Getting to Yes



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224 pages
ISBN 9780140157352 Published Dec. 1991
Penguin Books
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Getting to Yes
Negotiating Agreement Without Giving in
By Roger Fisher, Bruce Patton, William L Ury 

Related Blog Posts
Reviewing Reviews
Posted Sept. 26, 2008 6:30 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog

Heather Green has written a wonderful review of Jeff Howe's Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business for the September 29 issue of BusinessWeek. After observing that "Books about the crowd are becoming a crowd unto themselves," Green writes:

What sets Howe's book apart is his focus on business, an examination of different crowdsourcing models, and a deep dive into academic research to explain why people work together. It's a welcome and well-written corporate playbook for confusing times...

In his most recent article for Portfolio, "In Praise of Big Brother," Roger Lowenstein casts a somewhat leery eye at Stephen Baker's The Numerati. He begins:

Stephen Baker envisions a world in which our email and blog postings, our credit-card and grocery purchases, our pulse rates and facial expressions, and even our physical movements (handily tracked by our cell phones) will be fed to a new Brahmin class of math geeks devoted to sending us customized shopping choices, targeted political ads, real-time medical alerts, and the names of potential dating partners, not to mention (lest we be shirking on the job or hiding an illness) alerts to our bosses and insurance companies.

While that sounds awfully scary to me, the author is of the mind that this technology will one day empower us. Regardless of how you feel about these issues, the book does seem very informative and worth a read. Lowenstein describes Baker a "charming writer," and ends the review by calling the book "eye-popping and chilling."

David K. Hurst reveiws four books in the Autumn issue of strategy + business's Books in Brief. The first, Richard Bookstaber's Demon of Our Own Design, was awarded the top spot in the Finance & Economics category of our first annual book awards. The other three books are Stall Points: Most Companies Stop Growing--Yours Doesn't Have To by Matthew Olson and Derek Van Bever, Michael O'Leary: A Life In Full Flight by Alan Ruddock, and Tad Waddington's Lasting Contribution: How to Think, Plan, and Act to Accomplish Meaningful Work.

Fortune's Jia Lynn Yang has picked "eight volumes [that] belong in everyone's briefcase." Of course, Fortune doesn't make this list available online, but the chosen titles are:

Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America by Walter A. Friedman

Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story by Jerry Weissman

Hug Your Customers: The Proven Way to Personalize Sales and Achieve Astounding Results by Jack Mitchell

Selling to Big Companies by Jill Konrath

The New Strategic Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven Successful by the World's Best Companies by Robert B. Miller & Stephen E. Heiman

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher & William Ury

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Rich Karlgaard has written an update to his "Books to Get Rich By" for Forbes. (You can find the original list of 53 books here.) The lists are broken up into six categories: History and Heroes, How Capitalism Works Today, Instructional Tips, Management Secrets, Food for the Soul, and Useful Entertainment. While the list is too long to list all of the titles, I have listed the entire "Management Secrets" section below.

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company by Andrew S. Grove

Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths That Are Destroying Your Property by Garret B. Gunderson

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher, William Ury & Bruce Patton

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi

The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey with Rebecca M. Merrill

Did you notice that Stephen Covey picked up an initial sometime between 7 Habits and Speed of Trust? (edit: As the brilliant Seth Godin has pointed out in the comment section, Stephen M.R. Covey is the eldest son of Stephen R. Covey. I had not known this previously. Don't let it be said business books aren't a family business.) Notable titles from other sections are John Kao's Innovation Nation and Fareed Zakaria's Post American World from "How Capitalism Works Today," Dan Pink's Adventures of Johnny Bunko from "Instructional Tipps," Randy Pausch's Last Lecture form "Food for the Soul," and Michael Lewis's Blind Side from "Useful Entertainment."



Bunches of Business Book Recommendations
Posted Aug. 25, 2008 4:00 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In Lists - 800 CEO Read Blog

There has been quite a run in the blogosphere in the last two weeks with people recommending business books.

Josh Kauffman may have started this tidal wave with his updated 2008 version of The Personal MBA. His list is 77 books long with the mantra "skip b-school and the $100,000 loan: you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books."

