Jade Garden

You Happy and I am Happy

2010-03-04T18:30:00.000-08:00

It is a new era to be a mom, like butterfly transformed from moth.
I never know that I could have this kind of feeling. All my happiness and sadness are so attached to my angel's moods. There's one in the world to depend and rely on you with all her full heart.

Pink or Blue?

2009-08-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

Finally, it's time to have ultrasound which can tell the baby gender! Before it, I have to spend so much efforts to prevent myself from buying clothes because I don't know which color to choose.

Today I especially took today off from the work since I knew that I would not want to work after the big news. Even for today's ultrasound check, the main purpose is to measure if everything is fine with the baby, I'm so eager to know if that's pink or blue.

Before we started, Dr. warned us that we may not know the gender result since it all depends on how corporative the baby is. I suddently got a feeling that she or he will show up immediatly. I'm correct. Dr. started with the head to the toe, pointed to us where's face, eyes, mouth, hands, body, heart, leg, and toe. She said that baby is at sleep, though we can see clearly about all hand fingers opened, and leg crossed. The baby behaved angelically and let the doctor get all the needed data without any trouble. When the doctor finished talking about the heart and 4 ventricles, she paused a little bit, then asked if we want to know pink or blue. "Yes, absolutely yes!" we all said the same words and looked at the doctor. "Here's 3 white lines", the doctor pointed to some dark area in the screen, "it's a girl!"

All of a sudden, splendid fireworks displayed in front of me. The great news is like the sunny day, and it sheds its brightness everywhere. After the doctor said everything appears normal, the baby is so corporative that we finished all test in 6 minutes. I walked out the room as if I were walking on air. On the way home, I kept talking about buying beautiful clothes, decorating room with warm colors, and on and on and on.

My husband didn't understand why I got so excited with the girl. He seems fine with either choices, as long as we're having the baby. Even I always say that as long as the baby is healthy, it's always wonderful no matter it's a girl or boy. However, in the deepest of my heart, I want a girl -- I want my angel back. And now she comes. She still loves me and comes back. I'm so grateful for that. This great moment lasts forever. What a wonderful day! It made me feel on top of the world!

Now I can start hurry for the shopping.

Go shopping for my sweetie! We will celebrate tonight:-)

And thanks to my angel to make my dream comes true. Tears of joy.

Life always has two sides

2009-08-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

Life always has two sides. When the life give you the good side, it will throw you the bad side as well.

I'm still in the happy mood for my growing baby, here comes the bad news. Our group has been asked to relocated to east coast or lay off. It is a no-brianer decision for me to choose. Not to talk about any career potential or those kind of serious topics, just to think about I'm so happy to feel my baby growing day after day, how could I prevent my husband from this kind of happiness?

I'm usually on the pesmistic side for the world. In the past, I might be worry about looking for a new job in this uncertain economic world. My husband was so worried that I could be too stressed for the bad news. Weird thing is that I accept it calmly and put it behind me immediately. My emotional curve passed through so quick that I even didn't feel it. I'm not worried about that I will be out of job very soon. It's just a little bit pity that I haven't enjoyed the company maternity benefits. It's also a littlbe bit sad to see a great group dismissed. But other than that, I do not have any further regret or panic. My mind is full with my baby and all the joyness coming with that. Every time I hear her heartbeating using doppler, my heart seems melting down. Nothing else could let me risk that kind of joyful moment.

On the other side, from a professional point of view, I knew it could be a very costly and wrong decision for the company to dismiss the R&D group here. Our R&D group here has been supporting two product lines for many years with a lot of domain knowledge and lesson learned experience. We had a lot of great ideas about how to improve the products and make it better for the business. We have the rest of business team and operational team located in east coast. Since our company acquired another middle-sized company in the same wide domain and put our 2 product lines under the management of the new company, a lot of issues arise. The organization has been re-structueded multiple times in the past 2 years. Our R&D director left the team, and no local replacement has been put into place even for a year afterwards. One of the product line business director left the company, the other one turned to be changed right before the team dismissal. The new management team from that newly acquired company never has experience with distributed virtual team, and looked at us the same usage, but more expensive than their outsource India company. Since our R&D manager left the team, in a year, I have changed 3 different bosses who always have other higher priority to take care instead of team here! Now it comes to the time that R&D team will be dismissed here unless anyone is willing to relocate to the east coast, though on the other end, the new management team does not really prepared to hear any "Yes" answer to really relocate. It sounds like a good stragegy to dismiss the team without the limitation of new hiring due to layoff words. As a result, none of team members will relocate and all the experience accumulated in the past years could be lost.

For my professional responsibility, though I said I will try my best to complete the rest of projects I managed and help the transition process, I told my latest manager frankly that I would expect the business will be impact and has to be slow down for some period of time no matter how good I or we make the transition happen. Surprisely that my manager didn't agree and still think that business will be almost no impact to move forward. More interesting and ironic, the business director called everyone in the team here and tried to persaude us to consider the relocation option. He was also shocked by the news the same day we heard the bad news because no one in R&D department management side consider the business impact before making the decision. So now the business is emerging and growing, but no R&D support in short period and have to wait for the new team formed. To make things worse, did I mentioned that the R&D team in east coast has different skill set and has no idea about the domain knowledge?

It is really sad to see a great team dismissed and business, which I believe in mind, has to pay high price in the future. I heard about very bad morale among all business and operational team members, which actually appeared in the current projects I'm managing immediately. The emotional curve for the rest of people might take longer time to overcome.

What I will do? Take it easy, try to do more exercise and stay healthy for my baby. Enjoy the lovely time with my growing baby, and do not bother with looking for a new job. I don't want to risk anything for my baby with a new job or job search, which could be stressful for baby to feel. Every time I touch my growing belly, I'm so grateful that my baby is with me this time. My baby would feel all the sweet moods I'm having because of her or him. Next spring, after my baby delivered to kick off the new adventure in my life, I can start to looking for the next adventure in my career too. Now, I'm just eager to know if that's he or she to decorate the nursery room and purchase the clothes. Anything other than baby? not in my mind at all:-)

Reached the first milestone -- Now it's safer than before

2009-07-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I had my 12 week's check. Actually it's 12 week 6 days at the time based on the measurement. From UltraSound screen, I saw the baby moving up and down inside womb. Her heart beats strongly and her hands and legs swing back and forth. How lovely it is! NP said that baby is doing fine and all my test results return normal. It means so much to me! It also means that I'll finish the first trimster very soon, and enter into the second trimster, which is much safer than before.

Before the appointment, I was worried a lot. I can still remember how shocking I was for the first miscarriage time. As the first time parent-to-be, I was eager to see how baby grows and lister to her heartbeat. The bad news came during the 12 week's check, while my obstetrics told me that she cannot detect baby's heartbeat. Since I didn't see any blood or bad symptoms, it was extremely difficult to believe it's truly happened. Based on that worst experience of 12 week check, I'm so scared before the appointment time. Though immediately after NP started the ultrasound device, and babymovement showed up in the screen, my heart settle down.

Last night, while I was reading "Pregnancy Week by Week" by Pam Cass , I can't stop smiling. It gives me brief ideas about how mother and baby will be every week. It is amazing to know that baby is already a quite completed human being at the moment, even if she is so tiny.

So many things to prepare, and so many books to read. I am happy, since I can worry less now. Finally I can turly sleep at night.

I passed PMP exam today!

2009-06-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

I just passed PMP exam today after a long journey! I would love to share my experience here.

Firstly, lte's talk about the closest experience -- my exam day. I'm owl, so I chose the afternoon test time as 12pm. I'm not good at driving direction, so I checked the test center location, test drove there and remembered the driving direction and crossing street. I had a good night sleep and got up at 10am. After fighting with my morning sickness, I had my brunch. I arrived the test center 20 minutes earlier. The staff checked my ID, and asked me to put everything inside the locker! Remmeber everything--means you can only bring your ID and locker key insdie the test room. All other stuffs, such as watch, drink, and food, must be kept inside the locker. Since we can't access the locker during the test, I left the water bottle on top of locker cabinet. The staff is very nice to allow me kept wearing my sea-sick bank to fight for the nausea from pregnency sickness, which must help me a lot during the test(or I was too concentrated during the test to forgot the nausea?) Anyway, the staff allowed me to start the test after I settle down, but before scheduled 12pm. They gave me paper, 2 pencils, ear plug, and allowed me take some tissues they provided(you must kept the tissues on top of desk during whole process and can't put into pocket) to enter the test room. The staff showed me the test cubicle, and test started.

During the first 15 minutes tutorials, I quickly went through the turorials, and started the memory dump as all past warriors suggested. I had to admitted that the pencil writing on the dark colors paper is very difficult to read, though I didn't really use my memory dump during the test since I've rememmbered them all clearly in my mind. I memory dumped that table with 5 process groups, 9 knowledge areas, and 44 processes. I also wrote down all EV formulars, sigma %, conflict methods, power types before 15 minutes ends. The exam started. My anxiety level suddently increased a lot after I marked the first 3 questions. I didn't know the answer at all. It seems like I haven't prepare those area at all. I had a deep breath, marked it, and continue. The questions seems more difficult than my practice, since I almost spend 1 minute per question during the test, while usually I only need less than 30 seconds per question for those after chapter practice. Due to the slowness of answering, I changed my plan immediately. Initially I planed to break every 50 questions, now I decided to take break only after every 100 questions. I felt very thirsty during the test, since I usually sip a handful of water every couple minutes to keep myself hydrated after pregnant. I said sorry to my baby in my heart, and asked her to bear with the thristy for 4 hours. At the first break time after I finished the first 100 questions, my lips was totally dried up. During the break, I tried to drink as much water as possible before nausea caught me. Then I returned the test room. The second half questions seems much better than first half. I finished them faster and marked much less questions comparing to the first half. Then 2nd break. I spent a little bit over 3 hours to complete all questions, which is much longer comparing to 2 hours I tried during practice. Then I went through all marked questions. That's the time I started to feel hungry and the abdomimal cramp, which occurs to me almost everyday after pregnant. I had to softly touch my belly to sustain the cramp pain. I had around 40 questions marked, and 50 mintes left after my break. So time should be sufficient. After couple deep breath, I continued my review in a more relax sitting. I only felt more confirmative about 10 questions after review and changed some answers. By the time I finished review marked round, only 10 minutes left. I decided to use up all rest of time by going through the unmarked questions. After around 30 questions quick review, the popup windows shows the time is up. A survey comes first to ask how's your experience about the test. I finished the survey very quickly, and clicked next to wait for the exam result. Due to those marked uncertainty, I got a feeling that I might pass the exam just above the threshhold. The result came out--way better than I estimated. I got 5 P and 1 M to pass the exam, which makes me feel like flying. I went out to sign out, got the print out from the staff, and got all my stuff inside the locker. I started to eat the apple I prepared but not get time to eat during the test, and happily drove home.

