Description

Most of us consider Negotiation as something that
happens only when buying a house or a new car: one
argues in a traditional way offering less than one is
willing to pay, trading concessions for concessions –
grudgingly, in the hope of shaking hands on a
reasonable price in the end. When the deal is done, the
parties involved rarely feel happy.

In the eighties, Harvard University commenced a
research project: The Harvard Negotiation Project
in an attempt to develop improved ways of
Negotiation. The main Director, Professor Roger
Fisher and his Associate Director, William Ury, wrote
Getting to Yes” which introduced a straightforward
method of Principled Negotiation for reaching
mutually satisfactory agreements without giving in.
The book became a bestseller.

Their step by step dance routine has kept
considerable, universal appeal, even twenty years on.
Since 1989, I have worked as a part-time Director of
Advanced Negotiation Workshops worldwide (mainly
within Unilever), and in my experience Fisher and
Urys concise proven strategy is unequivocally
applicable to G.P.s, who under the recently accepted
new national G.P. contract, need to be able to agree
with non-medical managers on a range of items, such
as contracts for providing various types of medical care,
service levels and, of course, monetary rewards.