Our proposal, can have a positive response?

We can increase the likelihood that our idea will be translated into constructive action by estimating the path our proposal will have to travel on its way, to implementation, and who along the way will need to be persuade. We can run our proposal through several checklists to test it for different kinds of feasibility, both practical and ethical. Even if we are acting as advisers to ourselves, it is usually worth checking our ideas. We may be able to anticipate a potential roadblock and figure out how to overcome it.

To check our work, we ask whether we have constructed a choice to which the answer yes meets three tests:

• Yes is a sufficient answer;

• Yes is a realistic answer; and

• Yes is operational.

While these criteria may seem at first glance to be expressing the same idea, in fact they are quite different.

Yes is sufficient. We need to offer others a way forward instead of yet another problem. They should see themselves as having a specific option before them – something to which a simple affirmative is an adequate response. President Lyndon Johnson wanted memos that crossed his desk to end up with a proposal and with a choice of boxes at the bottom for him to check: “Yes”, ”No,” or ” See me.” He did not want staff to bring him a problem without taking the additional step of suggesting something that be done about it.

Yes Is realistic. Formulating a yesable proposition is no guarantee that the other party will in fact say yes. There should be a good chance that the proposition will be acceptable. Perhaps the chance is not as high as “more likely than not” – but yes should be at least a significant possibility. We are not looking for a guarantee of success but rather for something worth trying for. Depending on how high the stakes are and the effort required on our part, an estimated one-in-five chance of success may well be enough. The more that a proposal meets a party’s interests, the more likely it is to be accepted. We want to confirm that there is a fair likelihood the other side would agree to it.

Yes is operational. If our target decision maker agrees with our proposal, something happens. Some specific action, such as a ceasefire, a meeting, or the appointment of a representative, will take place. Rarely does it make sense to ask for a mere statement of principle: “Yes, we agree that peace is important.” It is better to have any such statement or principle accompanied by an operational decision that tells us who will do what when: ” … and we hereby agree to attend the meeting proposed for next week.”

The more clearly we know the parameters of the specific decision that we wan t and might expect, the more likely we are to obtain it. In order to understand those parameters, it is helpful to write out drafts of the very words that we might like another party to accept. We can try writing out several alternative versions in varying degrees of detail. A particularly valuable challenge is to draft a brief statement, which their decision maker might sign, or make public, or send as instructions to some subordinate official. Such a draft written in the first person using the decision maker’s voice, also reinforces the practice of putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes.

Roger Fisher

Source:

Fisher, R., Borgwardt, E. and Schneider, A. 1994. Beyond Machiavelli. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press