Leadership Transitions: The Watkins Collection (4 Items)

to launching a lawsuit.

2

The stronger your alternatives, the more

bargaining power you have, and the less you need to do a par-

ticular deal. One immediate implication is that you should never

lose sight of your alternatives and always seek to improve them.

A second is that you should look at the situation from the point

of view of your counterparts. How do they perceive their alter-

natives? What might they do to strengthen them?

At any point, negotiators like Paul face the basic set of

choices illustrated in figure 1-2. Do you accept the terms that

are currently on offer, do you make a new offer, do you wait to

see whether you can elicit better terms, ...