Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

UNCOVERING UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS
The lesson of what happened at 3 p.m. on June 17, 1981, in
Rochester, New York, was that when bits and pieces of a
case don’t add up it’s usually because our frames of
reference are off; they will never add up unless we break
free of our expectations.
Every case is new. We must let what we know—our
known knowns—guide us but not blind us to what we do not
know; we must remain flexible and adaptable to any
situation; we must always retain a beginner’s mind; and we
must never overvalue our experience or undervalue the
informational and emotional realities served up moment by
moment in whatever situation we face.
But those were not the only important lessons of that
tragic event. If an overreliance on known knowns can

---

shackle a negotiator to assumptions that prevent him from
seeing and hearing all that a situation presents, then perhaps
an enhanced receptivity to the unknown unknowns can free
that same negotiator to see and hear the things that can
produce dramatic breakthroughs.
From the moment I heard the tale of June 17, 1981, I
realized that I had to completely change how I approached
negotiating. I began to hypothesize that in every negotiation
each side is in possession of at least three Black Swans,
three pieces of information that, were they to be discovered
by the other side, would change everything.
My experience since has proven this to be true.
Now, I should note here that this is not just a small tweak
to negotiation technique. It is not coincidence that I
embraced Black Swan as the name of my company and the
symbol of our approach.
Finding and acting on Black Swans mandates a shift in
your mindset. It takes negotiation from being a one-
dimensional move-countermove game of checkers to a
three-dimensional game that’s more emotional, adaptive,
intuitive . . . and truly effective.
Finding Blacks Swans is no easy task, of course. We are
all to some degree blind. We do not know what is around
the corner until we turn it. By definition we do not know
what we don’t know.
That’s why I say that finding and understanding Black
Swans requires a change of mindset. You have to open up
your established pathways and embrace more intuitive and

---

nuanced ways of listening.
This is vital to people of all walks of life, from
negotiators to inventors and marketers. What you don’t
know can kill you, or your deal. But to find it out is
incredibly difficult. The most basic challenge is that people
don’t know the questions to ask the customer, the user . . .
the counterpart. Unless correctly interrogated, most people
aren’t able to articulate the information you want. The world
didn’t tell Steve Jobs that it wanted an iPad: he uncovered
our need, that Black Swan, without us knowing the
information was there.
The problem is that conventional questioning and
research techniques are designed to confirm known knowns
and reduce uncertainty. They don’t dig into the unknown.
Negotiations
will
always
suffer
from
limited
predictability. Your counterpart might tell you, “It’s a lovely
plot of land,” without mentioning that it is also a Superfund
site. They’ll say, “Are the neighbors noisy? Well, everyone
makes a bit of noise, don’t they?” when the actual fact is
that a heavy metal band practices there nightly.
It is the person best able to unearth, adapt to, and exploit
the unknowns that will come out on top.
To uncover these unknowns, we must interrogate our
world, must put out a call, and intensely listen to the
response. Ask lots of questions. Read nonverbal clues and
always voice your observations with your counterpart.
This is nothing beyond what you’ve been learning up to
now. It is merely more intense and intuitive. You have to

---

feel for the truth behind the camouflage; you have to note
the small pauses that suggest discomfort and lies. Don’t look
to verify what you expect. If you do, that’s what you’ll find.
Instead, you must open yourself up to the factual reality that
is in front of you.
This is why my company changed its format for
preparing and engaging in a negotiation. No matter how
much research our team has done prior to the interaction, we
always ask ourselves, “Why are they communicating what
they are communicating right now?” Remember, negotiation
is more like walking on a tightrope than competing against
an opponent. Focusing so much on the end objective will
only distract you from the next step, and that can cause you
to fall off the rope. Concentrate on the next step because the
rope will lead you to the end as long as all the steps are
completed.
Most people expect that Black Swans are highly
proprietary or closely guarded information, when in fact the
information may seem completely innocuous. Either side
may be completely oblivious to its importance. Your
counterpart always has pieces of information whose value
they do not understand.