Now, let's go back to my learning experience. I started the application last October, and got approval in a week after application submittal. I ordered whole crosswind package from PMI market place while I paid for the membership fee and exam fee. I wanted to read PMBOK, though it's great sleep pill due to the dryness of reading. I switched to "Head First PMP", which is much enjoyable reading experience, and finish reading it slowly once in about 2 months. Maybe couple hours every week. My learning stopped at last December, and I kept postponed my exam date from last December to this March, then this June to catch the last train before PMBOK version change. At the beginning of this May, I knew I'm pregnant while I haven't started picking up my learning. That made me make my mind to pass the PMP exam by end of June without postponing the exam again, so that I can focus on my baby afterwards. Only 7 weeks left for the exam preparation. A little bit tight. I spend all my free time on learning. I read the crosswind exam manual chapter by chapter, and read PMBOK related chapters after each chapter from crosswind exam manual. Then I tried the exercise and practice questions in the chapter end. This time PMBOK reading seems more smooth and easy to catch. One week before the exam, I quickly read through Rita's book to get different practice flavor. I think it benefits me quite a lot while I answer the situational questions of exam. I didn't have time to go through those mock up tests available online, though I hope I had to gain my confidence.

In summary:

Head First PMP, 1 time reading, highly recommend to use it as the first reading material especially if you haven't have a systematic knowledge about PM;
Crosswind exam manual, 1 time reading, recommend this manual, but not the whole package. (I didn't enjoy its Audio CD, and I didn't have time to try its exam CD). I use the first page from this manual as my memory dump base;
PMBOK, 1 time reading, MUST, recommend read it after you have good idea about PM. At the time I read it, it can easily link to my experience and knowledge for understanding;
Rita's book, 1 time very quick reading, recommend to understand PMI-ism;
Kim's book, just chapter end questions, but I wish I had time to read the whole book since I like the way it presents the knowledge in a natual process sequence instead of grouping by knowledge area from all the rest of books;
Oliver's 75 questions, I should not try it 2 days before my exam since I only scored 70% and 1 minutes per question which makes me very anxious about passing the exam.

I collected a lot of practice questions, and subscribed to quite some yahoo mailing lists. Though I didn't have time to read their contributed notes,, practice those questions, or even follow up those mailing list discussion. I did gain a lot of knowledge about other people's lesson learned at the beginning of my preparation. I do recommend you subscribe to those yahoo groups and follow the discussion if you have time:

The most important point is to understand the meaning instead of memorize it. I can't memorize ITTO for all 44 processes, but I tried to understand what's the purpose of those processes, why it use certain inputs, why it can create certain outputs, why it should use certain tools and techiniques instead of other tools, and why they follow certain orders during project life cycle. In this way, I can't write down all ITTO for the processes, but I can point out which one belongs to which process when I see ITTO. That is very important for the exam, since I did see quite some questions are asking about that in differnt way, and I was able to find out the best answer easily without memorizing all ITTO.

Also I don't practice mock up tests very much. All in all, I just finished one full 200 questions mock up test from Crosswind exam manual before and after reading its exam manual book. I did practice all those chapter questions from book lists above. I marked uncertain questions and pay much attention to understand why certain answer is correct even if I accidently pick the right answer. It is important to review each question after your practice, and really understand the reason behind the answer. Do not expect the exam question ask you exactly same sentence as PMBOK or mock up questions. There might be a lot grammatically incorrect sentences. I fully agree that PMP exam is to test your experience and knowledge instead of good memory, which proved from my exam experience. Again, the focus is to understand the concept, and know what has been used in the real life, what hasn't, and what can be learned to apply to the work to improve the real life work.

As I kept mentioning here, the understanding of knowledge and linkage with the real life experience is the most important thing. I usually follow 2 PM podcasts which helps me understand PM knowledge with real life work. I highly recommend you listen to them. It is not for exam boot camp, but it's beneficial for your professional learning:

Finally, it is a long journey! I started with engineering background. And based on Halo theory(if you've studied PMP, you knew what it means), my responsibility started to grow towards some project management and team management direction. Sometimes I felt the shortage of enough knowledge to handle certain conflicts during the work, I was thinking to take some classes in the communication area. I searched around and found "Project Leadership and Communication" class offered by UCSC-extension. I love the class, and I love the instructor Kimberly Wiefling! I felt so lucky that she's the instructor for that class. I love her presentation and exercises, especially her chicken story, which motivated to continue the whole "Certificate Program in Project and Program Management", and whenever I want to give up in the real life. Of course, when I went through the classes for that certification, I encournted a lot of great instructors. They taught me a very solid PM knowledge foundation towards my PMP journey. I would recommend the whole program to the people who'd love to learn more in PM world, or would love to acquire PMP, but not in rush. Because of the solid foundation I got from the program, I didn't spend much efforts to prepare the exam right before the exam but still passed it. Actually I learned PMI and PMP from those classes, and decided to acquire PMP as an important milestone in my career growup. It's definetely not the end of my journey. It just means that I can enter into a resting area for short break.

It is just a wonderful day to end a wonderful week:-) Now I'll take a break and focus more on my baby-to-be.

I hope this lengthy and wordy experience haven't drove you away. If you read here, good luck on your journey and wish you all the best!

Painful happiness --痛并快乐着

2009-06-16T16:01:00.001-07:00

It's been 8 weeks now. Since 4 weeks inconclusive result, I'm expecting again!

When I saw the ultrasound shows the rapid heartbeat in the screen, a strong feeling caught me immediately. My heart starts beating faster. With the bad experience of past two miscarriages from no reason, I'm so scared and concerned this time. Though my depression went away when I knew for sure that my lovely angel returns. I got a feeling that she comes back for love.

Unlike the minimal to none side effects from last two experiences, I had very strong pregnancy sickness effect this time. Nausea, vomitting, headaches, dizziness, sense of smell, motion sickness, fatigue, heartburn, ....you name it. It's so unpleasant and annoying experience, though happiness can't be replace by any of those pain. For the first time, I can strong feel that I AM PREGANT even it's not a pleasant feeling. I have the burning sensation in my stomach 24/7. And I feel in the edge of vomitting all day long. That's awful! My taste also changed so dramatically that I was joking that's a differnet wife my husband got. I dislike a lot of foods that I previously enjoyed, and start enjoying those hot salty spicy style.

When I read some articles mentioned that women who have pregnancy sickness are more likly to have a successful pregnancy than those who don't, all those pains suddently seems worth it. Some research suggests that women who do not feel nauseous during pregnancy are two or three times more likely to have a miscarriage than those who do feel. It's painful sickness, on the other end, it makes me feel better that my baby will come healthy this time. My lost angels want to come back -- no pain can compare to that joyness! Even I'm suffering with those painful sickness, I'm happy, feel the hope again, and no long depressed. No matter how miserable I'm now, remembering that gives my baby more chance to be survive makes me to forget the sick.

Oh yeah, mom-to-be, I like this name. I'm in the mood for a new baby!

继续挖树洞

2009-04-22T17:16:00.000-07:00

突然发现，若干年前，开始写这个blog，是因为知道我的好友离婚了。

我挖了这个树洞，想要往里面倒点秘密。

若干年后，我的另一个好友婚姻出了问题。

我继续往这个洞里倾诉，只是说给自己听，

只有陌生人可以偶尔到此一游。

女人可以靠自己，或是靠别人。

独立自强，意味着只能靠自己披荆斩棘一路前行？

清华多年，就两位知交，可都是婚姻触礁，

回头仔细一算，同一个宿舍，或是同一个班级的女同学，

居然有一半的概率婚姻变故，

还有一半不愿走进围城，

难道真的是女子无才便是德？

想的太多，容易心比天高？

怪不得童话故事总是在“王子与公主从此幸福的生活在一起”的时候嘎然而止。

Happily Ever After 只能是童话。

日复一日，年复一年，生活不是一个happy ending可以结束的。

太阳底下，无新鲜事。原来如此。

而今，

我只想要个孩子，

来寄存我的心。

忽而今夏

2009-04-20T16:49:00.000-07:00

开车回家的时候，听到收音机说今天是record high，有95度，就是摄氏35度的高温，一下子就像是夏天到了。可算算日子还该感觉着春天呢。

取车时，车身上落了好多白色的小花，车窗前不知名的白花盘旋着飞走，一朵朵的飞尽，就像是春天的尾巴就这么的飘走了。

想着要不要换上裙装来配合天气，又摇摇头放弃了自己的死心不改。每次在空调下冻得瑟瑟发抖，夏天穿的比冬天还多的教训总是学不乖。

想起小时候每年春天总是盼着六一节的到来，游行之后就是游园会，最重要的是终于可以开始穿裙子了，小姑娘也有爱俏的时候。

而后离乡多年，江南的春天却再也没有见过，一树树灿烂春花，合着那烟雨江南，都只有梦中相忆。

原来走到哪里都是围城，小时候盼着快快长大，而今恨不能重回儿时光阴，无忧无虑。

哪怕是主楼外，东门前一排树梢嫩嫩的黄绿色新枝，求学时每每望着，感慨不如江南春，也只是回不去的少年时代。

一次用了“忽而今夏”做昵称，旁人就说，这也是我喜欢的一本书。

却原来说的全不是一回事。

我想的是当时年少，为赋新诗强说愁时爱上的亦舒，

而旁人说的已经是下n代的别的书了。

怪不得人家说：老年人常思既往。真的是老了。

与朋友说起，岁月如梭，人到中年，怎么就这样过了半辈子。

她要割舍这个半辈子中一起扶持过了一半的情义，不知道前路如何。

而我，却在恐慌原来这辈子就是这样了啊。

我的前半生不知不觉过完了。

纵使举案齐眉，到底意难平。

仅有的几个好友婚姻纷纷触礁，这个世界到底变化太快，还是我已经落伍。

再给自己念念这首海子的诗吧，听说还选进了语文课本：

面朝大海,春暖花开海子

从明天起, 做一个幸福的人
喂马, 劈柴, 周游世界
从明天起, 关心粮食和蔬菜
我有一所房子, 面朝大海, 春暖花开
从明天起, 和每一个亲人通信
告诉他们我的幸福
那幸福的闪电告诉我的
我将告诉每一个人
给每一条河每一座山取一个温暖的名字
陌生人, 我也为你祝福
愿你有一个灿烂的前程
愿你有情人终成眷属
愿你在尘世获得幸福
我只愿面朝大海, 春暖花开

惆怅旧欢如梦

2009-04-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

刚刚出差回来，多时未联系的好友与我上网聊天。

平日温婉乐观的人，语调灰暗，让我担心。

终于给她打了电话，与好友谈完，心中郁郁寡欢。

我的好友，宜室宜家。

于她这样的可人儿，要思前想后，做出决绝的一步，经历了什么样的痛啊?

