Make Sure the Other Guy Wins

In 1978 I attended a weekend seminar on selling and negotiating at the Red Lion Inn near Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle, Washington. I had just entered the real estate business and was looking for ideas to give me a competitive edge. The seminar had a number of different instructors and sessions on various aspects of selling and negotiation, but one presentation that focused on one particular idea not only stuck with me, but became the basis for how I would do business throughout my entire career.

It's been decades since that weekend seminar, and the idea that I learned has been creating magnetism in my life ever since. When I share it with my clients and audiences, I tell them that it is the single most powerful and effective idea I know. It is, quite simply, the best idea ever.

The idea is to make sure the other guy wins. It's the win-win strategy.

An Elegant Equation to Explain Everything

In the movie The Theory of Everything, British theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking is portrayed as being on a relentless search to find one simple, elegant equation to explain everything. That's pretty much what the win-win strategy is for me.

Certainly in my business, but also in my personal relationships, with my family, and with the world in general, I have found that the win-win strategy has never failed me. That's a very bold statement, but I make it very intentionally. For me, it's a bulletproof strategy. It's always worked.

Most people's initial reaction to the win-win strategy is that it can't work because if the other guy wins, then they must lose. They believe that life is a zero-sum game in which there are winners and losers and that they must be one or the other. There are certainly a few situations in which that's the case. It's true in checkers, arm wrestling, chess, and any number of other competitive games. In order for you to win, the other guy or team has to lose.

But in real life—in the world in which you and I do business, have friendships, raise families, and do almost everything that we do—the “I win/you lose” dynamic not only isn't applicable, it's nonsense. In the real world, very rarely does it makes sense for you to make someone else lose. In fact, when you create losers, it almost always ends up working against you.

This isn't about being “nice,” and it most certainly isn't about being a wimp or a pushover. On the contrary, this is about being smart enough, creative enough, and strong enough to create transactions and relationships in which you create winners. It's not necessarily easy, but it's always worth the effort.

Look at the Options

Let's consider what the options are in transactional relationships:

• I Lose–You Lose. This really is starting at the bottom of the list with the least desirable option of all. This is the situation in which either both parties make really dumb deals in which neither of them gets what they want, or one or both parties are so snarky that the strategy is “If I can't get what I want then neither will you.” This would be a situation in which you sabotage or deliberately destroy a potential opportunity because you feel like the other side is winning more. You're willing to take a loss to keep them from getting a win. However you look at it, though, you're still taking a loss. Perennial victims, really incompetent businesspeople, and complete dopes are fans of this strategy. They are known for alienating customers and for destroying organizations from the inside out.
• I Lose–You Win. Just minutes ago I was doing a little background research on negotiating strategy, and I ran across an article that gave me a laugh. The title was “Why Win-Win Negotiating Is the Surest Way You'll Lose.” The writer said that self-made wealthy people are very leery of the win-win strategy and never use it. I'm not sure that I've ever read a more backward or erroneous statement.

The article said that when you play win-win with someone who really wants to win, you end up giving too many concessions in the interest of being nice, you ultimately lose, and it ends up being wimp-win, with you being the wimp.

What? Excuse me, but my half of the win-win strategy says that I win. If you give away so much that you lose, then, by definition, you're playing I lose–you win. There are only a couple of situations in which I'll play that game.

The first is when I am willing to take a loss in order that the other person can win simply because of the nature of the relationship. It's rare, but it might come up in a marriage, with a good friend, or with a family member. The thing to be avoided in this situation is that you can't lose and harbor resentment for the loss. If you do that, then it eats away at the relationship and can ultimately cause damage, resulting in a loss for everyone.

The second situation in which I lose–you win can make perfect sense, which I encounter fairly often in business, is when I am happily willing to take a short-term loss in order to get a long-term win. This might be as simple as agreeing to give a client an extra service for a reduced or no fee, which may cost me time and money to do, but which helps improve or solidify the long-term relationship and is ultimately in my own self-interest.

