thai food. Perhaps I have a food allergy or dietary restriction that makes it impossible for me to go along with your preference. It’s my way, or no group dinner tonight. Sometimes there's no choice.

• Negotiation. Finally, we could talk about what we each like about our favorite cuisine and try to find a restaurant that will serve something we each would like to eat. If we’re successful, neither of us has to compromise. We both win.

None of these strategies is inherently right, none inherently wrong. Negotiation is the route to the most satisfying long-term answer, but it takes time and skill, and sometimes there’s not enough at stake to go through the exercise.

When conflict stays within the box, it’s manageable. When conflict breaks out, we call it war.

The opposite of war, you see, isn’t peace. Peace (preferably on your terms) is the goal of war. Pretending the conflict isn’t there doesn’t work. If the stakes are that high, the real opposite of war is negotiation.

A New Political Lexicon

The “loony left,” right “wing nuts,” fanatics, extremists, terrorists — how we define these people normally grows from our own political beliefs and positions. Is it possible to define these categories objectively? Let’s start with the big, general categories:

Categories of Principled People

• Principled people. While some principles vary depending on political belief or position, other principles are generally accepted across the spectrum. These generally accepted principles include character, integrity, commitment, and hard work. Other principles come from our beliefs and positions, and we call others “principled” when they share and practice those same values.

• Indifferently principled people. This category, alas, is one most of us fall into at least some of the time. When we don’t live up to the principles we ourselves believe in and advocate, we usually know it.

• Differently principled people. When people share those generally accepted values of character and integrity, but hold opposing views on political issues, they’re “differently principled.” They may (or may not) be wrong on the issues, but they are consistent and thoughtful on the topic.

• Unprincipled people. Unprincipled people are centered around self rather than principle. They evaluate their choices and situations in terms of what maximizes personal (and usually short-term) benefit. They are not necessarily evil (but may commit evil acts), but they are almost by definition immoral.

• Passionate people. What passionate people have in common is a belief their cause is so important it justifies breaking at least some social rules. Passionate people cover a wide spectrum that starts with argument and ends in violence, but that’s not to say that all passionate people are cut from the same cloth. There’s a big difference between someone who insists on trying to win you to their cause verbally and someone who thinks killing a lot of random civilians is a great way to make a point.

• Kooks. “[T]he fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses,” wrote Carl Sagan. “They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” Believing something outside the mainstream doesn’t by itself make you a kook. To be a kook, you have to believe that the mainstream has to prove itself to you, rather than the other way around.

Passionate people. As noted, passionate people cover a wide spectrum. The best way to segment them is by the type and severity of the rules they feel entitled to break.

• Argumentative/persuasive people simply bring up their topic even when other people disagree or don’t want to hear it.

• Deliberately rude people believe showing bad manners to the opposition is a good strategy. Public shouting, interruptions, ad hominem attacks, and name-calling fall into this category.

• Civil disobedient people are willing tobreak laws they consider immoral or unjust, typically in a non-violent way.

• Extremists use violence or the threat of violence in support of their goals.

At different times or on different issues, we may occupy any of these categories ourselves, so it’s important to point out that even being an extremist isn’t always or necessarily wrong.

It is, however, wrong to confuse passionate people with unprincipled people. Unprincipled people are only out for themselves. Passionate people believe in what they’re doing. That dramatically influences their behavior, and if you confuse the two types, you’re likely to make huge tactical and strategic mistakes in dealing with your opposition.

Kooks. Extreme beliefs aren’t the same thing as extreme behavior. The extremes are determined by the norms – the opinions held by the majority of educated people on a given topic. If there is no strong and overwhelming consensus for a specific opinion, then the contrary opinions are also mainstream. When there is an almost universal consensus among educated people, contrary opinions are not mainstream. (The key is determining in each case who are the “educated” people. Shakespeare's dominance of English letters doesn't rest on whether ordinary joes like his writing, but on whether the consensus of English scholars do.)

But disagreeing with the majority doesn't automatically make you a kook. Believing it's the job of the educated majority to justify itself to you, rather than the other way around, does. “Burden of proof” is a very useful legal concept. Which side owns the burden of proof? In a criminal trial, the prosecution has the burden. Ties go to the defender. What is the burden of proof? Do you have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, or only by the preponderance of the evidence?

When it comes to extreme beliefs, the burden of proof lies with those who challenge conventional opinion, not those who support it. If you want to patent a perpetual motion machine, you can’t make the Patent Office prove your invention can’t work. It’s your job to prove that it can. Intelligent people who want their unconventional and extreme positions to change the world know they have to do it the hard way, by winning over educated opinion.

Kooks are people who believe the burden of proof falls on the mainstream, not on themselves. The world is full of people who walk around with detailed manuscripts “proving” that the Freemasons are secretly behind the Trilateral Commision and crop circles, and insist that opposing opinion is proof of a conspiracy.

It’s the insistence, not the claim itself, that is the gold standard of kookdom. Intelligent out-of-the-mainstream opinion understands and accepts the burden of proof, and works to establish it. Although social inertia makes change a slow process, in time the truth tends to win out.

