Getting More

How to negotiate to achieve your goals in the real world.

This is about a book.

This is not about a book.

There is a book by this title, and I read it. In the middle I thought hey, I understand this.

Living somewhere else would be constant negotiation. Maybe this method could provide a model for understanding, for living. For not being a doofus.

Maybe.

One thing I can say is this is a pleasant book to read. I can see why it is popular. It's the anecdotes. Anecdotes all over. It may be exactly 99 and 44/100ths percent anecdotes, but who's counting? The reading is breezy.

It is a smooth ride down a wide street with wind in your hair. Everything always works. Smiles abound. There are surpluses of satisfaction.

You forget that you expected to learn "How to negotiate to achieve your goals in the real world." You get all kinds of stories, with whipped cream and a pinch of catnip for Fritz as well. You forget that some negotiations fail.

Not to complain though. This is fun, done well. The core is there, a few pages in. You have to pay attention. You can still learn it. It's there.

Stuart Diamond wrote this. He is "one of the world's leading experts on negotiation", and taught at Wharton, and Harvard, and Columbia, NYU, USC, and Berkeley, and, in Dnepropetrovsk, put his hand right on the nozzle of a nuclear-tipped missile that had once been aimed pretty technically at Minneapolis, and negotiated there.

And I haven't, and didn't, and all that. Which is cool. We can't all do everything, which in turn is a good reason to read a book like this and find out stuff. He's good at this. I'm not. I need to learn.

Here is a spoiler: you can read "How to win friends and influence people", by Dale Carnegie instead. And get mostly the same story.

They are really the same book in a lot of ways, though Dale Carnegie is more general.

Key points:

• Goals are paramount: What you want? Get that.
• It's about them: Know the pictures in their heads.
• Make emotional payments: Logic helps but feelings rule.
• Every situation is different: Flex. Adapt. Scheme.
• Incremental is best: Like dawn, bring the light with baby steps.
• Trade things you value unequally: Big, small, tangible, intangible. Barter them.
• Find their standards: That's what they stand for, right? Then they stand for it, right?
• Be transparent and constructive, not manipulative: No faking, no bluffing, no bluster.
• Always communicate, state the obvious, frame the vision: Talk. Be open, be honest, be real. Listen.
• Find the real problem and make it an opportunity: Don't get lost in the fuzz.
• Embrace differences: More perceptions, more ideas, more options make better negotiations.
• Prepare - make a list and practice with it: If you are prepared, you do well.
• The short version: Get your head on straight, figure out what you need to get, be open about it, trade things you don't need for things you do, be honest, listen, listen some more, listen even more, think, plan, build emotional connections, see things as the other side does, get to the root, get what you need, and don't be a jerk.

"Done right, there is no difference between 'negotiation', 'persuasion', 'communication', or 'selling'." See?

If not Dale Carnegie, you could instead read "Dress for success", by John T. Molloy. It's almost the same too. Or if you want, you can pick up all this on your own, though a good book hands you a framework to mull over.

So the main point is, if you are living in a new culture, then bringing deep negotiating skills may be seriously smart. Once you are there, then what? Use them. Be all you can be.

I did wonder why all the stories about getting a few cents off one thing, a free upgrade on the other, but the material comes from the author's experience, and his classes emphasize learning this way. An early assignment is to get a discount on something. Anything. Then they proceed, probably repeating the same process until it's ingrained.

I generally agree with something Bruce Burrill, a Buddhist friend, told me around 1970. Which was, you don't solve problems, you leave them behind. Me in general, I normally leave money on the table and get on with it to avoid getting neck deep in the give and take.[1]

But mine is not the only way. Probably not the smart way. I'm not smart a lot. I keep hearing that. Maybe I should learn too.

Most of of life isn't a single transaction. Life is all day, every day, in the same place, with the same people, and they like it if you learn your way in and keep negotiating.

So if you establish relationships, join a community, fit in, be accepted, be respected, and do more than just showing up, you might be doing it right.

Getting back to Bruce, I'm thinking there may be two ways to move on: by leaving or by landscaping.

