Knowing Your Best Alternatives Key to Negotiations
I am a disciple of the negotiating approach explained in Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. One key to getting to yes in any negotiation is knowing and appreciating your "best alternative to a negotiated agreement" (BATNA).
An excellent article on figuring out your BATNA is discussed over at BizzBangBuzz. The article also discuses two related principles which turn on the perceptions of the negotiating parties: EATNA and ripeness.
Often the parties to a negotiation have distorted perceptions about their alternatives. Since perceptions are the perceiver's reality, these "estimated alternatives to a negotiated agreement" or "EATNA" may keep the parties from getting to yes:
Even when disputants do not have good options outside of negotiations, they often think they do. (For example, both sides may think that they can prevail in a military struggle, even when one side is clearly weaker, or when the relative strengths are so balanced that the outcome is very uncertain.) Yet, perceptions are all that matter when it comes to deciding whether or not to accept an agreement. If a disputant thinks that he or she has a better option, she will, very often, pursue that option, even if it is not as good as she thinks it is.
When the parties' share similar views about their alternatives a dispute is "ripe" for settlement.