在这世界上，到底还有没有恒久的爱与约定呢？

爱情，婚姻，如果没有了内容，还留着空壳又有什么用呢？

如果丢掉这些禁锢，才能找到新的幸福，

那么，我的好友，我祝福你。

希望时间是最好的良药。伤口早晚都要愈合。

人生的旅途上，曾经以为相伴一生的人，其实只是过客，

那就把他当作是过去的风景吧。

想想其实所有的爱情，亦或婚姻，都有所图，只不过看求的是什么罢了。

求钱，求权，或是求貌，反而容易办到，

求心，求的是相知相守，看似简单，其实是最难办到的。

真是悲哀，若是只求一张饭票，就不会嫁给这个人了。

而若是只求一张饭票，那么那个婚姻就可以继续忍受下去。

可惜我们都不是这样的人。

她辗转反侧，没有做最后的决定，只是说为了女儿，再想想。

我不敢劝她什么，也不知道该说什么。

其实我的心里已经有了答案。

我的好友，与我相似，都有颗极其自尊自傲的心。

若不是心中已有了决断，是断断不会把这样的惨痛与人诉说的，哪怕是相知的好友。

能够说出来，硬生生的砍断了一个臂膀，一转身已是万水千山。

十年修得同船渡，百年修得共枕眠。

于千万人之中遇见那个人，于千万年之中，在时间的无涯的荒野里，没有早一步，也没有晚一步，刚巧赶上了，可以修得十多年的缘分，可还只是个过客。

她的欢乐如今只来自于女儿，而她的悲伤却都来自于他。

有朝一日，他不再牵动她的悲伤，那就是完全的忘却了。

有期望，才有失望，才有绝望。

而今，心弦不再为之波动，过往已然落幕。

在人生的舞台上，没有人会在原地永远的等待。

漫漫长路，两个人若不能并肩前行，便会交错而过。

清明

2009-04-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

今日清明。

清明时节雨纷纷，路上行人欲断魂。

杏花烟雨，也许只是肆意思亲的理由？

可惜阳光灿烂下，我的心病也只能是一场梦。

林花谢了春红，太匆匆，胭脂泪，相留醉，几时重。

人生长恨水长东。

我只愿梁上娇燕再投林。

青春

2009-04-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

回家的路上，听到广播里面在说，原来千禧年到现在都快10年了，

时光飞逝，原来这一生也就这样过了，

原来回头看看，已然逝去的青春竟然如此苍白，

从未燃烧过的青春，或是灰烬后的余生，

不知道到底是哪种更痛呢？

原来理想主义还是假的，

终究还是屈服于现实的温暖，

可为什么还是那么的冷呢？

醉过方知酒浓，爱过方知情重，

从未醉过，从未爱过，

原来还是会痛的。

可生活还是一样的继续。

地球还是一样的旋转。

Another year

2008-12-18T16:29:00.000-08:00

Another year will pass soon, and I'm getting older and older.

I did not water my garden very often in the past year, though I planed to do that many times. I had bad luck again: I broke my knee on June 1st( many years ago, that's the date I like a lot for childish celebration). So I was demobilized for a while, and learned how important to be a healthy person. Though I'm so lazy that I wish I could have enough sleep all day, it is hard to image that all my life was limited to my bed, nothing else. Freedom to move around seems so precious.

Sometimes I was wondering if I was cursed. It seems like I have to visit doctor so often in the past 3 years, and every year I would have something major badly happened. Or am I so fragile that anythign can break mine? I was struggling with those pains, physical or mental, all the time. I guess I understood "the importance of living" from different angles. Life is always fragile. I need to live my everyday without regret, happily ever after, or not.

The happiness is easily achieved. It is also easily lost. At the time we were worry about economic downturn, the life is stressful. So many sad stories happened around the bad time, and again, life is so fragile. Sign... We saw more violence happened and happiness was destroyed within a second. The whole world is too big to be changed easily, though I could try to protect my small world.

The happiness is there when a big hug comes. Life is easy if you could satisfy. Life is still full of hope if you try.

We all can help the China Quake!

2008-05-16T01:21:00.000-07:00

The western media didn't give much attention to 512 China quake. If you want to know more details, here are list of sources to learn more detail:

24 hour TV coverage(in Chinese narration, but picture tells a lot)
CCTV 24 hour coverage 24小时直播5·12汶川地震灾情
Sichuan Sat TV 24 hour coverage 四川卫视24小时直播5·12汶川地震灾情
Sichuan TV 24 hour coverage 四川电视台第4频道直击震中救灾现场

News Links:
Special reports in English
Special Reports in English from XinHuaNet
Rotation news in Chinese
Special Reports in Chinese

How to Help:
One of Donation channels
Another donation channel (paypal or google checkout)

(Tips: Check if your employer can provide the company match so that we can maximize the benefits to victims.)

Pray for them! Hope for the miracle!

2008-05-14T23:36:00.000-07:00

Miracle: 3-year-old girl survives for 40 hours!

It's 3 days after the devastating quake. The death toll is still rising up, and a huge number of people still . buried underneath rubble. I can't look at those hell-like pictures any more.

Pray for them. I hope that miracle can happen! I wish it's just a scary dream.

Open your eyes! I was so touched by many many stories: teachers gave up their family, their children, even their own life to save the students; nurse kept saving lives while lost contact with her son. Whole nation is united no matter political positions. Shame on those people who claimed human rights all the time, but behave so cold to the disaster. I can't say how disappointed with the cold-hearted biased media: why you can only see the downsides? because that's your heart.

Life is so fragile. What can we do to help? .......

Best wishes to those affected by China quake in Sichuan

2008-05-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

I was terrified by the news that massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Sichuan province, one of the highest population density area, on May 12, 2008. A major quake jolted Wenchuan County of Sichuan province at 2:28 pm on Monday, and most of China felt the shake, from Beijing, to Shanghai, to Guangzhou, thousands of miles away. The toll of the dead and missing soared as rescue workers dug through flattened debris in a desperate attempt to find survivors of China's worst earthquake in three decades. All my sympathy and condolence to those affected by the massive quake, and I hope more survivors can be rescued on time.

I was amazed by the fast response from Chinese government to handle this natural disaster. Premier WenJiabao rushed to the endangered area immediately to oversee rescue efforts, to rescue as much as possible at fastest speed at any cost. The officials launched a massive government relief operation following the disaster. A lot of soldiers and armed police arrived in the quake-hit areas with more on the way by planes, trains, trucks or on foot. For tremor around the country, open communication makes people stay calm. The timely delivery of domestic and international donations to disaster areas can help the quake relief.

I was much disappointed by the media bias outside China. I saw "western" news and blogs talk about the quake and death, talk about the quality of buildings, and talk about the terrors around the people. However, not much news talk about how Chinese people rescue themselves, and how Chinese soldier rescue their people. In a world, why not talk about the positive sides when a massive disaster happened? Although I was disappointed by the politics corruption in the past, the ruling party was, is and will do all it could to protect its people. Premier went to the area with hundreds of aftershocks; soldiers walked 50 miles in 20 hours on foot to reach the disconnected area under heavy rain and aftershocks; the affect counties are well ordered to save people. Comparing to the disturbance happened in New Orleans and not much immediate help from government, should people around the world start to discover the virtue of Chinese nation?

At the moment, the number of casualties is still unknown. There are still disconnected counties unreachable, and rescuers were stranded outside Wenchuan as roads were blocked by boulders and rocks following the earthquake.The old Chinese saying said: to build the road in Sichuan province is much harder than to build the road to the heaven. With the heavy storms and destroyed road, the rescue work is difficult to move into those areas. I really hope the rescue can find more survivors and less impact to those affected area. I hope more funds and supplies will be provided around the world instead of criticism gesture for politics.

As Premier Wen Jiabao said through a bullhorm to survivors still buried under debris, "We will save the people. As long as the people are there, factories can be built into even better ones, and so can the towns and counties." People is the foundation of the country. The survivors, along with the giant panda, one of the famous symptom of nation, will stay and rebuild the tomorrow.

Life played me again...

2008-03-04T10:48:00.000-08:00

Last night, I had a dream. I went to somewhere, and I saw a lovely little girl playing. She's so adorable and ran to me with great smile. I kneed down to hug her. She's so tender with lovely smell, and she stayed in my arm with beautiful smile. I kissed her pink cheek, bright eye, and soft lips. Another little girl stood one step aside, and looked at me. I opened another arm and she walked closer with shy. She's so cute that I can't stop myself to grasp her, and kiss her tender cheeks. They all laughed like wind bell whistling. I can feel how soft they are when I hold them tight. Suddenly it turns foggy everywhere. They stopped laughing, and started to fade away. I tried to grab their hands, hold nothing but air in my hand. I was scared. I ran around to find them, but just saw nothing. The fog circled me around, and I can't breath at all. I tried to breath harder and harder, and suddenly I went back the the real life. I found myself lie in the bed, my husband's hands hold me tight. Listened to his breathe, tears fell down my cheeks.

