In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt embarked on a whistle-stop tour to cap off a hard fought presidential election campaign. At each stop Roosevelt planned to clinch people’s votes by distributing a state of the art pamphlet with a stern presidential portrait on the cover and a stirring speech inside. Three million copies had been printed before an astute campaign worker noticed a small line at the bottom of the photograph which read “Moffett Studios, Chicago.” Since Moffett held the copyright, the unauthorised use of the photo could cost the campaign one dollar per reproduction. With no time to reprint the brochure, what was Roosevelt to do?
Not using the pamphlets at all would weaken Roosevelt’s election prospects. If they went ahead, a scandal could easily erupt on the eve of the election with Roosevelt accused of breaching copyright and liable for substantial damages. Clearly they had to negotiate with Moffett. But research by their Chicago operatives turned up bad news. Moffett was not a Roosevelt supporter, his business was struggling and he was approaching retirement.
At this point George Perkins, the campaign manager, stopped worrying about the campaign and started thinking about what life might be like for Moffett. What did the photographer need most? He came up with an idea and then dispatched the following cable to Moffett Studios. “We are planning to distribute millions of pamphlets with Roosevelt’s picture on the cover. It will be great publicity for the studio whose photograph we use. How much will you pay us if we use yours? Respond immediately.” Moffett replied the next day, “We’ve never done this before, but under the circumstances we’d be prepared to offer you $250.” Perkins accepted – without asking for more.
Perkins’s misleading approach raises ethical yellow flags and is anything but a model negotiation on how to enhance working relationships. Yet this case raises a very interesting question: why did the campaign workers find the prospect of this negotiation so difficult? Their inability to see what Perkins immediately perceived flowed from their anxious obsession with their own side’s problem: their blunders so far, the high risk of losing the election, a potential $3 million exposure, an urgent deadline, and no cash to meet Moffett’s likely demands for something the campaign vitally needed. Had they avoided mistake 1 by pausing for a moment and thinking about how Moffett saw his problem, they would have realized that Moffett didn’t even know he had a problem. Perkins’s tactical genius was to recognize the essence of the negotiator’s central task: shape how your counterpart sees its problem such that it chooses what you want.
What do you make of that story? Did you like it? What sort of man was the campaign manager George Perkins? Was he a gifted systems strategist, a hard nosed negotiator, an unprincipled opportunist or all three? … and as you take the time to consider these questions is your perception of this story changing?
Perkins’s misleading approach raises ethical yellow flags and is anything but a model negotiation on how to enhance working relationships. Yet this case raises a very interesting question: why did the campaign workers find the prospect of this negotiation so difficult? Their inability to see what Perkins immediately perceived flowed from their anxious obsession with their own side’s problem: their blunders so far, the high risk of losing the election, a potential $3 million exposure, an urgent deadline, and no cash to meet Moffett’s likely demands for something the campaign vitally needed. Had they avoided mistake 1 by pausing for a moment and thinking about how Moffett saw his problem, they would have realized that Moffett didn’t even know he had a problem. Perkins’s tactical genius was to recognize the essence of the negotiator’s central task: shape how your counterpart sees its problem such that it chooses what you want.
What do you make of that story? Did you like it? What sort of man was the campaign manager George Perkins? Was he a gifted systems strategist, a hard nosed negotiator, an unprincipled opportunist or all three? … and as you take the time to consider these questions is your perception of this story changing?
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