* * *

This is a work in progress. I’d love to hear your comments. Do these categories seem objective? Is it clear how to categorize today’s controversies? Is it fair and reasonable? Is it useful? What have I missed?

The Three Americas

Abdul Aziz Al Saud, first monarch of Saudi Arabia, wanted his nation’s borders based not on geography, but on the migration of tribes. The British High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, lost his temper and started yelling, but Ibn Saud had a good point: a nation is not necessarily the same thing as a state. A nation exists in the hearts of the people who belong to it by some combination of heredity and choice. A state, on the other hand, exists in physical space. The two can be as one (a nation-state), but they don’t have to be.

In many parts of the world, nations overlap in the same geography: Israel and Palestine; Turkey, Kurdistan and Iraq; and Tibet, China and Taiwan. Nations can overlap states, be contained within states, or be distributed in communities worldwide like the Chinese and Jewish Diasporas. Such relations tend to be uneasy, and sometimes (Yugoslavia, Rwanda) turn tragic.

What makes a group of people into a “nation”? Culture, common geographic or ethnic origin, religion, history, numbers, and political clout all combine. Nations can self-declare, but others eventually have to recognize them as a distinct population. The Kurds and Tibetans are generally recognized as nations even if not as states. Some nations (Native American tribes) get some limited privileges of statehood. Other self-proclaimed nations (Nation of Islam, Aryan Nation) get little recognition except from their immediate circle.

“Nation” can exist on a metaphorical plane as well. We can be members of more than one nation (if not more than one state) at a time. We might recognize our national, ethnic, or racial origins, or embrace the community of our religion or political movement. Regional differences form nations. In his 1981 book The Nine Nations of North America, the Washington Post writer Joel Garreau identified nine culturally distinct nations sharing our North American continent.

I’d like to propose three nations of my own. Three distinct motives drove Europeans to conquer and settle the New World.

1. Business. New Romans came to conquer and build. The frontier was dangerous, but the potential rewards were great. “The business of America is business,” New Romans tell us, and pragmatically measure success in terms of wealth. It’s not an accident that Washington classical architecture is Roman in style, or that we have a Senate and do not have a king. Above all, it's no accident we maintain the world's largest military.
2. Faith. New Israelites, from the Puritans of New England to the Baptists of Dixie to the Mormons of Utah, came here to settle a new Promised Land, to build anew the institutions and society of God.
3. Society. New Athenians came from the explosive development of liberalism in Europe, which sparked a revolt against aristocracy and the divine right of kinds. Embodied by the intellectual elite that clustered around the hotbeds of political thought in great American cities like Williamsburg, Philadelphia, and Boston, they sought to build a pure Athenian democracy.

Each of the three nations has equal roots that stretch back before the founding of the United States of America. We share, but none of us owns outright, the state, even if from time to time we all wish we could.

We are fortunate that no group is powerful enough to dominate alone. In practice, the country is governed by a shifting and inherently unstable alliance of two out of the three nations. Traditionally, New Romans, pragmatic in orientation, find it easiest to unify in a common cause with either of the other two nations, although occasionally New Athenians and New Israelites have found common cause. And there's not a simple Athenian=liberal, Israelite=conservative pattern either: libertarians are New Athenian conservatives; utopian religious communities are New Israelite liberals. New Romans occupy the whole spectrum as well.

Viewed through this lens, here’s our recent pattern: New Athenians and New Romans united to conquer the Great Depression and World War II. Their alliance could not withstand the philosophical discord and disintegrated over Vietnam and civil rights. Inertia sustained the cause for a while, but by the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, the foundation had clearly crumbled beyond repair, and a new alliance of Israelite and Roman led the country into a new era, which now too appears to be at an end.

(Some will argue that the Reagan Israelite/Roman alliance is merely suffering a temporary setback, but that’s not the way to bet. The fracturing and realignment is natural, and even if it can be staved off for a while, it can’t be stopped.)

Regardless of your national identification, there’s a lot to like about the well-known 30-year political cycle. Ideas, like fields, need to lie fallow from time to time to maintain healthy crops. A strategy that worked on one set of problems turns into a one-size-fits-all solution, working on the well-known theory that when the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems start to look like nails.

The success and the stability of the system require the three nation tribes to live with one another. The relationship among the three Americas too often resembles something in between a food fight and the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

When we share geography with people whose values we dislike or distrust, we have to accept that they are here, that they are not going anywhere, and that they have a right to be part of the public discourse. Nations that have not been able to recognize and accept their overlapping distant cousins as neighbors inevitably turn to the only logical alternative: get rid of them. While the United States has robust cultural and legal institutions that make such an outcome unlikely, it’s never impossible.

When I was young, my father made a point of paying attention to news sources and ideas he found stupid, repugnant, or just plain wrong. He wanted to make sure he understood them. I know he paid attention; I’ve even known him to change his mind. That's SideWise Thinking.