Life played my again. I had my second miscarriage. I felt to be doomed. Did I do something wrong? I'm not the one who always do good things to others, but I never really hurt somebody else in all my life. So why me? why us again? I just found out that I'm pregnant, cramp started. I feel the blood lost underneath, and I knew it can't be stopped. People said that it's better to be loved than never been loved, I disagree. If I knew that'll be the end, I would rather never start it. The pain is the worst pain when you have the joy in the beginning. You never know how strong the wine is unless you're drunk; you never know how that hurts unless you loved it before. "醉过方知酒浓，爱过方知情重", I used to love that poem for the words, now I can resonant it with my heart. I know that the time will be the best cure for all the wound, but I will always lock my two little lovely girls in my heart. I can still hear they're laughing and playing each other. But the life continues.

『豆浆食谱』+ 『豆渣食谱』

2008-01-18T23:38:00.000-08:00

『豆浆食谱』

滋补保健类:

『黄豆豆浆』

『用料』黄豆70克、水1200毫升

『制法』 1、将黄豆浸泡6—16小时，备用；
　　　 2、将泡好的黄豆装入豆浆机网罩中，往杯体内加入清水，启动豆浆机，十几分钟后做出熟豆浆。

『功效』滋阴润燥、宽中和脾、利水下气。

『五豆豆浆』

『用料』黄豆30克、黑豆10克、青豆10克、豌豆10克、花生米10克、水1200毫升

『制法』 1、将五种豆类浸泡6—16小时，备用
　　 2、将浸泡好的五豆装入豆浆机网罩中，往杯体内加入清水，启动豆浆机，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟，报警即成。

『功效』降脂降压、强筋健脾、保护心血管。

『五豆·红枣豆浆』

『用料』黄豆26克、黑豆9克、青豆9克、豌豆9克、花生米9克、红枣13克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将黄豆、黑豆、青豆豌豆、花生米一起浸泡6—16小时，备用；
　　　 2、将红枣洗净去核；
　　　 3、将红枣和浸泡好的五豆装入LB豆浆机网罩中，杯体内按规定加入清水，接通电源十几分钟五豆·红枣豆浆就做好了。

『功效』降脂降糖降压、补虚益气、健脾和胃。

『枸杞豆浆』

『用料』黄豆60克、枸杞10克、清水1200毫升

『制法』 1、将黄豆浸泡6—16小时，备用；
　　　 2、将泡好的黄豆和枸杞装入LB豆浆机网罩内，杯体内加入清水，启动豆浆机，十几分钟豆浆煮熟即成。

『功效』滩垢紊觥⒁婢髂俊⒃銮棵庖吣芰Α?

『红枣枸杞豆浆』

『用料』黄豆45克、红枣15克、枸杞10克、清水1200毫升

『制法』 1、将黄豆浸泡6—16小时；
　　　 2、将红枣洗净去核，枸杞洗净备用；
　　　 3、将泡好的黄豆、红枣和枸杞装入LB豆浆机网罩内，杯体内加入清水，启动豆浆机，十几分钟豆浆煮熟即可。

『功效』补虚益气、安神补肾、改善心肌营养、防治心血管疾病。

『红枣莲子浆』

『用料』红枣（去核）15克、莲子肉15克、黄豆50克、白糖50克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将黄豆浸泡6—16小时；
　　　 2、将莲子肉泡至发软；
　　　 3、将红枣洗净与莲子肉、黄豆一并装入LB豆浆机网罩内，杯体内加入清水，启动豆浆机，十几分钟豆浆煮熟。
　　　 4、趁热往杯体内加入白糖，搅匀即成；不愿喝甜的也可以不加糖。

『功效』滋阴益气、养血安神、补脾胃、清热解毒。

『花生豆浆』

『用料』花生30克、黄豆40克、水1200毫升

『制法』 1、将黄豆、花生浸泡6—16小时，备用；
　　　 2、将泡好的黄豆和花生装入豆浆机网罩内，将清水装入杯体，启动豆浆机，十几分钟后即成。

『功效』补血益气、滋阴润肺、适用于体虚瘦弱、大病初愈及健康人养生保健。

『黑豆芝麻浆』

『用料』黑豆50克、花生15克、黑芝麻5-10克、水适量

『制法』 1、将黄豆、花生浸泡6—16小时；
　　　 2、将泡好的黑豆、花生和黑芝麻一起装入LB豆浆机网罩内，杯体内加入清水，启动豆浆机，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟。

『功效』乌发养颜、解表清热、滋养健体。

『百合莲子浆』

『用料』百合10克、莲子肉10克、银耳10克、绿豆40克、冰糖50克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将百合用开水泡至发软，将莲子肉用开水浸泡至发软；
　　　 2、将银耳洗净，用温水浸泡至发软，摘成小朵；
　　　 3、将绿豆浸泡6-16小时；
　　　 4、将绿豆、百合、莲子、银耳一并装入LB豆浆机网罩内，杯体内加入冰糖和适量清水，启动机器，十几分钟后浆煮熟即成。

『功效』清火滋阴，养心安神、补脑抗衰。

『备注』网罩中的渣加白糖调制成豆沙，爽脆可口。

解暑降火类:　

『绿豆豆浆』

『用料』绿豆80克、白糖50克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将绿豆洗净，浸泡6—16小时。
　　　 2、将泡好的绿豆放入LB豆浆机网罩中，杯体中加入清水，启动机器，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟。
　　　 3、趁热往杯体内加入白糖，不愿喝甜的也可不加糖。

『功效』清热解暑、利水消肿、润喉止渴、明目降压。

『备注』进行温补者不宜饮用，以免失去温补功效；脾胃虚寒者不宜过多饮用,以防腹泻。网罩中的豆渣加白糖调成豆沙，十分可口。

『消暑二豆饮』

『用料』黄豆45克、绿豆30克、白糖50克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将黄豆、绿豆浸泡6—16小时。
　　　 2、将泡好的二豆装入LB豆浆机网罩中，杯体中加入清水，启动机器，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟。
　　　 3、趁热往杯体内加入白糖，调匀即成，不愿喝甜的也可不加糖。

『功效』消暑止渴、清热败火。

『二豆蜜浆』

『用料』红豆20克、绿豆80克、蜂蜜50克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将红豆、绿豆浸泡6—16小时。
　　　2、将泡好的红豆、绿豆放入LB豆浆机网罩中，杯体中加入清水，启动机器，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟，稍凉后调入蜂蜜即成。
　　　3、趁热往杯体内加入白糖，不愿喝甜的也可不加糖。

『功效』清热利水、健脾润肺、清热解毒。

『备注』网罩中的豆渣加白糖调成豆沙，十分可口。

『“三加一”健康豆浆』

『用料』青豆40克、黄豆20克、绿豆15克、清水适量、白糖适量。

『制法』 1、将三豆浸泡6—16小时。
　　　 2、将泡好的三豆放入LB豆浆机网罩中，杯体中按规定加入清水和白糖，启动机器，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟。

『功效』清热解暑。

『红枣绿豆豆浆』

『用料』红枣（去核）15克、绿豆20克、黄豆40克、白糖50克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将绿豆、黄豆浸泡6—16小时；
　　　 2、将红枣洗净与绿豆、黄豆一并放入LB豆浆机网罩中，杯体中加入清水，启动机器，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟；
　　　 3、趁热往杯体内加入白糖，搅匀即成，不愿喝甜的也可不加糖。

『功效』补气提神，消暑凉血。

『蜂蜜豆浆』

『用料』黄豆40克、绿豆35克、蜂蜜4克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将黄豆、绿豆浸泡6—16小时。
　　　 2、将泡好的黄豆、绿豆装入LB豆浆机网罩中，杯体内放足清水，启动机器，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟，稍凉后调入蜂蜜即成。

『功效』滋润五脏、美容润肠、补气益血、解暑止渴。

健脑益智类：

『益智豆浆』

『用料』黄豆55克、核桃仁10克、黑芝麻5克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将黄豆浸泡6—16小时。
　　　 2、将泡好的黄豆与核桃仁、黑芝麻一起装入LB豆浆机网罩中，杯体内加入足量清水，启动机器，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟。

『功效』益智健脑。

『核桃杏仁露』

『用料』杏仁40克、核桃40克、冰糖少许，清水适量。

『制法』 1、将杏仁、核桃装入LB豆浆机网罩中，杯体内按规定加入清。
　　　 2、启动机器，十几分钟后豆浆煮熟，加适量冰糖即可。

『功效』养颜益智。

『花生乳』

『用料』花生60克、清水适量。

『制法』 1、将花生浸泡6-12小时，备用。
　　　 2、将泡好的花生装入豆浆机网罩中，将水装入杯体，启动机器，十几分钟后花生乳即成。

『功效』补脑、健身、益智。

消暑冷饮

『香蕉奶昔』

『用料』香蕉100克；鲜奶1升（1000毫升）香草冰淇淋50克；白糖适量。

『制法』香蕉去皮洗净切块一同放入网罩（豆浆网或米糊网）内，往杯体内加入鲜奶1升（1000毫升），装好米糊机，启动“粉碎”键数次后，放入冰淇淋，即可。

『特点』香滑爽口，甜而不腻；营养丰富，富含维生素。

『备注』放入冰箱内冰冻后效果会更好。

『草莓奶昔』

『用料』草莓100克；鲜奶1升（1000毫升）香草冰淇淋50克；白糖适量。

『制法』将草莓洗净切块一同放入网罩（豆浆网或米糊网）内，往杯体内加入鲜奶1升（1000毫升），装好米糊机，启动“粉碎”键数次后，放入冰淇淋，即可。

『特点』色泽红润，口感冰爽，夏日食用，可解暑润肺。

『备注』放入冰箱内冰冻后效果会更好。

『香橙苹果什饮』

『用料』橙子50克苹果100克；鲜奶1升（1000毫升）蜂蜜若干。

『制法』将香橙，苹果洗净切块一同放入网罩（豆浆网或米糊网）内，往杯体内加入鲜奶1升（1000毫升），蜂蜜若干装好米糊机，启动“粉碎”键数次后，即可。

『特点』酸甜绵软，口感细滑。

『备注』放入冰箱内冰冻后效果会更好。

『蜜桃鲜蛋液』

『用料』牛奶1升（1000毫升）鸡蛋2只，新鲜或罐装蜜桃2个，蜜桃冰淇淋适量。

『制法』将鸡蛋打碎，新鲜洗净，或罐装蜜桃切块一同放入网罩（豆浆网或米糊网）内，往杯体内加入牛奶1升（1000毫升），装好米糊机启动“粉碎”键数次后，放入冰淇淋即可饮用。