In this scenario, I'm taking that short-term loss for the purpose of creating a long-term and bigger win. So ultimately I'm playing win-win. I use this strategy all the time. I'll gladly “lose” on a short-term transaction in order to win long term. People who fail to see the benefit of this tend to be guilty, as the old saying goes, of “stepping over dollars to pick up nickels.”

• I Win–You Lose. This is the strategy of the “tough” guy or gal, the bully, or the person who can only think short term. When I teach the win-win strategy in workshops, there are always some people who will say that win-win “sounds good,” but it's not the way the real world works. They believe that the real world is one in which, when someone wins, someone has to lose.

Okay, let's think about who we play the game with. Let's start with customers.

Let me get this straight. For me to win, I should make my customer lose? Well, let's all reference our own experiences as customers and see how that strategy invariably plays out.

When you do business with people who make you lose, and especially if they make you lose repeatedly, what do you do? You fire them! You stop doing business with them and you make a point to spread the word about what jerks they are and that no one should ever do business with them.

The real world is much like two little kids playing with a ball. If one of them hogs the ball and won't let the other play, the other quits and goes home. The I win–you lose strategy tends to work only temporarily or short term at best. If you would claim that you have always played to make others lose and that it's worked just fine, I would suggest you would have been infinitely more successful if you had created wins for other people.

If you truly believe that it works in your favor to make the other guy lose, then have at it, and best of luck to you. Sometimes choices come down to “this is how I want to live my life.” For me, and for the multitude of successful businesses and individuals that I've worked with over the years, I simply go with the evidence, which is obvious and overwhelming. It's more magnetic to have people want to do business with you than to have people dread doing business with you.

• I Win–You Win. This is it. This is the mother lode of all strategies. I honestly believe that this truly is the best idea ever. This is the ultimate magnetic force that attracts business, people, great relationships, money, good fortune, and just about every wonderful thing you can think of. Think I'm overstating things a bit? Not at all. This strategy is, quite simply, the bomb. It trumps all other strategies and consistently beats the I win—you lose strategy in particular.

I Hate to Lose

Don't think for one minute that the people who are masters of the win-win strategy are necessarily overly “nice.” If you're nice, that's just a positive byproduct, but it certainly isn't the point. It's about what works. It's about being effective and creating a business that attracts business.

One of the keys to my success is that I hate to lose. I mean I really, really hate to lose. If you ever play a classically competitive sport against me, you'd better bring your “A” game. My longtime friends and family will tell you that I am one of the most competitive people you will ever meet. I play to win, whether it's a game of touch football, billiards, Trivial Pursuit, soccer, checkers, or any other sport or game.

I also hate to lose in the game of business. That's why, more than 35 years after first hearing about the win-win strategy, I am still working to master and refine my use of it. It's the ultimate winning strategy.

I've Developed Reverse Paranoia

In the real world of business, the rules are that for me to get what I want, I must help the other person get what he or she wants. That's just the way business works. The most basic and obvious example of this is with my customers. The only way I stay in business, much less succeed and grow, is to be sure that my customers win. In fact, the rule of success is quite clearly that the ultimate winners and the market leaders are whoever helps the most people win. We all do business with the companies that we feel make us win.

Think of who else you deal with in addition to customers. Employees, coworkers, partners, vendors, the community in general, and on and on. Who on that list do you want to make lose? What possible logic could there be to any strategy other than having them win?

The great thing about leaving a path of winners in your wake is that you build a bank of good will that comes back over and over. I've worked at playing win-win for so many years that I've developed reverse paranoia. I feel like everybody's out to help me.

Of course, in the real world sometimes we have to say no. I've said no to customers in cases where for me to grant their request, I would have had to take too big a loss. But in saying no to them, I tried to create a win for them on some level, even if it was simply to demonstrate they had been heard and understood, and to respectfully explain why I was unable to grant their request. The same goes for employees, partners, vendors, etc.

If there's that rare occasion where the other person is going to take a loss no matter how you handle it, i.e., having to fire an employee, it can still be handled in such a way that you lessen the blow as much as possible through respectful communication. The bottom line and guiding force should always be to avoid a loss and find the win.

