Don’t Mess with Old Men
There is a sweet story about an elderly man who is woken at 3.00am by his wife, who can hear strange noises outside the house. He opens the bedroom curtains and sees robbers stealing some of his stuff from the shed at the bottom of the garden. He calls the emergency line, explains what he can see, and asks for police assistance immediately. ‘Are they actually in your house?’ asks the operator.
‘No’, he says, ‘I’ve told you. They are in the shed at the bottom of the garden’. ‘We don’t have anyone available at the moment,’ says the operator ‘but we will send someone along within 2 hours’.
The man puts the phone down, waits thirty seconds, and calls back to the police. ‘I called you a minute ago about the robbers at the bottom of my garden’ he says. ‘I’m calling you again to tell you that I just shot them’. He hangs up.
Within 2 minutes there is a squad car, 3 policemen, and a detective sergeant at the door. They arrest the robbers, and then interrogate the elderly man. ‘You said you shot the robbers. You are in serious trouble. You lied’. Says the detective.
‘So did you. You said you had no-one available for 2 hours’ says the man. Case closed. Moral of the story – don’t mess with old men.
The story has a deeper lesson too, in a simple phrase summarized as ‘fighting fire with fire can be very effective’. Conflict often brings the worst out in people. If they think they can bid-up their position with a little exaggerating, bulls hitting or out-and-out lying, they will. Buyers claiming that an alternative supplier has offered a much better deal. Suppliers claiming they are almost out of stock. Statements made not to convey truth, but to try to change perceptions.
To counter this, good negotiators do their homework; a bit of research revealing the truth, either before the bogus statement is made, or investigating its veracity after. Another defensive activity is to