People who disagree with you can be opponents or enemies. Opponents are people with whom you have opposing interests, but a good relationship (trust, mutual respect.) Opponents keep you on your toes, make you think harder, and often stimulate your best work. Good opponents make your ideas better and your life richer. They can

When respect and trust are absent, opponents turn into enemies, and with enemies, it’s personal and negative. "Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer" doesn't mean what most people think. Contact provides opportunity, either to find common ground, or to build a better relationship. While success isn't always possible, it's usually worthwhile to make a reasonable effort.

Six Skills for Managing Your Boss

I didn’t learn to appreciate the art of managing up until I first had the experience of managing down. One of the common surprises a new manager experiences is how much time you spend doing things for your employees. And when it comes to your employees doing things for you—well, I was so naïve when I first became a supervisor I actually thought that meant that people would do what I said.

How quickly we learn.

When I talk about “managing up,” people often think that’s something you do to your boss, that the goal is for the employee to get power over the boss. But that’s not the case. “Managing up” is something you do for your boss, and if you’re the boss, it’s something you wish more of your employees knew how to do.

At work—and at home, for that matter—we live inside a tightly woven web of mutual obligations. If you’re the boss, your employees are obligated to do certain work for you. And you normally have obligations in return: you review and approve and advise and decide. You go to bat. You run interference. You receive the passed buck. And occasionally you call for a Hail Mary play.

You have a similar relationship with your own boss, and he or she with his or her, and so ad infinitum. And that’s not even getting into the more complicated lateral relationships that cut across organizational boundaries.

Management, in a nutshell, is getting work done through the agency of other people. Whether those people actually report to you is largely irrelevant. You have to manage in three dimensions: up, down, and sideways. The official power you get as a supervisor or manager is never adequate to the task at hand. Ultimately, we’re all Blanche DuBois, from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire: we rely on the kindness of strangers.

We had better be good at it.

A few years ago, my wife Deborah and I researched and wrote a series of three books on the practical challenges of the workplace: Coping With Supervisory Nightmares, Enlightened Office Politics, and Managing UP! As we interviewed managers on what worked and what didn’t, we also looked back on our own careers. We had learned most of these lessons the hard way ourselves, many of them imperfectly, and more than a few we had missed altogether.

While the target audience of the book was new supervisors, we quickly learned that higher ranks of leadership were far more interested in the skills we had identified. That’s because we feel the need most keenly because we’re also on the other side.

Of course, you’ve long since learned the basics, but like us, you probably acquired your knowledge the way the cat learned to swim—by being thrown into the deep end. Even more importantly, you’ve learned what’s at stake.

Managing up isn’t just about taking care of your personal career, although it does. Managing up is the missing link in the relationships you need to run a large, complex organization in today’s crisis-prone environment.

SELF

To manage up effectively, you have to start with yourself and move outward. The first issue, the first rung on the ladder of MANAGING UP, is you: the self. A big part of your success in managing others, in whatever direction, comes from your own fundamentals: the quality of your work; the value of your word; and the content of your character

STYLE

From the inward self, we move outward to style: our own and that of others. None of us checks our humanity at the door when we clock in. For better and for worse, human beings have personalities, preferences, and interests. Friction is unavoidable. Without lubrication, the machine grinds, and eventually freezes.

SUBSTANCE

Style without substance, however, is insufficient. We begin our rise up the management ladder by demonstrating technical merit. But we quickly discover that there’s no such thing as a promotion, not really. Instead, each level is a career change, and we have to discover for ourselves what we need to be successful at the next level. The current age requires continuous learning: what do you need to know next? Where do you need to grow?

SYSTEMS

We can’t do it alone. We need systems in order to function effectively. Leaders are necessarily generalists; the higher you go the wider the set of skills and knowledge you need. Eventually you need to know everything, and that’s impossible. We feel we’re stuck in the Peter Principle trap, promoted to the level of our incompetence. But we can pull ourselves out. There are two ways out. Sometimes we have to acquire new skills and knowledge…or else we have to manage others to provide the work we need.

SYNERGY

The word of the day is “team,” because none of us, it is said, is as smart as all of us. Sadly, sometimes the opposite is also true. Nothing is dumber than groupthink gone wild. The real synergy involves balancing the wisdom of the team with the wisdom of the individual. If “there is no ‘I’ in ‘team,’” it’s equally true that “you can’t spell ‘team’ without ‘m-e.’"

SOLVING PROBLEMS

General rules will take us only so far. We have to apply our skills tactically as well as strategically. Managers manage problems as well as people—not to mention problem people—up, down, and sideways. Some bosses are harder to manage than others, and some live up to the old observation that “BOSS” spelled backwards is “double SOB.”

In an ideal world, you want your work environment to have certain characteristics, from the level of challenge and responsibility you desire to how you want to balance the demands of the office and the home. It's unlikely that happy accident alone will achieve what you want. Take responsibility for managing the relationship between you and your boss, you and your peers, and you and your worklife. You'll be much better off.