“We Make People Lose”

How do you play the game internally in your business? What is your culture when it comes to winners and losers? I worked with a company many years ago that had a clear I win–you lose culture. It was a “survival of the fittest” environment in which everyone was out to undercut everyone else.

I was quite frankly amazed and incredulous that senior leadership there was not only aware of this culture, but encouraged it. The feeling was that it would help create great performance by encouraging the “best” people and ideas to rise to the top. I had one executive say to me, “This is a cutthroat business, and if you can't cut it, then you're out.” They may as well have had huge banners hanging on the walls inside and outside the company headquarters that said “We Make People Lose!”

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the reason that they had called on consultants like me was that the company wasn't performing well, and their competitors were pulling away from them in terms of market share. In reality, it wasn't a “cutthroat” industry at all, but one in which strength of relationships was vitally important to success.

That company, incidentally, ended up going out of business.

This I win–you lose company was drowning in its own self-created pool of bad relationships both inside the company and out. Their failure to understand the true nature of effective competitive strategy in business was their undoing.

It's Like a Cultural Miracle Drug

As magnetic a force as the win-win strategy is for customers, it's just as effective when practiced internally. There's a big difference between companies in which the people continually lift each other up as opposed to cutting each other down. The strategies you employ internally and the way you treat each other is usually a pretty accurate reflection of your external strategy and how you treat customers, vendors, partners, and the community.

The win-win strategy is like a cultural miracle drug that cures a lot of the potential ills that can negatively affect a company's performance. Internal communications, cooperation between departments, creativity, overall employee morale, and more are all positively affected by the use of a win-win strategy internally.

Standing out Like a Sore Thumb

Hopefully you have had the experience of being a part of an organization in which people buy into and embrace a win-win culture. When you've got that kind of mutually supportive environment, everything seems to go more smoothly, and work is more efficient and effective. You've probably also had the experience of that one person or small group of people within the group who insist on playing their “I win–you lose” strategy in contrast to the rest of the team.

I've seen a single person poison the attitudes, morale, and effectiveness of an entire team. I would guess that we all have. I take a pretty hard line about these people. If your stated culture is one of mutual support and cooperation, then the I win–you lose players have to go. It costs too much in terms of coworker morale and inefficiency (i.e. poor communication) to keep them around.

Constructive Disagreements

None of this is to say that there shouldn't be differing opinions or disagreements within a team. On the contrary, a solid win-win culture lets people offer differing points of view openly and honestly in a direct and extremely effective way that ultimately benefits everyone. Win-win means let's get to the best solution. Win-win means I'm willing and even eager to hear your idea, which may be contrary to mine if it can get us to the accomplishment of our goals.

There are dozens of people with whom I've regularly done business for many years and with whom I share a win-win approach. It makes things so easy that it's spoiled me against ever trying to work with anyone who doesn't “get it.” I'm amazed by people who are adversarial in their relationships when it makes no sense to be that way.

My good friend and business associate Kris Young and I have worked together for a very long time and have cowritten a book. In our business dealings, we sometimes disagree about what to do or how to do it, and we are very direct and straightforward about these disagreements.

But, because we decided long ago that we are on the same side and that we each want the other to succeed and ultimately win, we can have very constructive disagreements that get us to better decisions and smarter solutions, rather than arguments or personality conflicts. That's one of the main reasons I'm such a fan of the win-win strategy. It helps makes communication, decision making, and, ultimately, performance so much more efficient and effective.

The Ultimate Guideline

What makes the win-win strategy so powerful and effective is its simplicity. I've been using it since I first heard it in 1978 (do the math—that's a long, long time) and it's never failed me. Win-win is the ultimate guideline for attracting business, building a collaborative and effective team, successful negotiating, honest and direct communication, and productive relationships.

In working with tens of thousands of business owners, leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs in my career, win-win is the one idea that I've always said is the best idea I've ever heard. It's not easy to stick with, but it's worth the effort to make it work. The payoff is amazing. It's pure power to those wanting to become magnetic.