BusinessPundit followed with their 25 Best Business Books Ever post, placing Adam Smith at #25 and In Search of Excellence at the top spot.

For The Best Business Book of 2008 (so Far), Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog directs people to The Opposable Mind, Presentation Zen, Rain Making, Groundswell, Senior Leadership Teams and Brain Rules.

And then people started finding old lists to highlight. A "Business Book" hit on tweetscan directed me to a October 2007 post at Newly Corporate titled "15 Books For Rogue Professionals and How To Read Them At No Cost." Their no-cost solution is the library, and they recommend everything from Carnegie to Chris Anderson to China Inc.

This led me to another tweetscan hit where Melissa Woo, inspired by this post, spent the morning tweeting her favorites. As a fellow Milwaukeean, I thought I would list all of her favorites.



More From The Penguin Blog--The Hornby Edition--and Other Stuff I've Been Missing
Posted July 23, 2008 5:00 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog

NickHornby.jpgI love Nick Hornby. His column, "Stuff I've Been Reading," is (or, sadly, was) the first thing I turn to every month when The Believer arrives in the mail. They're consistently the most unpretentious, enjoyable and downright funny reviews out there. If you're interested, McSweeney's has released two collections of those reviews--The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. the Dirt. Joe Posnanski, author of a wonderful book himself, has called Hornby's Fever Pitch "one of the five best sports books ever written." Hornby is also author of High Fidelity and About a Boy--both made into terrific movies--and Fever Pitch was also made into, well, let's say a Jimmy Fallon movie. He has authored many, many, many other books as well.

But, none of that is why I'm writing of him today. I mention him today because he has his own blog, a fact I've somehow overlooked until I came across his post about eBooks, a hot topic here at 800-CEO-READ. The Penguin Blog picked up the post, which is where I found it. (And, what's the first thing I read on Nick Hornby's blog? That he's giving up his "Stuff I've Been Reading" column. Drats!)

Anyway... onto that ebook post. Hornby begins:

In branches of Borders, they are trying to flog us their e-book reader, the 'iLiad', for £399. Meanwhile in the London Evening Standard, David Sexton seems quite taken with Amazon's version, the Kindle. In my branch of Borders on Monday, the iLiad was piled high on the left, just as you walk in; on the right is their wall of bestselling paperbacks, many of which are being sold at half price. It was a quiet Monday morning, and there didn't seem to be too much interest in the four hundred quid e-book reader; what was striking, though, was that there didn't seem to be too much interest in the four quid books, either. Attempting to sell people something for four hundred pounds that merely enables them to read something that they won't buy at one hundredth of the price seems to me a thankless task. (A member of staff at Borders told me that he attempted to persuade a young and famous comedian to buy an iLiad last week. He seemed interested, until he was told the price, at which point he swore loudly and walked away. So at the moment, they are priced too high for millionaire showbusiness entertainers.)

If you're interested in the eBook debate, be sure to check out the discussion that followed its posting over at The Penguin Blog.

Paper Cuts has an interesting look at how the internet commerce has actually increased the price of certain books by discovering "a previously non-existent market for what you might call 'rare but not collectible' books."

And, finally, The Guardian has been having authors submit their top ten lists of books in their genre. Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life, chose the top 10 book undercover economics books in February. His choices were:

1. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

2. Micromotives and Macrobehavior by Thomas Schelling

3. The Poetry of Robert Frost, Complete and Unabridged by Robert Frost

4. Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton

5. The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod

6. The Winner's Curse by Richard Thaler

7. The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

8. The Hare and the Tortoise by John Kay

9. How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff

10. Why Buildings Fall Down by Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori

For Harford's explanations of these picks, go here.

For other author picks, go here. If you love independent bookstores as much as we do, start with Jeremy Mercer's top 10 bookshops of the world, and allow us to nominate here our beloved sister company, Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops.



Ask 8cr! - Negotiate
Posted Oct. 2007 6:52 a.m. by aaron
In Ask 8cr! - 800 CEO Read Blog

Welcome to "Ask 8cr!" - a new section of our blog where we've created a forum to find out what kinds of issues and challenges people are having in the workplace. We then take these issues and apply a business book we feel offers a viable solution. Others then chime in via the comments section. The person with the selected challenge gets a free copy of the book, but everyone who reads these posts, wins. Do you have a challenge at work? Send it to me at jon(a)800ceoread(dot)com.