I need to learn this (especially for being immersed in a different culture): quit searching for a better garden and cultivate the one you're in.

More quickies from the book:

• Always communicate.
• Listen and ask questions.
• Value, don't blame them.
• Summarize often.
• Do role reversal.
• Be dispassionate.
• Articulate goals.
• Be firm without damaging the relationship.
• Look for small signals.
• Discuss perceptual differences.
• Find out how they make commitments.
• Consult before deciding.
• Focus on what you can control.
• Avoid debating who is right.

The stories are like this (imagine it in Spanish if you like):

"It was pouring rain, and Chuck McCall had forgotten his umbrella. His office was four blocks away, and he had an important meeting in thirty minutes.

"He spotted someone getting off the same train who worked in a building a block away. He didn't know her, but he'd seen her on the train before. 'Hi,' he said 'I work a block away from you and I forgot my umbrella. Can I buy you a bagel and coffee on the way if you walk me to work? I know it's a block out of your way.'

"'I'm Chuck,' he continued. He looked up at the sky. 'It's wet. Maybe I can return the favor someday.'

"They walked to work under her big umbrella. He bought each of them coffee and a bagel. When they arrived, she told Chuck she felt good about doing this. They had each made a new friend for the train. 'What I've learned the most,' said Chuck, now the CEO of Astoria Energy, a big energy provider to New York City, 'is that being candid about what you want is a key to success in business and life in general.'

"In a world that sometimes seems full of muggers and other threats, we still have to get through the day. We have dozens of small interactions from the time we get up to the time we go to sleep. Together they can spell a life of frustration, or one of mastery and joy. Using the tools in 'Getting More', you will have a greater consciousness about the world immediately around you in a million different ways."

The fundamental business is living, and this might help with that, especially in a new culture.

 

Getting More

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[1] Doofus: A person with poor judgment and taste. Dimwit. A stupid incompetent person.

 

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Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff+nosey@nullabigmail.com
Me? Might get myself recycled soon.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

Different/Difference

Make Me Different. Make A Difference.

Say you have an idea. A big idea. A really, really big idea.

Cool, so who cares?

Size does not matter, potency does.

Your idea does not matter unless it matters. That's all that matters.

It gets easier when you ignore everyone else. Things get quieter. Like in your head. And then things can happen. You got that message before. Maybe it's sunk in by now. Hope so.

When you chase around, biting at flies, if you are successful you get to eat a fly for lunch. Chasing ideas is like that too. There are lots of bad ones around and you really don't want to catch any of them.

When you have a fixed idea about ideas, you are fixed. The way your neighbor's dog is fixed. Which is fine if that is your goal, but maybe not. Usually, when you have fixed ideas you are fixated on someone else's idea that happens to be stuck in your head.

And once it is, once it is stuck in your head, that alien idea, stuck there, then you have a problem.

It's like a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth, but in a good way. A good way because it's a good idea. (You aren't dumb enough to chase a dumb idea. Duh? No.) You chase good ideas. But it puts you in a bad way too because that idea is already taken. You can only borrow it, at best. Or steal it and pretend you didn't.

But it's already used.

If you borrow an idea you can't make it your own. And a borrowed idea isn't new. Not fresh. Not so interesting. You will wow no one. Fact of nature. Game over.

You can't start the race after it's over. Doesn't work. All you get is a view of horse butts.

So you lose.

This is good.

Nothing succeeds like failure.

Failure is the world's way of freshening up. Once you know you are a failure you have nothing left to lose. You already know what does not work, so you are way ahead.

You have a freshly-fertilized garden, but freshly-failed, and no one is expecting flowers from it, so you are A-OK, ready to go, cleared for liftoff, in a position to wow.

Someone else's idea is not yours. Someone else's game is not yours. So you reset the system, and you get to start over, with rules that you yourself make up. Because you are a failure, and because you have tried to copy success, and have played by the rules, and have had that gold ring on your mind for quite a while, and lost out, you are desperate.

Or were. Once.

Recently, in fact, but that didn't work, so you give up. You gave up.

So now you just play around at something, and that is when it can happen. Not always. No guarantee, but it can.