『特点』营养丰富，最适合早餐饮用。

『备注』用同样的制法，可随便配以自己喜爱的鲜果、冰淇淋，制美味饮料。

『消暑酸奶』

『用料』绿豆50，香蕉50克；酸奶1升（1000毫升）白糖适量。

『制法』将绿豆浸泡（6-16）小时备用，将泡好的绿豆，洗净香蕉切块一同放入网罩（豆浆网或米糊网）内，往杯体内加入酸奶1升（1000毫升），装好米糊机，启动“粉碎”键数次后，放入糖即可。

『特点』营养丰富、口感好，可解渴降温，是夏日最好的饮品。

『备注』放入冰箱内冰冻后效果会更好。

『豆渣食谱』

营养食物纤维

『小豆腐』

『用料』豆渣适量、葱、姜沫、鸡蛋2个、盐、味精、油等

『制法』用油、葱花蒸锅后加入豆渣翻炒两下，打入鸡蛋，继续翻炒三五分钟，加入盐、味精等调味品即可。

『作用』含丰富的营养，常吃能健身补脑。

『豆渣丸子』

『用料』豆渣适量、瘦肉1-2两、鸡蛋2个、青菜少许、面粉适量、食盐适量

『制法』将瘦肉和表菜切碎，和豆渣、鸡蛋、面粉一块搅和，调入食盐，做成丸子，入锅煮熟即可。

『作用』营养丰富全面，适于补虚。

『豆渣蛋饼』

『用料』鸡蛋3个、豆渣100克、葱花、盐、食油适量

『制法』 1、将豆渣装入盆中，打入鸡蛋，并将盐葱花等加入其中搅拌均匀。
　　　 2、将少许食油倒入炒勺内，待油热后将准备好的豆渣鸡蛋倒入其中，摊平四五分钟后即可食用。

『特点』做出的豆渣蛋饼色黄味香，含有丰富的蛋白质。尤其适合厌食、肥胖或营养不良的儿童和老人食用。

『五豆窝头』

『用料』五豆豆渣100克、玉米面40克、水少许

『制法』将五豆豆渣放入盆中，加入玉米面，搅拌均匀，捏成窝头，入锅蒸十分钟即可。

『特点』五豆窝头有丰富的营养，具有降脂补脑降压等多种作用，中老年人经常食用对保健养生大有益处。

豆渣食谱：豆渣食谱家用全自动豆浆机打完豆浆后，留存在网罩内的豆渣，细腻糯软，浓香爽口，比起工业产豆浆后的豆渣又干净又细腻，弃之可惜，若善加利用，细心调配，亦可制成独具风味的美食。

1.营养早餐：

豆渣沥干之后，色拉油烧至5成热，先用花椒、大蒜爆锅，然后将豆渣倒进去翻炒，炒熟。放多一点葱花，再翻炒片刻，盐可以放但不要放太多。配上豆浆，泡菜，烧饼馒头，再加一个鸡蛋，就是很好的早餐。

2.什锦豆渣饼：

豆浆机产生的豆渣加适量面粉、面包糖、五香粉、胡椒粉、鸡精等配料；什锦配料可自己根据口味选配，如：香菇、青椒、辣椒、红椒、洋葱、大葱、火腿肉、精肉馅、莲藕、胡萝卜等；加入鸡蛋、香油、水适量和面成微软状；做成适当大小的薄饼入平锅或电饼铛煎制即可。

3.豆渣粥：

用料：豆渣、玉米面，一比一，加少许水调成糊状，另烧半锅开水，待开水沸腾后倒如调好的豆渣糊，煮沸片刻即得。特点：比只用玉米面作的粥香甜，更近于国内加豆面的那种玉米面烧成的粥。

4.小豆腐：

用料：豆渣适量、葱、姜沫、鸡蛋2个、盐、味精、油等做法，用油、葱花爆锅后加豆渣翻炒，打入鸡蛋，继续翻炒。作用：含丰富的营养，常吃能健身补脑。

5.豆渣蛋饼：

用料：鸡蛋3个、豆渣100克、葱花、盐、食油适量。做法： 1、将豆渣装入盆中，打入鸡蛋，并将盐、葱花等加入其中搅拌均匀。2、将少许食油加入饼铛中，然后将准备好的豆渣鸡蛋倒入电饼档中，摊平四五分钟后即可食用。特点：做出的豆渣蛋饼色黄味香，含有丰富的蛋白蛋。尤其适合厌食肥胖或营养不良的儿童和老人食用。

6.五豆窝头：

用料：豆渣100克、玉米面40克、水少许。将五豆豆渣放入盆中，加入玉米面，搅拌均匀，捏成窝头，入锅蒸十分钟即成。特点：五豆窝头有丰富的营养，具有降脂补脑降压等多种作用，经常食用对保健养生大有益处。

7.豆渣丸子：

用料：豆渣适量、瘦肉1-2两、鸡蛋2个、青菜少许、面粉适量、食盐适量。将瘦肉和表菜切碎，和豆渣、鸡蛋、面粉一块搅和，调入食盐，做成丸子，入锅煮熟即可。作用：营养丰富全面，适于补虚。

Since I bought a soy milk maker, it's a good idea to use the residual after making the soy milk.
Here are some recipes I collected online:
豆腐渣因口感差几乎被人们遗忘，但是它含有丰富的蛋白质，而脂肪含量却很低，豆腐渣富含纤维素，纤维素可吸收糖分，从而缓解身体对多余糖分的吸收。豆腐渣可解除饥饿感抑制脂肪生成，故可减肥。
此外豆腐渣中含有大量人体所需的钙质，每100克豆腐渣中钙的含量达0.1克，同牛奶一样，所以豆腐渣也是补钙强壮骨路的保健食品。
以下介绍豆腐渣的几种吃法：
(1)葱末豆腐渣
原料：豆腐渣500克，葱花200克，精盐、味精各适量，色拉油50克。
制法：豆腐渣放入盘中上锅蒸透，葱花撤在豆腐渣上备用。炒锅上火，注入色拉油烧至六成热时放少许葱花，炒出香味，倒入盘中豆腐渣及葱花，煸炒片刻放盐、味精颠炒出锅。
(2)豆腐渣炒蒜苗
原料：豆腐渣200克，青蒜100克，花椒水、盐、姜末、色拉油各适量。
制法：
①将青蒜切成碎末备用。
②炒锅上火，放入色拉油，加入姜末稍炸，将豆腐渣放入炒几下，倒入花椒水，加盐和青蒜翻炒几下即成。
(3)茄汁豆腐渣
原料：番茄酱50克，豆腐渣200克，笋50克，盐、味精、糖各适量，色拉油50克。
制法：
①将笋洗净，切为细丝，入沸水中焯一下备用。
②将炒锅上火，倒入色拉油炒番茄酱，酱出红油倒入豆腐渣，笋丝翻炒片刻加盐，味精拌炒即成。
(4)三色豆腐渣
原料：豆腐渣200克，青辣椒50克，胡萝卜50克，葱末、精盐、味精、色拉油各适量。
制法：
①将青椒、胡萝卜分别洗净均切小方丁，入开水中焯一下备用。
②炒锅上火，放入色拉油，油热放葱、豆腐渣、盐煸炒片刻，然后入青辣椒丁、胡萝卜丁、味精速炒即可出锅。
(5)锅榻豆腐渣
原料：豆腐渣150克，鸡蛋2个，葱10克，胡萝卜10克，精盐、味精各适量，色拉油50克。
制法：
①将豆腐渣入蒸锅蒸10分钟，取出备用。
②鸡蛋打入碗中，搅打成泡，葱切细末，胡萝卜搅汁，同入碗中加豆腐渣再次搅拌备用。
③炒锅上火，注入色拉油，油热将碗中之物倒入，炸至金黄色将味精、盐和水倒入锅中，盖上盖子焖上几分钟，汁尽出锅即成。
（6）香炸豆腐渣
原料：豆腐渣，淀粉，精面粉，白糖，牛奶，芝麻，植物油
做法:各种原料拌匀，揉成团，做成饼状，平锅里放植物油烧热，放入做好的豆腐渣饼炸制，待两面呈棕红色时捞出即可。
其他方法
油热爆葱，放入肉末，加一点点酱油，放入豆入渣炒熟就好了，也可以不放肉炒素的。
牛肉馅,罗卜丝(热水烫过)豆腐渣,葱,姜切碎,调料粉,盐,鸡精调和好,加少许面粉炸丸子,决对美味
近年来，国外的科学家研究发现，豆腐渣中含有较多的抗癌物质“异黄酮”。经常吃点豆腐渣，可以大大降低乳腺癌、前列腺癌、胰腺癌及大肠癌的发病危险。
　　研究结果同时表明，豆腐渣还含有大量的钙，每100克豆腐渣中含有100毫克钙，几平与牛奶的含钙量相等。值得一提的是，豆腐渣中的钙具有极易被人吸收利用的特点，是人们补钙最价廉、易得的佳品。此外，豆腐渣中的纤维素能吸附食物中的糖分，减少小肠壁对葡萄糖的吸收，减轻胰脏的负担。因此，常吃豆腐渣能预防和辅助治疗糖尿病。
豆渣中有蛋白质、糖类，但主要是膳食纤维。膳食纤维可以防治便秘、降血脂、血糖，对肥胖症、高血压、高脂血症、经常性便秘等疾病都有预防和治疗作用。但豆渣的口感不好，一般在磨制豆浆时，第一二次取豆浆，剩下的磨细直接做成豆花或者煮豆浆稀饭或者豆腐，口感就好多了。

