Comment by peterangular | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peterangular | Hacker News Reader

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I'm in the Jim Camp school of thought where, in negotiation, there is no "win-win" situation.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcamp/2013/03/11/revisiting-w...

The reason I am firmly in this school of thought is that I've made the absolute mistake of a decision to try for "win-win" situations in a capitalistic society, specifically in regards to contract negotiations and ultimately pricing/billing.

When I'm making sure that the person on the other end of the table "wins" I'm putting myself at a capitalistic disadvantage; and - if both parties "won" then didn't both ultimately lose?

I get your ideal, but when money is involved I find that the "win-win" is very much that: just an ideal. And, anecdotally over the years I've found many business experts write on the topic of why "win-win" is a losing position which validates my position on this.

What is the definition of "win-win" that you are against?

I'm not familiar with Jim Camp, but the term is vague. The linked article to me mainly seems to argue that:

- the side with a better BATNA has more negotiating power (yes, of course) and

- a negotiator should avoid agreeing to a bad deal out of desperation (yes, of course - but not always easy to do)

I'm not sure how the concept of "win-win" specifically plays into it, so I think this is where definitions are useful.

To me, win-win doesn't make sense for transactional negotiations where there is only one dimension (usually price), but CAN happen for more complex negotiations with multiple dimensions where each dimension has different value to each party (price, time, volume commitments, etc...)

> if both parties "won" then didn't both ultimately lose?

No, because even in a capitalist society "winning" is defined by each party's relative improvement over the state they would be in if they didn't come to an agreement and make the trade—not by some absolute measure of whether they did better than the other party. A "win-win" is simply an agreement where both parties are better off for making the trade. This is the usual state of things when both parties are free to accept or decline and there is no deception (fraud) involved, since both parties need to accept the agreement and they will only do so if they believe that doing so benefits them. In rare cases one or both parties may be mistaken about the benefit, but they know their own business better than anyone else and are best positioned to judge the expected value of making the trade based on the information available at the time.

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