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and leaving it to others to secure theirs.
Which Option Is Best?
Of these five philosophies discussed so far -- win-win, win-lose, lose-win, lose-lose, and win --
which is the most effective? The answer is, "It depends." If you win a football game, that means the
other team loses. If you work in a regional office that is miles away from another regional office, and
you don't have any functional relationship between the offices, you may want to compete in a win-lose
situation to stimulate business. However, you would not want to set up a win-lose situation like the
"Race to Bermuda" contest within a company or in a situation where you need cooperation among
people or groups of people to achieve maximum success.
If you value a relationship and the issue isn't really that important, you may want to go for lose-win
in some circumstances to genuinely affirm the other person. "What I want isn't as important to me as
my relationship with you. Let's do it your way this time." You might also go for lose-win if you feel
the expense of time and effort to achieve a win of any kind would violate other higher values. Maybe
it just isn't worth it.
There are circumstances in which you would want to win, and you wouldn't be highly concerned
with the relationship of that win to others. If your child's life were in danger, for example, you might
be peripherally concerned about other people and circumstances. But saving that life would be
supremely important.
The best choice, then, depends on reality. The challenge is to read that reality accurately and not to
translate win-lose or other scripting into every situation.
Most situations, in fact, are part of an interdependent reality, and then win-win is really the only
viable alternative of the five.
Win-lose is not viable because, although I appear to win in a confrontation with you, your feelings,
your attitudes toward me and our relationship have been affected. If I am a supplier to your company,
for example, and I win on my terms in a particular negotiation, I may get what I want now. But will
you come to me again? My short-term win will really be a long-term lose if I don't get your repeat
business. So an interdependent win-lose is really lose-lose in the long run.
If we come up with a lose-win, you may appear to get what you want for the moment. But how
will that affect my attitude about working with you, about fulfilling the contract? I may not feel as
anxious to please you. I may carry battle scars with me into any future negotiations. My attitude
about you and your company may be spread as I associate with others in the industry. So we're into
lose-lose again. Lose-lose obviously isn't viable in any context.
And if I focus on my own win and don't even consider your point of view, there's no basis for any
kind of productive relationship.
In the long run, if it isn't a win for both of us, we both lose. That's why win-win is the only real
alternative in interdependent realities.
I worked with a client once, the president of a large chain of retail stores, who said, "Stephen, this
win-win idea sounds good, but it is so idealistic. The tough, realistic business world isn't like that.
There's win-lose everywhere, and if you're not out there playing the game, you just can't make it."
"All right," I said, "try going for win-lose with your customers. Is that realistic?"
"Well, no," he replied.
"Why not?"
THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart
"I'd lose my customers."
"Then, go for lose-win -- give the store away. Is that realistic?"
"No. No margin, no mission."
As we considered the various alternatives, win-win appeared to be the only truly realistic approach.
"I guess that's true with customers," he admitted, "but not with suppliers."
"You are the customer of the supplier," I said. "Why doesn't the same principle apply?"
"Well, we recently renegotiated our lease agreements with the mall operators and owners," he said.
"We went in with a win-win attitude. We were open, reasonable, conciliatory. But they saw that
position as being soft and weak, and they took us to the cleaners."
"Well, why did you go for lose-win?" I asked.
"We didn't. We went for win-win."
"I thought you said they took you to the cleaners."
"They did."
"In other words, you lost."
"That's right."
"And they won."
"That's right."
"So what's that called?"
When he realized that what he had called win-win was really lose-win, he was shocked. And as
we examined the long-term impact of that lose-win, the suppressed feelings, the trampled values, the
resentment that seethed under the surface of the relationship, we agreed that it was really a loss for both
parties in the end.
If this man had had a real win-win attitude, he would have stayed longer in the communication
process, listened to the mall owner more, then expressed his point of view with more courage. He
would have continued in the win-win spirit until a solution was reached and they both felt good about
it. And that solution, that Third Alternative, would have been synergistic -- probably something
neither of them had thought of on his own.
Win-Win or No Deal TM
If these individuals had not come up with a synergistic solution -- one that was agreeable to both --
they could have gone for an even higher expression of win-win, Win-Win or No Deal.
No deal basically means that if we can't find a solution that would benefit us both, we agree to
disagree agreeably -- no deal. No expectations have been created, no performance contracts
established. I don't hire you or we don't take on a particular assignment together because it's obvious
that our values or our goals are going in opposite directions. It is so much better to realize this up
front instead of downstream when expectations have been created and both parties have been
disillusioned.
When you have no deal as an option in your mind, you feel liberated because you have no need to
manipulate people, to push your own agenda, to drive for what you want. You can be open. You can
really try to understand the deeper issues underlying the positions.
With no deal as an option, you can honestly say, "I only want to go for win-win. I want to win, and
I want you to win. I wouldn't want to get my way and have you not feel good about it, because
downstream it would eventually surface and create a withdrawal. On the other hand, I don't think
you would feel good if you got your way and I gave in. So let's work for a win-win. Let's really
hammer it out. And if we can't find it, then let's agree that we won't make a deal at all. It would be
better not to deal than to live with a decision that wasn't right for us both. Then maybe another time
we might be able to get together."
THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart
Some time after learning the concept of Win-Win or No Deal, the president of a small computer
software company shared with me the following experience:
"We had developed new software which we sold on a five-year contract to a particular bank. The
bank president was excited about it, but his people weren't really behind the decision.
"About a month later, that bank changed presidents. The new president came to me and said, 'I am
uncomfortable with these software conversions. I have a mess on my hands. My people are all
saying that they can't go through this and I really feel I just can't push it at this point in time.'
"My own company was in deep financial trouble. I knew I had every legal right to enforce the
contract. But I had become convinced of the value of the principle of win-win.
"So I told him 'We have a contract. Your bank has secured our products and our services to convert
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