高血压，医生向我推荐一种饮食疗法：喝豆浆，以黄豆为主，加少量的黑豆、豌豆、花生和核桃仁。

1)豆渣粥
用料：豆渣与西人店都可以买到的玉米面，一比一左右。
加少许水调成糊状，另烧半锅开水，待开水沸腾后倒如调好的豆渣糊，煮沸片刻即得。
特点，比只用玉米面作的粥香甜，更近于国内加豆面的那种玉米面烧成的粥。
2)小豆腐
用料：豆渣适量、葱、姜沫、鸡蛋2个、盐、味精、油等
做法：把油、葱花、姜末放入豆渣中，在锅内翻炒两下，打入鸡蛋，继续翻炒3～5分钟，加入盐、味精等调味品即可。
作用：含丰富的营养，常吃能健身补脑。
3)豆渣蛋饼
用料：鸡蛋3个、豆渣100克、葱花、盐、食油适量
做法：1、将豆渣装入盆中，打入鸡蛋，并将盐葱花等加入其中搅拌均匀。
2、将少许食油加入饼铛中，然后将准备好的豆渣鸡蛋倒入电饼档中，摊平四五分钟后即可食用。
特点：做出的豆渣蛋饼色黄味香，含有丰富的蛋白蛋。尤其适合厌食肥胖或营养不良的儿童和老人食用。
4)五豆窝头
用料：一豆豆渣100克、玉米面40克、水少许
做法：将五豆豆渣放入盆中，加入玉米面，搅拌均匀，捏成窝头，入锅蒸十分钟即成。
特点：五豆窝头有丰富的营养，具有降脂补脑降压等多种作用，经常食用对保健养生大有益处。
5)豆渣发糕
将豆渣倒入一只碗中，加入适量面粉和少许发面粉，静止几分钟后，放进平盘，放入蒸锅蒸熟，一盘又松又软的豆渣发糕就做好了。揭锅后，将平盘中的豆渣发糕切成适当的方块或长条就可食用了。这种豆渣发糕不仅营养丰富，而且其中的粗纤维对人体的消化系统、防治糖尿病等大有好处。
6)炒豆渣。用葱花、调料炒，是一道味道颇佳的主食兼副食
7)鸡蛋豆渣饼。用豆渣和鸡蛋烙制薄饼，作为早餐面食营养不错
8)豆渣糕:豆渣加水、加面种（没有的话用酵母、泡打粉也行），发一个晚上，第二天做时加牛奶、鸡蛋、糖，微波炉里转上几分钟，就成豆渣糕了，发得好大，象发糕一样。
9)用豆渣炸丸子。
原料：新鲜豆渣、面粉、胡萝卜丝、香菜末、花椒粉、盐。
制法：将以上原料搅拌均匀（不要加水）制成丸子，炸时火不要太旺，炸好后，外焦里嫩，口感很好且极富营养。
10)豆渣也有个简单的吃法，放上油，葱花，姜末，把豆渣炒一下，放清水适量开后放上青菜（也可以先把青菜用水绰一下），打上一个鸡蛋，盛盘滴上香油，味道也是不错的。
11、什锦豆渣煎饼http://www.ecpay.cn/mumu/douzha.htm 图片介绍制作过程。
12、营养早餐：豆渣沥干之后，色拉油烧至5成热，先用花椒、大蒜爆锅，然后将豆渣倒进去翻炒，炒熟。放多一点葱花，再翻炒片刻，盐可以放但不要放太多。配上豆浆，泡菜，烧饼馒头，再加一个鸡蛋，就是很好的早餐。
13、豆渣丸子：豆渣适量、瘦肉1-2两、鸡蛋2个、青菜少许、面粉适量、食盐适量。将瘦肉和表菜切碎，和豆渣、鸡蛋、面粉一块搅和，调入食盐，做成丸子，入锅煮熟即可。作用：营养丰富全面，适于补虚。
14.豆渣饼的制作面饼基本配方：
精白粉150g、马铃薯粉46g、砂糖21g、食盐1.2g、花生油18g、鸡蛋6g。以一定比例的豆渣取代部分面粉，经和面、成型、烘烤(或油炸)制成一系列食品。
15.白豆沙馅的制作
新鲜豆渣加适量水，用高速组织捣碎机搅拌破碎，用纱布滤至半干。蒸煮约18min，加入豆渣量70％的白砂糖，煮至稠糊状、用烘箱烘至表面无水，即得成品。
用上述方法制得的白豆沙馅风味较好，口感比纯豆沙粗糙，粘稠性也较低，但完全可以取代豆沙制作各种包点。
16 豆渣牛肉丸的制作
原料配方(％)：豆渣糊34.0、碎牛肉7.8、人造奶油0.8、鲜奶油7.6、面粉7.6、洋葱15.1、调味料0.8、食盐0.45、面粉 18.25、水7.6。用豆渣代替原牛肉丸子配料中的马铃薯泥，成品口感滑润，无豆渣味。豆渣牛肉丸子中，蛋白质、膳食纤维含量高，是一种很理想的食品。
17.白菜炖豆渣: 油烧热,把豆渣和白菜丝放入炒一炒,豆渣炒出香味儿,然后放水煮直到豆渣熟了.不要炖得太干.当然要适当放盐,酱油,也可以放一小瓣大料(八角),花椒什么的.很好吃的啊.

现代的营养学研究证明，豆腐渣具有很高的营养价值。中医认为豆腐渣味甘性凉，具有清热解毒，消肿止血的作用。常适量的进点豆腐渣大有好处，可防治动脉硬化，高血压，糖尿病，便秘等，对老年人延年益寿也很有作用：

1.防治便秘：
豆腐渣中含有大量的食物纤维，是膳食纤维中最好的纤维素，被称为大豆纤维。常驻机构吃豆腐渣能增加大便体积，使粪便松软，并可促进肠蠕动，有利于排便。可防治便秘，肛裂，痔疮和肠癌。

2. 防治心脑血管疾病：
豆腐渣中的食物纤维能吸附贮留于十二指肠内胆汁中的内源性胆固醇，阻止了胆固醇的吸收，从而有效地降低血浆和肝脏的胆固醇水平，对预防血粘稠度增高、高血压，动脉粥样硬化，冠心病，中风等病的发生都非常有利。此外豆腐渣中的钙还能抵御血压的升高，心脑血管疾病的患者常吃豆腐渣，在助于疾病的康复。可减少中风、心肌梗塞发生的危险。

3. 降低血糖：
豆腐中的纤维素还可以吸附食物中的糖份，减少肠壁对葡萄糖的吸收，经常吃豆腐渣，能预防糖尿病。此外豆渣还含有粗蛋白质，不保和脂肪酸，这些物质有利于延缓肠诞辰对糖的吸收，降低餐后血糖上长的速度；纤维素还能使胰高血糖素的分泌的兴奋性降低，并影响氨基酸的代谢，从南昌可防止进食后血糖的迅速升高，对控制糖尿病的患者的血糖十分有利。

4. 减肥瘦身：
豆腐渣具有高膳食纤维、高粗蛋白，低脂肪、低热量的特点，肥胖者吃后不仅有饱腹感，而且热量比其它食物低，在减肥期间食用可解除饥饿感，抑制脂肪生成，又能为身体提供必要的营养成份，使健康瘦身效果更显着。

5. 防癌抗癌：
美、德、日及荷兰等国科学家先后发现，豆腐渣中含有较多的抗癌物质皂角苷，经常吃点豆腐渣，可大降低乳腺癌，前列腺癌，胰腺癌，及大肠癌的发病危险。

6. 预防骨质疏松：
豆腐渣中含有大量的人体所需要的钙质，每100克豆腐渣中钙的含量达0.1，同牛奶一样，所有的豆腐渣也是补钙强壮骨骼的保健食品，豆腐渣中地保健钙质，极易在消化道吸收，它对人体传导神经的功能信号，维持组织器官和运动系统的生理机能都十分必要，同时可补充骨骼和牙齿的钙质，能防治中老年人的骨质疏松症。

7. 美白养颜（MM们注意了哦…… ）
豆渣中含有丰富的营养成分，以纤维素和蛋白质为主，可以吸附皮肤表层的平时不容易清洗的垃圾，所以有美白养颜的功效！具体方法：用温热的豆渣拌入少许蜂蜜，洁面，然后取一些拌好的豆渣在脸上轻轻的搓揉（手法同按摩霜或去角质霜），再将剩下的豆渣敷在脸上（薄厚自便），用棉质面膜或毛巾沾水拧干盖在上面保持水分，十五到二十分钟后揭掉面膜用清水洗净，再用冷水洗脸，这时，你就会觉得脸上有紧绷的感觉，而且肤色明显变白了许多，脸上的雀斑也淡了，最后，再搽上晚霜或保湿产品就OK了！（变得更漂亮了记得帖照片出来哦……）

The No Asshole Rule --the inevitable experience in the life (Continued)

2008-01-18T15:52:00.000-08:00

When we always talk about a* around, can that be ourselves -- an inner bad one -- behave badly? How can we stop our "Inner Jerk" from getting out? We need to understand that acting like an a* is a communicable disease. According to "emotional contagion" researchers, "in conversation, people tend automatically and continuously to mimic and synchronize their movements with facial expressions, voices, postures, movements, and instrumental behaviors of others." So being around people who are a* makes us feel a* and behave a* too. When we get a job offer, we should take a close look at the people we would work with, not just at whether they are successful or not. If the future colleagues are self-centered, nasty, unethical, narrow-minded, overworked and physically ill, there is little chance that we will turn them into better human beings or transform it into a healthy workplace, instead, odds are that we will catch their disease, even we think ourselves as moral and strong-willed persons. Unfortunately, "a* poisoning" is a contagious disease that anyone can catch. Then how can we avoid it? Dr. sutton gives the following suggestions:

Don't join the Jerks, and get it right at the beginning. As Leonardo da vinci saide, "It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end." The more time and effort that people put into anything, the harder it is for them to walk away. The "too-much-invested-to-quit" syndrome is sound social psychology.
Walk out, or stay away as much and fast as you can. If you can't or won't quit the job, do everything you can to limit the contact with the worst people.
Warning: seeing coworkers as rivals and enemies is a dangerous game. When status differences between people at the top, middle and bottom of the pecking order are emphasized and magnified, it brings out the worst in everyone. Trivial differences in language had profound effects on how willing people were to e selfish and dishonest backstabber, such as people are primed with words like enemy, battle, inconsiderate, vicious, lawyer, and capitalist are far less likely to cooperate than when first exposed to words like helped, fair, warm, mutual, and share. Try to use ideas and language that frame life in ways that will make us focus on cooperation. First, although many situations do require a mix of competition and cooperation, try focusing on the win-win aspects. Most inspiring managers has a few things in common, including they thought and said we rather than I. Second, adopt a frame that turns our attention to ways in ways we are no better or worse than other people instead of we are superior, which provoking arrogance and negative opinions of others, or inferior, which provoking envy and hostility. We are all the same in most ways. Reminding us of our common humanity helps us see and treat other people in ways we would like to be treated. Finally, Tell ourselves that I have enough. Although common attitude "whoever dies with the most toys wins." helps the constant improvement, taken too far with constant dissatisfaction, unquenchable desires, and overbearing comparativeness can damage the mental health, and trapped us in a lifelong contest where we want "more more more for me me me" and never get enough. Feel satisfied and be at peace with ourselves help us treat others with affection and respect.
See yourself as others do. Since nearly all human beings travel through life with distorted and often inflated beliefs about how they treat, affect, and are seen by others, we should try contrasting what we believe about ourselves with how others see us. Only after we discloses that we worked hard to change our negative behavior, we will be able to get open comments from the others and change ourselves. Testing how other people see us and making adjustments as a result constantly avoid us to be a jerk.
Face your past. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Facing the facts about the past, even the dark past, can be a powerful way to assess the risk of acting like an a* in the future, and start changing our "a* proneness". Facing the fact that the borne personality, the culture and environment around us have measurable and strong effects to our behavior and starting to change.