Today's challenge deals with overcoming fear in the sales process. Here's a note from one of our readers:

"I am in sales and have found that I linger around mediocrity or below not because of lack of skills or desire but because of the fear of rejection I have, which is a manifestation of my inability to trust in combination of my fear of abandonment. When I say fear, I am not talking about sweaty palm fear or "a knot in the stomach before I pick up the phone" fear but a gnawing insidious little thing that crops up in the most inconvenient places like the times I need to be exploring the customers needs or asking for the order. It is not even a conscious thing, I just don't do it and it has really hamstrung my career. It is also not something that can be simply overcome by doing that which the fear keeps you from doing." - Greg

Fear can ruin all of us, no matter what we do. In Greg's case, it's important to point out that he's good at what he does; he has the skills and desire to sell, but he's afraid of losing, and that's keeping him from moving forward. What Greg needs, and what we all need, is the confidence of better outcomes. I'm sure Greg understands that in business, we need to claim and create value. But how do we build this and support it through the entire process so that we come out where we want? Negotiation. By building a process and sharpening his negotiation skills, Greg won't have to be wondering about the customer's needs or asking for the order. These issues will be addressed in the negotiation process he creates.

Roger Fisher and William Ury's book, Getting To Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, discusses how to identify the underlying interests involved in any business situation, and tells readers that "behind opposed positions lie shared and compatible interests." Consider this, in business, both parties want stability, both want maintenance, both want a good relationship, but they also might have some different interests - terms of payment, different materials, etc. Figuring out how to comfortably work around those differences by asking "why" and "why not" questions (which the book identifies through a series of real-world examples) will put anyone in a sales discussion on better ground. Let's face it, talking about interests is a conversation that shouldn't be shadowed by the subconscious fear that Greg describes, and this book gives great advice on how to avoid those feelings and create a positive outcome for both parties.

Similarly, G. Richard Shell has written a book called Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People that focuses on Shell's "Six Foundations" (personal bargaining styles, goals, authoritative standards, relationships, the other party's interests, and leverage). He refers to his method as "Information-Based Bargaining" and makes it easy to apply the theory to deals ranging from large business to, humorously, negotiating with your kids. The book concludes with a full assessment tool that readers can use to track their progress in learning these skills - a handy and useful way to extend the content into real-life situations Greg or any of us might have.

Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman have also recently written a helpful book called Negotiation Genius: Real World Strategies That Give You the Edge. In it, they say, "Negotiation genius is about human interaction, and the only raw material you need to achieve it is the ability to change your beliefs, assumptions, and perspective." When sales people lose a sale, they think they got a bad deal and that there were circumstances out of their control that inhibited them from landing the sale. These factors can range from price, market, and time. But, the path to negotiation genius tells us that these can be overcome, that everything can be negotiated.

The book states: "Selling involves telling people about the virtues of the product or service you have to offer, focusing on the strengths of your case, and trying to induce agreement or compliance. Effective negotiating requires this kind of active selling, but it also entails focusing on the other side's interests, needs, priorities, constraints, and perspective." What the authors go on to show is that in negotiation, no one has to lose for the other to win. By using case studies of political and pro sports negotiations, it's clear that these claims aren't academic pipedreams, but real possibilities that business people can apply to their work - particularly salespeople. From a sales perspective, this means you can avoid getting the "bad deals," the lost opportunities, and the fear that Greg experiences every time he gets close to closing the deal. Through negotiation, and the ideas outlined in this book, we can learn how to make agreements that benefit everyone involved.

Greg is going to get this jackpot of books on his doorstep. Hopefully he'll chime in here with some follow-up notes after he has a read.



Craigslist's Book Recommendations for Start-Ups
Posted Sept. 21, 2005 11:12 a.m. by kate
In Wall Street Journal Book Reviews - 800 CEO Read Blog

To continue this week's business book recommendations, here are a few suggestions from Craig Newmark, founder and chairman of craisglist Inc., featured in Monday's Wall Street Journal. Check out the detailed list here.

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