Francis Ford Coppola once said that if you deployed $10,000 as if it were $100,000, it would do the same work in the world as one hundred.
This is the up side of the monetary accounts and rationalizations we engage in everyday - an experience I recognized the first time I won $200 at a casino with my new husband peering over my shoulder, wincing.
I've always considered gambling outings good for lawyers and business people because the litigation risk- taking analogies are so plentiful.
The day after my micro-victory at the blackjack table, I was still spending that $200.
Don't worry, I said as I pulled three twenties from my wallet for an afternoon gourmet picnic in Griffith Park. I'm paying for it with the casino's money.
My husband - who I then called Mr. Thrifty - gently reminded me that this was the third time I'd spent my winnings --the first on the spa visit before I hit the gaming floor; the second on a few Crate and Barrel essentials from the outlet stores so conveniently located next to the casino; and, the third for this picnic in the park.
Actually, by the time we were collecting our food tickets, I'd also "spent" my unexpected windfall on the gift I'd planned to buy for a friend's birthday the following week.
Spending Your Negotiation Dollar Ten Ways from Sunday
In negotiations, two and two is rarely if ever four.
You can place your two dollar bets on winning; fairness; future opportunities; or, investment return.
You can lay your chips down on need or equity or equality. You can wager your money (or more importantly, your negotiating partner's money) on common sense or risk aversion.
You can spend it on respect or conserve it with empathy and understanding.
The brilliant part of all of this is that you can spend the same two dollars on each of these things during any negotiation session, doubling your two with every move so that by day's end it has become six, eight, ten or even one hundred.
We don't pay much attention to the way we're persistently rationalizing numbers - creating subjective monetary "accounts" to justify our expenditures. But create them we do.
Rationalizing Numbers and Nora Ephron's Hair
In one of the many appreciative obituaries for the great Nora Ephron today, the New York Times reported this:
She was also fussy about her hair and made a point of having it professionally blow-dried twice a week.
“It’s cheaper by far than psychoanalysis and much more uplifting,” Ms. Ephron said.
Indeed.
Any Reason is Better Than No Reason at All
Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University tells us in the Mind and Heart of he Negotiator, that people's idiosyncratic monetary accounts strongly influence the outcome of a negotiation.
In one of the most striking studies reported by Professor Thompson, the usual cadre of beleaguered undergraduates were asked to negotiate cutting in line at a photocopy machine.
Those who provided no rationale were, not surprisingly, the least successful. Only sixty percent of them were allowed to "cut" into the line. Those who presented a logical rationale, however, got what they wanted an extraordinary 94% of the time.
But here's the truly remarkable part. Those students who presented a meaningless rationale such as, "I want to cut in line because I need to make copies," racked up a ninety-three percent success rate, only one percent less than their logical peers.
Proven Rationales Acquire the Largest Slice of the Distributive Pie
Even though any excuse whatsoever appears to do the trick, Thompson offers the following advice for "spending" your two dollars as if they were a hundred.
Use objective sounding rationales and invite your opponent to buy into them; label your proposals as "fair," "even splits," or "compromises," understanding that notions of fairness are purely subjective -- each deal-maker focusing on only those norms that serve his own interests; avoid falling for the "even split" ploy which invariably benefits the person who offers it; and, understand (and use) the three basic "fairness" principles -- equality, in which everyone benefits or suffers equally -- a principle governing the distribution of government resources ; equity or proportionality which is based on merit and governs the distribution of resources in the private sector; and, need, which often comes into play where the parties are of greatly unequal bargaining power.
Those are today's negotiation tips as we bid a fond farewell to the great Nora Ephron and her legendary ability to rationalize anything . Or, in a journalist's terminology, the talent not only to realize that "everything is copy" but the genius to copy life like no one has before or since.