To keep our inner a* from getting out, "admitting you're an a* is the first step." We need to be aware of places and people that will turn us into an a*; we need to be aware of how seeing life as a bitter winner-takes-all contest can turn us into an instant jerk, and of how others see us even if it doesn't reflect our true intentions. Try to treat the person right in front of us, right now, in the right way.

In real world, we may trapped in places surrounded or inevitable encountered with mean-spirited colleagues without the luxury of escape immediately. What can we do to survive nasty people and workplaces? Dr. Sutton gives a great analytical guidance from rafting experience: if you fall out of the boat in rapids, don't try to fight it; just rely on your life vest and float with your feet out in front of you. That way, if you are thrown up against rocks, you can use your feet to push off, and you will protect your head and conserve your energy. Similarly, while we are dealing with the nasty workplace, we can use the following strategy to keep our mental and physical health intact:

Reframing: change how you see things, include avoiding self-blame, hoping for the best but expecting the worst, developing indifference and emotional detachment. It was backed up by psychological theory: if you can't escape a source of stress, changing your mind-set about what is happening to you, or reframing, can help reduce the damage done to you. When people view difficulties as temporary and not their fault, and as something that will not pervade and ruin the rest of their lives, this frame protects their mental and physical health and enhances their resilience. There are no needs to be a victim and think irrationally like "I will never get over this," "I must have done something wrong for this to happen to me," and "everyone hates me."
Hope for the best; expect the worst. It is supported by another psychological theory that happiness reflects the difference between what you expect versus what you actually get in life. Keep the expectation that the jerks will change their behavior low, but continue to believe that we will be fine after the ordeal is over, then we will not be surprised or upset by the nasty behaviors, and even enjoy the pleasant surprise if they do behave nice. Thus having low expectations for an a* boss, focusing on the good things, and being optimistic about how it will all end can help us endure a horrible situation.
Develop indifference and emotional detachment. Passion, commitment, and identification with an organization is absolutely correct if we are in a good job and are treated with dignity and respect. However, when organization life takes the ugly turn, learn to feel and practice indifference and emotional detachment, caring as little as possible about the jerks around us help us survive.
Look for small wins: Finding hundreds of tiny actions we could take each day to take a modicum of control over our lives-- the feeling that one is in control--can reduce feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Aiming for small wins is often more effective than aiming for big wins, since the advantage of taking small actions is that they bring about noticeable and typically successful changes. Besides, most big problems can be solved only one small step at a time, progress can be made if all people are taking all small positive steps in the right direction. Another advantage is the opponent may ignore the small wins, while over time, a series of small wins may add up to a big win against the opponent. To survive a nasty workplace that we can't escape completely, start looking for small ways to seize bits of control; try to find little steps we can take to reduce our exposure to their venom; build pockets of safety and support, as the act of helping theirs alone is good for our mental health.
Limit your exposure to face the jerks: to suffer less direct damage, and to gain even tiny bits of control. Meet them as rarely as possible, schedule meetings that will be short such as using no chairs, use information technologies such as email or tele-conference to buffer us from a* are some tactics to limit the exposure. When those tactics in use, pay special attention that conflict, such as disagreements characterized by anger and hostility is more likely and trust is lower when groups do work that is mediated by information technologies than in face-to-face meetings.
Build pockets of safety, support and sanity: by finding escape locations or rooms, joining or forming a secret social network of victims, finding tiny moments with supportive colleagues or customers. Be careful when we use this double-edged sword that gossip sessions sometimes do more harm than good if it focus on creating arenas that produce and spread feelings of despair instead of on ways to reframe events that reduce stress and on means for gaining small wins.
Fight and win the right small battles: constantly looking out for small but sweet victories that we CAN win, such as gently teach the angry people to calm down rather than escalate their anger, don't play their game, etc. De-escalation, gentle reeducation relentlessly responding to irate people with calmness and respect are relatively low risk strategies; confronting an a* head-on, exacting revenge, putting the a* in his or her place, and outing and humiliating the jerk are riskier strategies especially aggression often provokes more aggression. Call their bluff if even riskier, but may be effective if it works because bullies usually pick on those who will not stand up for themselves. Watching what happens when others get the courage to stand up before we use this strategy reduces the risk.

Using those tactics does not mean that we will bear with nasty workplace forever. Think twice if we really are trapped in and if we can make any changes.

To show it's a book for the real world, Dr. Sutton even brings a chapter talking about if a* is a necessary evil. Given some industry examples to show it's naive to assume that a* always do more harm than good, interesting enough, there are some virtues arise from nastiness:

Gaining personal power and stature: in a "kiss-up, slap-down world", although angry people are seen as unlikable and cold, strategic use of anger includes outbursts, snarling expressions, staring straight ahead, and strong hand gestures like pointing and jabbing created the impression that the expresser is competent. Ironically, subtle nasty moves like glaring and condescending comments, explicit moves like insults or put-downs, and even physical intimidation can be effective paths to power, and making themselves seem smarter than others.
Intimidating and vanquishing rivals: threats and intimidation can be used for gaining and sustaining a position at the top of the heap.
Motivating fear-driven performance and perfectionism: although reward is more effective motivator than punishment, people will work to avoid punishment. Effective a* are rarely nasty all the time; their followers are driven by both the sticks of punishment and humiliation and the carrots of hard-won warmth and recognition. "Contrast effect" taking the contrast between being good and bad makes the threating and warmth more magnified.
Bringing unfair, clueless, and lazy people to their sense by being strategically nasty and scramble so that indifferent and clueless people start to pay attention. Know when to use this strategy and when to stop is crucial.

Dr. Sutton even brings following key lessons how to be an effective a*. Use it at your own risk.

Expressing anger, even nastiness, can be an effective method for grabbing and keeping power. Climb to the top of the heap by elbowing your colleagues out of the way through expressing anger rather than sadness or perfecting a general's face like George Patton.
Nastiness and intimidation are especially effective for vanquishing competitors. Follow in the footsteps of baseball legend Ty Cobb, and succeed by snarling at, bullying, putting down, threatening, and psyching out your opponents.
If you demean your people to motivate them, alternate it with, at least occasional, encouragement and praise. Alternate the carrot and the stick; the contrast between the two makes your wrath seem harsher and your occasional kindnesses seem even sweeter.
Create a toxic tandem. If you are nasty, team up with someone who can calm people down, clean up your mess, and extract favors and extra work from people because they are so grateful to the good cop. If you are "too nice", you might "rent a jerk", perhaps a consultant, a manager from a temporary staffing firm, or a lawyer.
Being all a*, all the time, won't work. Effective a* have the ability to release their venom at just the right moment and turn it off when just enough destruction or humiliation has been inflicted on their victim.

Even with those "effective way to be an a*", there are many other nice, kind, warm-hearted people can reach to the same success without being nasty. I love the statement from the author:"I wrote it because my life and lives of the people I care about are too short and too precious to spend our days surrounded by jerks." Neither do we.

If you are reading this line, congratulations that you've start the process of self-improvement. I encourage you take a look at Robert Sutton's blog: Work matters, and take a moment to test yourself using ARSE(Asshole Rating Self Exam) to see "Am I a certified a*?" or "When and where do I behave like an a*?".

Quiz by Robert Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule:
Instructions: Indicate whether each statement is a true (T) or false (F) description of your typical feelings and interactions with the people at your workplace.

What Are Your Gut Reactions to People?

___ 1. You feel surrounded by incompetent idiots – and you can’t help letting them know the truth every now and then.
___ 2. You were a nice person until you started working with the current bunch of creeps.
___3. You don’t trust the people around you, and they don’t trust you.
___4. You see your co-workers as competitors.
___5. You believe that one of the best ways to "climb the ladder" is to push other people down or out of the way.
___6. You secretly enjoy watching other people suffer and squirm.
___7. You are often jealous of your colleagues and find it difficult to be genuinely pleased for them when they do well.
___8. You have a small list of close friends and a long list of enemies, and you are equally proud of both lists.

How Do You Treat Other People?

___9. You sometimes just can’t contain your contempt toward the losers and jerks at your workplace.
___10. You find it useful to glare at, insult, and even occasionally holler at some of the idiots at you workplace – otherwise, they never seem to shape up.
___11. You take credit for the accomplishments of your team – why not? They would be nowhere without you.
___12. You enjoy lobbing "innocent" comments into meetings that serve no purpose other than to humiliate or cause discomfort to the person on the receiving end.
___13. You are quick to point out others’ mistakes.
___14. You don’t make mistakes. When something goes wrong, you always find some idiot to blame.
___15. You constantly interrupt people because, after all, what you have to say is more important.
___16. You are constantly buttering up your boss and other powerful people, and you expect the same treatment from your underlings.
___17. Your jokes and teasing can get a bit nasty at times, but you have to admit that they are pretty funny.
___18. You love your immediate team and they love you, but you are all at constant warfare with the rest of the organization. You treat everyone else like crap because, after all, if you’re not on my team, you either don’t matter or are the enemy.

How Do People React to You?

___19. You notice that people seem to avoid eye contact when they talk to you – and they often become very nervous.
___20. You have the feeling that people are always very careful at what they say around you.
___21. People keep responding to your e-mail with hostile reactions, which often escalate into "flame wars" with these jerks.
___22. People seem hesitant to divulge personal information to you.
___23. People seem to stop having fun when you show up.
___24. People always seem to react to your arrival by announcing that they have to leave.