What can happen? What it is it?

Something new. Something unique. Something yours. Something that can change the world, or at least a part of

it. Something you are in control of. Something real.

Real. Really real.

Focus on that.

Focusing on the real makes it real.

And also, that which impresses may be big, and entertaining, but not always valuable.

That which speaks in a small voice may only be a random squeak, or it may be something valuable, and true. It may be something that has come to you and you alone for love and nurturing, because you were ready for it. Something that whispers truth and can change the world.

But you have to be there, and be open, and be honest, and be willing. Copying is not allowed.

If you are true to yourself at least you are true. You can't fake true, and people notice.

People like true. They will help you to be true, and to make more true, and to spread true around, and to become true like you.

Big ideas are always true at their core, and always start small, with the true part. Small is easier. Easier to understand, to make, to spread, to sell, to share, to appreciate.

Big comes later, but true comes first.

True is unique and different and honest, and wants a good home. And is always true. It is different from everything else and so makes a difference.

It will make you different and make a difference for you.

Which is what you want in creativity.

 

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Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff+nosey@nullabigmail.com
Me? Still wondering.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

I Thought So

This is about why things are better than ideas, and maybe not.

This is about business, whether or not money is involved. That sounds strange but business is more than money. Hucksters have been saying so for years. Making money is easy they say, don't worry about it. Easiest thing in the world. Or, if you do the right thing the money will follow. Inevitably.

The real message is underneath, snaking around, sniffing for your wallet. What they really want is the money, your money, but they don't want you to catch on.

This reinforces what I just said. Really. Business is about more than money, and in a way money isn't the point, even if it is. If you focus on money, and only on money, you will fail. You can't help it. Money is the wrong thing to focus on.

I've always felt that competitions were pointless. Take a sport. Sprinting. Say you want to compete. You want to win. The idea is to win, and you want to do that. So what's the most efficient way to win? Kill off the other competitors. Get real. Anything else would be stupid.

How much time do you really want to spend training? Do you really want to find out after years of effort that the kneecaps you were born with prevent a win? Screw that. If you want the trophy then blow away everyone else. Walk to the finish line. If no one else is running then you have it made.

Want to make lots of money? Don't see the point in earning an MBA and spending decades clawing to the top? Rob banks. Do a bunch in one day. Bing. End of story. Vacation time. Forever.

So if the whole idea was the payoff then things would be simple. Cut the crap and grab the pie.

But it doesn't work that way. In case you hadn't noticed.

There are reasons why you can't rob a bank when you need money. Or rob the guy sitting beside you on the bus. The whole law enforcement thing is not what I'm talking about either. The real reason is that it doesn't work. Like trickle-down economics, being a robber baron was tried once and it failed, left behind by history. You may have heard of it. Called the Dark Ages. People learned slowly, but they learned.

We're beyond that now. The reason is efficiency.

Hitting someone over the head and making off with their loot sounds like an efficiency. But it doesn't work as a general way of doing business. Even if only a few of us try it. Tends to disrupt everything else. Causes system-wide failures. So we don't do it. Business is about more than money. Where have you just heard that?

One way or another you have to inspire people. Give them a thrill. Make them want to join your side. Then make your side big so everyone can join, or most everybody. Make some money on the side. If you focus completely on money then you lose focus on everything else. Then you fail. And then you don't make any money. At all.

There is a split right down the middle of this game. On one side you have things and on the other you have ideas. Generally speaking things are easier. Its easier to base a business around providing things than around providing ideas. It tends to be easier to set up, easier to administer, and more profitable. Sort of.

Think about things versus ideas.

Things are easy to grasp. You reach out your hand and grab one. People like to touch stuff. It's built in. That's one reason we use the phrase "grasp an idea". We are that way. We want stuff we can pick up and play with and bite and throw.

Things are discrete. You know where an apple starts and where it ends. You know how big it is and what it weighs. You're familiar with its texture and flavor and color. A thing gives you several dimensions to judge it by, and you don't have to think about it either. You are hard wired.

