Negotiating Against Reality
Get Your Whole Team on the Same Side of the Table
When deciding what to build, there’s nothing I love to hear more than a question like, “Would it work about as well if it worked this way instead of that way? Because if so, it would save about two weeks of development time.” I love getting questions like this one from my teammates from other functions, because in most product development, there are no “requirements”, and almost everything is negotiable.
We can have anything we want, but we can’t have everything we want. And pretty much nothing we want will come for free. Finding the right set of scope for a project, that considers all aspects and implications and maximizes return on investment (ROI) — that’s the magic.
Since almost everything about a project is negotiable, that must mean that Product is negotiating against the rest of the team, trying to get as much as possible from them for the lowest possible effort estimate? I’m sympathetic to that question, because I know firsthand that it can sometimes feel that way. But no, absolutely not.
Your True Adversary Isn’t Your Teammate
So, let's set the record straight: the true negotiation is not within our team. The actual negotiation is against a formidable, silent adversary known as Reality.
Reality is always willing to negotiate and will “accept” any number of “offers”. But he won’t give you everything you want — as frameworks like the project management triangle, CAP theorem, and Zooko’s triangle illustrate in their respective domains. And what Reality is willing to give you is going to cost you something. That cost may be in the form of your team’s time and effort, complication of your product’s UX, tech debt, delayed timelines, opportunity costs, etc. Every time you try to reduce one kind of cost, you typically pay more cost of another kind.
We often fall into the trap of viewing our team members in Design or Engineering as the opposition during negotiations of scope, timelines, and other tradeoffs. This adversarial dynamic leads to a tug-of-war over how much can be done and how fast. However, the real negotiation isn't with our colleagues—it's with Reality.
Reality is that stern negotiator with a poker face who watches as we lay out our plans and resources, only revealing the outcome once we've committed. It's not until we're deep into development that we discover if we’ll actually be getting what we wanted for the price we expected to pay.
You vs. Reality
When you, as the Product person on the team, make an offer that you think is a win for your team and product, Reality will silently allow you to proceed. If your offer underestimated the costs Reality demands for your desired outcome, he won’t bother to mention it, rather simply let you discover that on your own, eventually. If the outcome you want isn’t possible, he’ll let you invest time and resources into executing the “deal” — only to reveal it’s a no-go once you’ve already sunk your resources into the failed endeavor. And even if the deal works as planned, he’ll never speak up to let you know if he was open to an even more favorable, higher-ROI deal you hadn’t thought of.
To illustrate with an example, consider this: you offer three weeks of your team’s time for a feature you believe will be a game-changer. Yet, what you don't see — and what Reality knows — is the domino effect of backend refactoring and the downstream consequences on user experience, which result from executing against your well-meaning “requirements”.
So, you've negotiated against Reality, offering weeks of effort for a feature that, unbeknownst to you, will come at a greater cost than you anticipated and won't resonate with users as expected. Reality knows this and silently lets you proceed with your plan, well aware that you're making a much worse bargain than you meant to.
But it doesn’t have to be a losing battle. The trick is not to outwit or outmaneuver Reality but to approach the negotiation with a wealth of collective knowledge, experience, and creativity. This is where your team comes in.
Bring Your Team to the Same Side of the Table
By uniting as a team in crafting the deal, we can face Reality with more information and creative options. With our combined expertise, we're better equipped to predict outcomes, understand implications, and construct deals that get us more of what we want for less cost — and ones that Reality is more likely to accept. This united front changes the dynamics of negotiation from a solo struggle to a team effort, from an almost-certain defeat to a likely win.
Across the negotiation table, Reality represents a host of factors: the calendar, your budget, team capabilities, tech stack limitations, and more. Recognizing Reality's role and facing it as a team is how we transform negotiation from a gamble into a strategic decision.
Even if it’s felt tense to negotiate scope and project plans with your team in the past, they were fundamentally only trying to help you understand the constraints that Reality was going to impose on the deal. The mood shifts when you stop resenting them for it and appreciate it as the help that it truly is, as you work to win the negotiation against Reality. When we negotiate as a team, we aren't just guessing at what Reality might accept. We're leveraging our collective strength to shape a winning deal that Reality will cosign.
So, the next time you're planning a project, remember that your entire team is on the same side of the table. Invite their questions, input, and even pushback. Ask them why exactly X won’t work as well as you thought. Ask them if Y may work better than X, or if they have any other better options in mind.
And thank them for their willingness to help you win the negotiation. You’re not at odds, because your opponent in every negotiation is Reality. How the process feels to you and your team will largely depend on how you engage, how open you are to feedback and pushback, and how you respond when it comes.
When you make the mindset shift, make it explicit to your team and key partners. You want their help to craft the best deal, and you’re all on the same side of the table. Once you all see it that way, the negotiation process stops being zero-sum. Winning the negotiation becomes far less stressful and more fun, when we realize we can all work together and win as a team.