Negotiating the Impossible
Deepak Malhotra · 2016
"Deadlocks that look unsolvable through direct bargaining usually get broken by changing the game itself — the frame, the players at the table, or the process — rather than by pushing harder within the existing structure."
A Harvard Business School professor studied negotiations that looked hopeless on paper — hostage standoffs, corporate takeovers, the Cuban Missile Crisis — and found the ones that resolved shared a pattern: someone stopped negotiating the terms and started negotiating the game.
Malhotra identifies three levers beyond direct bargaining. Changing the process — who talks to whom, in what order, on what timeline — can unstick a deadlock that no new argument would have moved. Changing the players — bringing in a mediator, a new stakeholder, or removing someone whose presence is triggering positional digging-in — resets the dynamic entirely. And reframing what's actually being negotiated (from 'who's right' to 'what future are we both trying to avoid') can turn a zero-sum fight into a shared problem. His case studies show that the negotiators who succeeded in 'impossible' situations rarely won by being more persuasive within the existing frame — they won by refusing to accept that frame as fixed.
According to Malhotra, what do successful resolutions of 'impossible' negotiations typically have in common?
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- Negotiating the Impossible: How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly ConflictsBerrett-Koehler
Start with No
"Chasing agreement makes you weak — a negotiator who needs a 'yes' has already given up leverage, while one who invites 'no' keeps the decision, and the deal, fully in the other side's honest control."