The Invisible Game

Chapter 19The Power of the Next Small Thing

Coming up with decoys or finding ways to use the power of now to your advantage, for example, may be sexy and creative challenges that people want to be part of. But there are also many small ways to influence the balance of power and change perceptions. These tasks may not come to mind immediately as powerful tactics, but they can help you set and reset frames, now and in the future. We highlight three of them in this chapter.

Restrict the other negotiating party's options

A party's personal power is diminished when something constrains their options or their flexibility. An example of a buyer imposing a power-limiting constraint is to set a deadline. By saying ‘we need a deal by the end of the week’, a buyer instantly leaves the seller with fewer degrees of freedom. Why does restricting options or imposing constraints diminish personal power? The reason is that it creates additional hurdles for the other party to overcome.

Overcoming a hurdle has a depletive effect. You only have so much capacity to deal with hurdles properly. The better way to succeed in a challenging situation is not to overcome hurdles, but to eliminate hurdles and not have them to begin with. Your best opportunity lies in exerting as much control as possible over the environment or frame. The more options you have, the better your chances are to eliminate variables and manage your environment. This is analogous to why we reframed the question of discounting ...