If you have something today you have it tomorrow. You know what it is and where. You can paint racing stripes on it, give it a name, and trade it for something else, even if it's a cat.

So you want to set up a business? It's easier if you sell things. You don't need a creed. No need to take sides or argue a case. Just say here is this here thing, it does this and doesn't do that, it comes in these colors, lasts this long and costs this much. Buy it and do what you want with it.

But wait, there's more.

Once you own this thing you can use it all the time or only now and then. Get tired of it now, put it down and find it waiting in your closet next year. It'll still be good.

Buying, selling, using, storing: all simple. Things are tidy and clean. As long as a thing works it's always new because every time you use it the situation is a little different. Every backyard game is different, and so the football is too, sort of, even though it's the same. But different.

But maybe you have more competition selling things. Everybody can sell the same things as you.

So ideas, now, how about them? Maybe tougher.

Each idea is unique. No mass production.

Ideas are slipperier. Juggling them can make your head hurt. You have to work to get a grip. Each one is different so each one is unfamiliar, harder to customize because you have to know it inside and out, where it came from and where it is going. No size, no shape, no taste, no smell, no texture, no color.

You can't have crates of ideas waiting in the back room. There is no volume discount. Every idea is hand crafted and requires its own care and feeding regime.

Ideas go stale, or age out, or fade away. Ideas are tough to fit into a business model. You can't order from a catalog, in every possible size and color, to keep them in stock, just in case. And an idea is new only once, no matter how good it is. It comes with its own environment and doesn't feel different if you use it on the beach instead of at the office. There is no way to paint racing stripes on an idea.

On the other hand, ideas thrive among people. Ideas have a life of their own. They bring people together. They are almost the only reason to keep living.

Check out a major league baseball game. If it's not baseball that moves you, then pick opera, or quilting, or a church service. Then bind. You bind to ideas.

If it's a baseball game you aren't there for the seats, or the restrooms. It's the idea. Your team versus theirs. Or a good team versus another good team. The idea of sport, life, a struggle. To see excellence and its acting out. Or some other reason, but a reason all the same, one full of life. Reasons are ideas.

It's the group though. Maybe you're just sitting there at the game surrounded by others and enjoying that, or maybe you help to run things, but it's ideas that bring you to a group and hold you. You have a place. You have friends and enemies. You have meaning. Commonality. Sharing. Purpose. You can make better sense of things with others. This is why an idea appeals to you as a buyer.

As a seller of ideas things are hard.

Ideas are new only once. Ideas are always hard to keep alive. They are so slow to sell. There is only one of each idea, but anyone can make infinite copies, without asking first. Ideas are a hard breed, as you know if you've tried to create a new one. And people shy from any idea too unlike any other they know about.

This can be a hard sell, very hard.

Selling ideas is a poor way to make a living. It's better to rob banks if you want money. Except that robbing banks is even worse. Like democracy being the absolutely worst form of government except for all the others.

The key to ideas is the group. A society. A clan. A band of disciples. A congregation. A family. A community.

Find the right idea and the right way to share it with the right people and you have a self sustaining system. Even one idea can start the process. An idea which forms a core and then draws in a community. The pull of more and more people keeps communities growing. Feed in a few more of the right ideas and the community will reach critical mass and grow on its own.

If you gently manage the habitat, tend the ecosystem, you may make it, but not by cutting throats.

The system can grow and remain fresh based on ideas. Those ideas that remind us of why we are alive, that bring us the pleasure in being together. Do it right and some money will come along for the ride. Maybe a lot, maybe not.

That's another story. Think about whether you would rather be J.K. Rowling or a flower seller.

 

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Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff+nosey@nullabigmail.com
Me? Learning to scheme.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

The Dettmer/Bisbee Slap

Take something so ordinary that you don't even see it. Add imagination. Jolt people into another order of consciousness.

I've just returned from alternate dimensions. Each one is exactly like our own but the meanings of things are completely different.

I have known people who have made a point of expostulating while waving their arms on why art is not important and has no place in their world. This opinion ignores reality.

