Win-Win

Long term success when working with other people is all about win-win.

I’ve been writing about concepts from “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” for the past few months. The first 3 Habits deal with “Personal Victory” of the self. We learned that Habit 1 is about us being responsible for choosing our actions, Habit 2 is about how to figure out our destination, and Habit 3 is about how we get to our destination. All the first 3 habits focus on the self. We learn how to lead and manage ourselves. Now we will focus on teams.

Dependence

We all start with being dependent on someone else. As babies we need our parents to take care of us or we will not survive. Some of us, as you may have seen, stay dependent on others. We sometime do this consciously as in the case of a young adult staying with their parents to save money early in a career. Sometimes we do this subconsciously, as is the case with some relationships where we seek the attention of another person in order to be happy. When we are dependent on another person, we require that person to function and to define who we are. Sometime we see two people being dependent on each other (codependent).

Independence

As we get older, most of us strive for independence. We want to make our own decisions, go with our friends, and usually make our own way in life. Independence means that we make decisions about what and how we want to act and focus on what we are doing. We can accomplish great things being independent because we are driven from within and mostly don’t rely on others to make things happen, to be happy, and content.

Interdependence

Once we are independent we learn that we can only do so much by ourselves. We also learn that our perspective and skills are limited. We then choose to work in teams and to be interdependent with others to accomplish and experience greater things than we could alone.

If you’ve ever worked in a team of high caliber people, you know the amazing things that you can learn, accomplish, and do. I’ve had the great pleasure of working on several such teams in my career so far, and the experience is joyful, intellectually rich, and very rewarding.

Being interdependent is a choice only Independent people can make. You need to first recognize and believe that you choose your actions, to lead and manage yourself, then you can choose to be independent, and then interdependent.

Interdependent Ways

There are several ways we can work with others and these are discussed below.

Win-Loose

In this method we focus on winning for ourselves and loosing for the other person. We see value in “winning” and the other person loosing as a way of getting self worth. This method is natural when playing games or sports but in life it will backfire. Imagine you are selling a couch and need to hit your quota. You see a buyer and try to sell the couch to the buyer for $400. The buyer says their budget is only $300 and was looking for a different color. You use some of your sales tactics to sell the couch for $400 anyways. The buyer takes the couch home. They feel they paid too much and still don’t like the fabric. Do you think that buyer will come back to you to buy other things in the future?

Loose-Win

Imagine you are selling the same couch from above for $400. The buyer says they will only pay $200 and knows you are desperate to sell. You don’t want to upset the buyer so you give in and sell the couch for $200 to make the buyer happy. When you do this, you’ve lost money on the sale. Do you think you will want to sell to this buyer again?

Loose-Loose

A person gets divorced from their partner and is really angry with their partner. They blame their partner for all their problems. The judge in the case says that all assets must be sold and the spouse must receive half the proceeds. The person sells their $50,000 car for $100 and gives $50 to their partner. Both people loose in such a situation. We often see this in negotiations where both parties give up something and are not happy in the end. The chances of these people doing anything together again is very low.

Win

In this scenario the seller of the couch just wants to sell the couch for $400. He does not care if you get a good deal or not or are happy with the purchase, he just wants to sell the couch. Its totally ok if you like it and are happy, its just not a concern for the seller. As the buyer, will you want to do business with this seller again?

Win-Win

After looking at all the options, it becomes clear that Win-Win is the only long term viable option when working with other people. It is very possible to have both parties be happy. The seller of the couch can sell the couch for $400 and the buyer of the couch can buy that couch for that money, really like the fabric, and enjoy the value they received.

In this case the seller will naturally want to sell to the customer again. The customer will naturally want to buy again. Both parties are happy and will continue to do business together.

Win-Win is obvious, yet it is hard to do. It takes a lot of skills to do win-win. For example, we first have to understand what is really important to the other party AND to express what is really important to us. After understanding and expressing it is even harder and really important to make sure that both side’s needs are met. It sounds strange that you can meet the needs of both parties and get a win-win but it is true in most cases.

Think about the selling of stock. The seller of the stock believes that the value will go down, the buyer believes the value will go up. By selling the stock to the buyer, both parties are happy even though it seems that its not possible for both of them to win. Many other situations are similar, the buyer wants to purchase a product or service for a fair price, the seller wants to sell the product or service for a fair price as well. Both can win and be happy.

Or No Deal

In some cases its possible that a win-win scenario is not possible and in those cases we can choose to not do a deal. For example, a friend of mine was renovating their home. They wanted to do a third bathroom but did not have enough funds to make that happen. The builder did not take on that job because they knew the buyer would not be happy with what they could do for less money and needed to make a profit so they can pay their employees. They both decided not to do the bathroom for now until more funds were available. A few months later, the buyer had more funds and the builder came back to finish the bathroom. Both are very happy with the relationship because of this win-win.

Sales

I used to look down on the sales process because I saw it as people trying to sell things to others wether they needed it or not. The sales people were trying to hit a quota (WIN) and did not really care if the buyer needed the product or if it was a good fit. You’ve likely seen this before.

We know from experience and from the above scenarios that this approach destroys relationships. The customer does not come back. The flip side is also true, i.e. getting a customer that complains all the time, does not pay their bills, and so forth is not desirable to a sales person.

Win Win Feels Good – Works Well

Going for Win-Win does not only feel good, its also very successful and fruitful in the long term. As we mentioned above, doing a win-win is hard. It requires skills, determination, and willingness. A lot of the skills required to do this well are not usually taught in school but this knowledge is available. I will write more about this in my next blog article.

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