Why Hasn’t the World Gotten to Yes? An Appreciation and Some Reflections

Carrie Menkel-Meadow

A Revolutionary Agenda Some years ago at a conference of negotiation teachers sponsored by the at and the Hewlett Founda- tion, Roger Fisher, speaking with some regret, remarked that he had hoped to change the world with the publication of Getting to Yes (Fisher and Ury 1981; Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1991). Yet, he said, the ways in which both world leaders and ordinary people had interacted with each other when in conflict seemed to have changed so little. I rose to remind him that Getting to Yes had been published in more than thirty different languages, had sold millions of copies (and, as of this writing, is in its fortieth printing), and had revolutionized how negotiation is taught in law schools, business, public policy and planning, and in inter- national relations and government departments. (Many of these places, in fact, had never even taught negotiation before the book’s publication.) In addition, thousands of lawyers, diplomats, business people, labor negotia- tors, managers, and educators around the world have been trained in the book’s concepts of “interest-based” bargaining, to think about “interests, not positions,”to “separate the people from the problem,”to “invent options for mutual gain,” and to “use objective criteria” to productively resolve their disputes and conflicts. These have become the four golden rules of prin- cipled negotiation and Getting to Yes has become the canon. Students of the book’s authors, Roger Fisher,Bill Ury,and Bruce Patton, have learned not only these four methods of approaching others with the goal of improving the prospects of both parties via their negotiation. They

Carrie Menkel-Meadow is the A. B. Chettle Jr. Professor of Dispute Resolution, Civil Procedure, and Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and the director of the Georgetown-Hewlett Program in Conflict Resolution and Legal Problem Solving. Her e-mail address is meadow@ law.georgetown.edu.

10.1111/j.1571-9979.2006.00119.x © 2006 President and Fellows of Harvard College Negotiation Journal October 2006 485 have also mastered the “seven elements” of problem solving: learning how to diagnose and frame a problem, how to brainstorm multiple possible solutions, how to decide what information is necessary to develop solu- tions, and how to choose, implement, and evaluate actions taken. In nego- tiation classes throughout the world,students consider what they“did well” or what they would “do differently next time” as they navigate the experi- ential and behavioral components of the Getting to Yes conceptual frame- works,learning to improve behavior through on-going self-reflection and by constantly reapplying conceptual templates to the messiness and chaos of human communications and interactions. In additional books, “spin-offs” of Getting to Yes, the authors have expanded the principles and elements to human relationships (Getting Together: Building Relationships as We Negotiate 1989); international rela- tions (Beyond Machiavelli:Tools for Coping with Conflict by Fisher, Kopel- man, and Schneider 1994); preparing for negotiation (Getting Ready to Negotiate by Fisher and Ertel 1995);designing systems of dispute resolution (Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Cost of Conflict by Ury, Brett, and Goldberg 1988); dealing with difficult people (Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People by Ury 1991) or difficult issues (Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Stone, Patton, and Heen 1999); leadership (Getting It Done: How to Lead When You are Not in Charge by Fisher and Sharp 1999); and most recently, emotions (Beyond Reason: Using Emotions asYou Negotiate by Fisher and Shapiro 2005). All of these books were coauthored or heavily influenced by Fisher, Ury