The last time this happened, my friend and coworker was sitting in a chair. He had a desk, a computer on it, inside a cubicle. The floor was carpeted. His shelf held books. The desk drawer held pens, pencils, paper clips and Post-it notes, among other things.

He had no clue that even the pencil in his hand had undergone several centuries of development and marketing on several continents. (Read "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance: by Henry Petroski.) True, most of this development was by engineers, scientists, and technical wizards, but the thickness, shape, length, color, and logo placed on the pencil are still under scrutiny.

It's easier to imagine if you take something less common, like a ball point pen. It's less a commodity and more a result of a specific company so you expect one specimen to be a bit different from all others. That comes from art, and art comes from creativity.

There is no formula.

I've just come across the work of two artists, John Bisbee and Brian Dettmer. Each one has a formula, of sorts, but their creative formulas are hidden, and inherent in their identities.

You can say that creativity is taking something familiar and making it unfamiliar. Not necessarily better in any sort of way. Possibly even often worse, even with no regard to utility.

Creativity is simple but hard. And is it scary. Frightening. Shocking. To be shocking is one of its uses. It provides us with some things that we need. One of them is simple novelty.

The human eye likes edges, whether they come from contrast (light against dark, dark against light, one color against another) or from sparkle. Handle a cut diamond or even a piece of broken glass in the sunshine and if you really look at it, you'll barely be able to put it down again. The flash of its reflections has an inherent attraction because it is always new.

Creativity provides edges. It takes us by the consciousness and throws us straight out of our normal world an into another one.

Your exploding breath, your shaking body, your howls, and your tears are all acknowledgment of the unexpected, creativity we call humor. We like that, but maybe we'll say we don't like the shower scene in "Psycho". That is also creativity. It jars, it jolts, and in this case frightens, but it also makes us more alive.

Creativity does that, and it can do it without always being pleasant. It is the kick into a totally different reality, another dimension, that counts.

It keeps us fresh. It reminds us that we don't know it all, and so refreshes a person's humility. It inspires. It picks up our spirits. It resets out own imaginations. It can be a piece of art on a wall, a piece of art that we stick onto an envelope, a horror movie, a roller coaster ride. Any of these and more.

Whichever it is and however encountered, creativity makes us better.

The source? Can't say, but I know that things come to me when they want to. Artists say that sort of thing all the time. Song writers just start hearing the music and words, and write them down as they come. A sculptor can't quite do that but if producing something meaningful from a block of marble is just to remove what isn't the subject, that implies some sort of guiding principle that the artist (the right artist) only has to listen to.

For me, in my simple way, at my limited level of creativity, it seems to be cross-linked connections somewhere. I'm always perceiving juxtapositions that act like a shock from a thick dry carpet.

Take this, not mine, but from a world class comedian: A person gets onto an elevator. Asks the other person already there where they're going. Second person says "Phoenix".

Do a thought experiment.

Go into a store, stop, pick the first thing handy, and see something about it that no one has has ever seen before. Write about it, photograph it, make up a joke or a song, or redesign in a way that will make people gasp.

As stated, it's simple but hard.

Now try that with a box of nails. If you succeed you are John Bisbee. If you succeed with a box of old books you are Brian Dettmer. John Bisbee welds nails together in ways you would have no reason to expect, and Brian Dettmer carves into books to reveal their internals.

Prefer yours in writing? OK, look up comedian Stephen Wright. You can find reams of his quotes online. Or go to Timothy McSweeney internet site and see what it's like to imagine Ernest Hemingway blogging about the top teams in college basketball. Too obvious? How about "Midlife-Crisis Bible Stories"? There's still "Open letters to people or entities who are unlikely to respond", a whole section of the site.

You can find anything you want if you go looking. People all over are full of creativity. If not the ones around you, then maybe you're in the wrong place. You could be somewhere else entirely, if you want. Somewhere more interesting. Like another universe where the books have been autopsied, or nails snake across the floor.

 

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Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff+nosey@nullabigmail.com
Me? Grabbed me neck and slapped myself around for a while, just in case.

 

Refs:

Brian Dettmer at Wikipedia
John Bisbee at Wikipedia

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals