What If They Are More Powerful?
Key Takeaway: Negotiating power comes not from wealth, connections, or force, but from the attractiveness of your best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) — developing your BATNA is the single most effective action you can take when facing a stronger counterpart.
Chapter 6: What If They Are More Powerful?
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Summary
Fisher opens Part III ("Yes, But...") with the most honest admission in the book: no method can guarantee success when the other side holds all the leverage. Principled negotiation cannot teach you to grow lilies in a desert. What it can do is serve two protective functions — prevent you from accepting a deal you should reject, and help you extract maximum value from whatever assets you do have. Both objectives converge on a single concept: your BATNA — Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.
Before introducing BATNA, Fisher dismantles the conventional protective tool: the bottom line. Setting a minimum acceptable outcome in advance (e.g., "we won't sell below $260,000") seems prudent but carries serious costs. It's rigid by design, which means it inhibits the creative option-generation from Chapter 4. It's often set arbitrarily — family members talking themselves into increasingly ambitious numbers around the breakfast table. And most critically, it conflates a position with a real assessment of your alternatives. A bottom line tells you the lowest number you'll accept; it doesn't tell you whether accepting that number is actually better than your alternatives.
#BATNA replaces the bottom line with a dynamic, reality-based benchmark: what will you actually do if this negotiation fails? For the family selling a house, the question isn't "what should we be able to get?" but "if we don't sell by a certain date, will we rent it? Tear it down? Convert the land?" The most attractive of these real alternatives becomes the standard against which any offer should be measured. Unlike a bottom line, a BATNA is flexible — it allows you to evaluate creative deal structures (like $235,000 plus the right to use the barn for storage) that a rigid number would reject outright.
Fisher's insight about the source of #negotiatingpower is one of the most counterintuitive in the book. Power doesn't come from wealth, connections, or military might — it comes from the attractiveness of walking away. The Mumbai vendor illustration makes this vivid: a wealthy tourist is actually the weaker negotiator if he doesn't know where else to buy a comparable brass pot, while the poor vendor with multiple potential buyers has strong #leverage. The job interview comparison is equally striking — walking in with two other offers completely transforms the salary conversation. This reframing connects to Chris Voss's discussion of leverage in Never Split the Difference, though Voss frames leverage through the lens of loss aversion and Black Swans rather than rational alternatives. Voss would argue that Fisher's BATNA analysis is necessary but insufficient — you also need to understand the other side's emotional attachments and hidden fears.
The small town versus corporation example is the chapter's masterpiece. A tiny town negotiated a massive factory's "goodwill" payment from $300,000 to $2.3 million per year — not because the town was more powerful in any conventional sense, but because it had developed a devastating BATNA (expand the town limits and tax the factory the full residential rate of $2.5 million). The corporation, despite its vast resources, had no alternative to reaching agreement because it had committed to keeping the factory. Assets that aren't converted into a good BATNA are worth nothing in negotiation.
Fisher provides a three-step process for developing your BATNA: (1) invent a list of possible actions if no agreement is reached, (2) improve the most promising ideas into practical, executable alternatives, and (3) select tentatively the best one. The emphasis on converting vague options into concrete, executable plans is critical — a vague sense that "I could always find another job" is worth far less than an actual offer letter from another company. Fisher also introduces the concept of a "trip wire" — a pre-set threshold above your BATNA that triggers a pause for reflection before you accept anything lower.
The chapter closes with advice about the other side's BATNA. If theirs is too good (they don't see any need to negotiate on the merits), you may need to change it — filing a lawsuit to revoke a permit, for example. And sometimes the best outcome is no agreement at all: when both sides have attractive BATNAs, discovering that each would be better off walking away is itself a successful negotiation.
Key Insights
Power Is the Attractiveness of Walking Away
The wealthy tourist and the Mumbai vendor prove that conventional indicators of power (money, size, connections) are irrelevant if they don't translate into a good alternative to agreement. A small town beat a multinational corporation because the town had a concrete alternative (annexation and taxation) and the corporation didn't. Every negotiator should ask: "How easily and happily can I walk away?"Bottom Lines Are Dangerous Because They're Rigid and Arbitrary
A predetermined minimum acceptable outcome creates the illusion of discipline but actually inhibits the creative deal-making that principled negotiation demands. It prevents you from evaluating packages that might satisfy your interests in unexpected ways, and it's almost always set based on wishful thinking rather than analysis of real alternatives.BATNA Must Be Developed, Not Assumed
Most people walk into negotiations with a vague sense that they have alternatives but haven't developed any of them into executable plans. The aggregation trap — mentally summing up all possible alternatives as if you could have them all — creates false confidence. The antidote is the three-step process: invent, improve, and select a concrete best alternative.You Can Change the Other Side's BATNA
If the other side's alternative to agreement is so good they won't negotiate seriously, your strategic move isn't to negotiate harder — it's to worsen their alternative. The community group facing a power plant doesn't just negotiate about emissions; they file a lawsuit to revoke the construction permit, transforming the company's BATNA from "build without restriction" to "face legal injunction."Key Frameworks
BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement)
The most famous concept in the book and one of the most influential in negotiation theory. Your BATNA is the best thing you will do if negotiations fail. Every proposed agreement should be measured against it — accept if it's better than your BATNA, reject if it's worse. Unlike a bottom line, BATNA is flexible, reality-based, and permits creative deal evaluation.Three Steps to Develop Your BATNA
(1) Invent — brainstorm a list of all possible actions if no agreement is reached; (2) Improve — develop the most promising ideas into concrete, executable alternatives; (3) Select — tentatively choose the best one as your standard. Converting vague options into real alternatives is where most negotiators fail.Trip Wire
A pre-set threshold above your BATNA that triggers a pause for reflection. Not a rigid bottom line, but an early warning system. If an agreement approaches your trip wire, stop and reexamine before accepting. Also useful for limiting agent authority: "Don't sell below this price without calling me first."Power Reframing: BATNA as the Source of Leverage
Negotiating power is not determined by resources (wealth, size, connections) but by the relative attractiveness of each side's alternative to agreement. Resources only become power when converted into a strong BATNA. The strongest negotiator is the one who can walk away most easily.Direct Quotes
[!quote]
"The reason you negotiate is to produce something better than the results you can obtain without negotiating."
[source:: Getting to Yes] [author:: Roger Fisher] [chapter:: 6] [theme:: BATNA]
[!quote]
"The relative negotiating power of two parties depends primarily upon how attractive to each is the option of not reaching agreement."
[source:: Getting to Yes] [author:: Roger Fisher] [chapter:: 6] [theme:: negotiatingpower]
[!quote]
"The greater your willingness to break off negotiations, the more forcefully you can present your interests."
[source:: Getting to Yes] [author:: Roger Fisher] [chapter:: 6] [theme:: leverage]
[!quote]
"Developing your BATNA is perhaps the most effective course of action you can take in dealing with a seemingly more powerful negotiator."
[source:: Getting to Yes] [author:: Roger Fisher] [chapter:: 6] [theme:: BATNA]
Action Points
- [ ] Before your next negotiation (deal, salary, vendor contract), write out your BATNA explicitly — not a vague list of alternatives, but your single best concrete option if this deal falls through
- [ ] Apply the three-step BATNA development process to your current business: what would you actually do if your biggest deal/client/relationship fell apart? Invent alternatives, improve the best ones into executable plans, and select your strongest
- [ ] In any high-stakes deal, develop your BATNA before making any offer — having another viable option lined up transforms your negotiating posture completely
- [ ] Assess the other side's BATNA in every negotiation: what will they do if they don't deal with you? If their BATNA is strong, consider how to weaken it (create urgency, highlight risks of their alternatives, offer terms their alternatives can't match)
- [ ] Replace any "bottom line" numbers you currently use with BATNA-based thinking — instead of "I won't accept less than $X," ask "is this offer better than my best alternative?"
Questions for Further Exploration
- Fisher defines power as the attractiveness of walking away, but Voss argues that leverage comes from understanding the other side's hidden fears and losses — can both be true simultaneously, or do they represent fundamentally different theories of power?
- BATNA analysis assumes rational comparison between alternatives, but behavioral economics shows people are loss-averse and status-quo biased — does BATNA theory need to be updated to account for cognitive biases in how people evaluate alternatives?
- Fisher advises disclosing your BATNA when it's strong and concealing it when it's weak — but doesn't concealment itself risk being detected and interpreted as weakness? Is there a way to signal BATNA strength without explicit disclosure?
- The "change their BATNA" advice (e.g., file a lawsuit to revoke a permit) is powerful but adversarial — does it conflict with the collaborative spirit of principled negotiation?
Personal Reflections
Space for your own thoughts, connections, disagreements, and applications. What resonated? What challenged your assumptions? How does this connect to your own experience?
Themes & Connections
- #negotiation — the core domain; this chapter addresses power dynamics within principled negotiation
- #BATNA — Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement; the book's most famous concept
- #leverage — reframed as walk-away attractiveness rather than resource accumulation
- #negotiatingpower — Fisher's key insight: power = quality of your alternatives, not size of your resources
- #principlednegotiation — BATNA is the defensive foundation of principled negotiation
- #walkaway — the willingness and ability to leave the table; the ultimate source of negotiating strength
- #alternativeoptions — developing concrete alternatives is the most effective power-building activity
- #riskmanagement — BATNA and trip wire as tools for protecting against bad agreements
- Concept candidates: BATNA, Negotiating Power, Walk-Away Power
- Cross-book connections:
Tags
#negotiation #BATNA #leverage #negotiatingpower #principlednegotiation #walkaway #alternativeoptions #riskmanagement