Scoring the test: add up the number of statements that you marked as true. This isn’t a scientifically validated test, but in my opinion:

0-5 true: You don’t sound like a certified asshole, unless you are fooling yourself.

5-15 true: You sound like a borderline certified asshole; perhaps the time has come to start changing your behavior before it gets worse.

15 or more true: You sound like a full-blown certified asshole to me; get help immediately. But please, don’t come to me for help, as I would rather not meet you.

At the moment I writing it, I was rated as 6 true, and most of points come from my gut reaction to people. I guess that my gut feeling is not that elegant, and I am trying to pretend, or just practice myself to be nice? Anyway, that is a good warning signal.

The No Asshole Rule --the inevitable experience in the life

2008-01-11T15:52:00.000-08:00

I first learned this book:"The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't" by Robert Sutton from a lecture. In the beginning, I have to admit that I didn't pay enough attention to this book because of the weird title. I thought that it was just an exaggerate people try to do some commercial tricks, especially the person who talked about this book is quite in exaggerate style. So this gem was throw in the dark of my mind for a while until I accidentally came across it from an old volume of Harvard Business Review. If HBR is fine to publish a mild obscenity name in their respectable pages, there must be some value inside . So I thought that I will give it a try, and picked it up from the local library.

I am glad I did it. In a non-sanitized real world, it is inevitable to meet someone who is an a*, or jerk, or whatever you called it. You have to either work with, serve or struggle to lead a*, and find yourself either vulnerable to deal with the situation, or arrogant with the helplessness feeling inside. A lot of valuable books talk more about an reasonable human being, while this special book provide some ideas to deal with nasty people or limit the damage from that. It was great read.

As not being the saint, we can be a temporary a* just because of having a bad day. If that's persistent pattern, "to have a history of episodes that end with one target after another feeling belittled, put down, humiliated, disrespected, oppressed, deenergized, and generally worse about themselves", it might be branded as a certified a*. Dr. Sutton presents a simple test to spot whether a person is acting like an a*:

Test One: After talking to the alleged a*, does the "target" feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself? In another words, identify people who persistently leave others feeling demeaned and de-energized.
Test Two: Does the alleged a* aim his or he venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful? Look to see if their victims usually have less power and social standing than their tormentors.

Dr. Sutton consolidates the dirty dozen list that a* uses everyday:

Personal insults
Invading one's "personal territory"
Uninvited physical contact
Threats and intimidation, both verbal and nonverbal
"Sarcastic jokes" and "teasing" used as insult delivery systems
Withering email flames
Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims
Public shaming or "status degradation" rituals
Rude interruptions
Two-faced attacks
Dirty looks
Treating people as if they are invisible.

According to the book, bullying, psychological abuse, mobbing, tyrants, and incivility in the workplace goes on and on, and much of this nastiness is directed by superiors to their subordinates(estimate run from 50% to 80%), with somewhat less between coworkers of roughly the same rank(estimates run from 20% to 50%), and upward nastiness where underlings take on their superiors(estimates less than 1% of cases).

How to develop "a shock-proof, bullet-resistant a* detector" to build a civilized place to work? Dr. Sutton tells a fundamental lesson: "the difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know." Indeed it is a good rule to test people. I had met a colleague she's very mean to our contractors and very polite to our boss, and I conclude that behavior arises from her lack of technical expertise to do her job. Although she did survive, uh, maybe much better than just survive in the office, the scene she shout at the poor contractor flashed in front of my eyes whenever she talks to me.

According to the book, "negative interactions had a fivefold stronger effect on mood than positive interactions". It takes numerous encounters with positive people to offset the energy and happiness sapped by a single episode with one a*." The negative effect does not only interfere with the firsthand victims, it also affects the secondhand witnesses or bystanders strongly. Furthermore, even a* themselves also suffer from their own behavior being "outed". If all employees are devoting their time and energy to protect themselves, then nobody will help the company with high performance. Turnover rate will be high.

An research conducted at couple nursing unit shows that "units with the best leaders reported making as many as ten times more errors than the units with the worst leaders." Why? Because when people feel safe, they are willing to admit the mistake and notice how serious the mistake could be. Instead of finger pointing, or just focusing on self protection, people are more focus on the organization improvement under the good leaders. As Dr. Sutton admitted in the book:" When I am stuck working for, or with, a bunch of a*, I don't go out of my way to help. But when I admire my superiors and colleagues, I'll go to extreme lengths."

Then, what is the Total Cost of A*(TCA) to our organization? Dr. Sutton again brought in an interesting exercise consider certain factors when we calculating TCA follows:

Damage to Victims and Witnesses

Distraction from tasks: more effort devoted to avoiding nasty encounters, coping with them, and avoiding blame; less devoted to the task itself
Reduced psychological safety and associated climate of fear undermines employee suggestions, risk taking, learning from own failures, learning from others' failures, and forthright discussion--honesty may not be the best policy
Loss of motivation and energy at work
Stress-induced psychological and physical illness
Possible impaired mental ability
prolonged bullying turns victims into a*
Absenteeism
Turnover in response to abusive supervision and peers -- plus more time spend while at work looking for new work

Woes of Certified A*

Victims and witnesses hesitate to help, cooperate with them, or give them bad news
Retaliation from victims and witnesses
Failure to reach potential in the organization
Humiliation when "outed"
Job loss
Long-term career damage

Wicked Consequences for Management

Time spend appeasing, calming, counseling, or discipling a*
Time spend "cooling out" employees who are victimized
Time spend "cooling out" victimized customers, contract employees, suppliers, and other key outsiders
Time spend reorganizing departments and teams so that a* do less damage
Time spend interviewing, recruiting, and training replacements for departed a* and their victims
Management burnout, leading to decreased commitment and increased distress

Legal and HR Management Costs

Anger management and other training to reform a*
Legal costs for inside and outside counsel
settlement fees and successful litigation by victims
Settlement fees and successful litigation by alleged a*(especially wrongful-termination claims)
Compensation for internal and external consultants, executive coaches, and therapists
Health-insurance costs

When A* Reign: Negative Effects on Organizations

Impaired improvement in established systems
Reduced innovation and creativity
Reduced cooperation ad cohesion
Reduced discretionary effort
Dysfunctional internal cooperation
Costs of victims' retribution toward the organization
Impaired cooperation from outside organizations and people
Higher rates charged by outsiders -- combat pay for working with a*
Impaired ability to attract the best and brightest

To sum the above factors up, we can be shocked to see that A* are creating more troubles than they're worth. Then why there are still so many a* around the workplace? Because when people believe " winning isn't everything; it's the only thing" and "Second place means being the first loser.", a* are seen as character flaws but tolerated when people are more talented, smarter, more difficult to replace, and endowed with a higher natural success rate than ordinary mortals. A bad society rule seems to be: " If you are a really big winner, you can get away with bring a really big a*."

Fortunately, today a lot of organizations start to change: to enforce the no a* rule and build it into the culture. Of course, writing, displaying and repeating words about treating people with respect, but allowing or encouraging the opposite behavior, is worse than useless. On the other side, the only thing worse than too much confrontation is no confrontation at all. According to Karl Weick from University of Michigan: " Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong."

According to the book, there are top ten steps to enforce the No A* rule:

Say the rule, write it down, and act on it: But if you can't or won't follow the rule, it is better to say nothing at all since avoiding a false claim is the lesser of two evils. You don't want to be known as a hypocrite and the leader of an organization that is filled with a*.
A* will hire other a*: Keep your resident jerks out of the hiring process, or if you can't, involve as many civilized people in interviews and decisions to offset this predilection of people to hire "jerks like me".
Get rid of a* fast: Organizations usually wait too long to get rid of certified and incorrigible a*, and once they do, the reaction is usually "why did we wait so long to do that?"
Treat certified a* as incompetent employees: Even if people do other things extraordinary well but persistently demean others, they ought to be treated as incompetent.
Power breeds nastiness: beware that giving people--even seemingly nice and sensitive people--even a little power can turn them into big jerks.
Embrace the power performance paradox: accept that your organization does have and should have a pecking order, but do everything you can to downplay and reduce unnecessary status differences among members. The result will be fewer a* and, according to the best studies, better performance, too.
Manage moments, not just practices, policies, and systems: effective a* management means focusing on and changing the little things that you and your people do, and big changes will follow. Reflect on what you do, watch how others respond to you and to one another, and work on tweaking what happens as you are interacting with the person in front of you right now.
Model and teach constructive confrontation: develop a culture where people know when to argue and when to stop fighting and instead gather more evidence, listen to other people, or stop whining and implement a decision, even if they still disagree with it. When the time is ripe to battle over ideas, follow Karl Weick's advice: fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.
Adopt the one a* rule: because people follow rules and norms better when there are rare or occasional examples or bad behavior, no a* rules might be most closely followed in organizations that permit one or two token jerks to hang around. These reverse role models remind everyone else of the wrong behavior as long as it is clearly identified as wrong.
The bottom line: link big policies to small decencies: effective a* management happens when there is a virtuous, self-reinforcing cycle between the big things that organizations do and the little things that happen when people talk to one another and work together. Having all the right business philosophies and management practices to support the no a* rule is meaningless unless you treat the person right in front of you, right now, in the right way.

The rule test is essentially right when things are going badly since it is easy to be civilized when things are going well.

(to be continued...)

Getting to Yes -- The final stop in the journey (Continued)

2008-01-03T17:29:00.000-08:00

After Roger Fisher and William Ury explain four detailed propositions in their book "Getting to Yes":
Separate the people from the problem
Focus on interests, Not positions
Invent Options for Mutual Gain
Insist on using objective criteria

In the third part of the book, authors dig deeper to certain complexity in real world:
What if they are More powerful? Develop BATNA -- Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.

Protect ourselves against making an agreement we should reject. Do not fall into the persuasive song like "Let's all agree and put an end to this."
1. The cost of using a bottom line: Having a bottom line makes it easier to resist pressure and temptations of the moment. At the same time, a bottom line is a position that is not to be changed and too rigid, which may keep us from inventing and from agreeing to a solution it would be wise to accept.
2. Know our BATNA: since the reason we want negotiate is to produce something better than the results we can obtain without negotiating, BATNA is the standard against any proposed agreement should be measured, and still be flexible enough.
3. The insecurity of an unknown BATNA: One frequent mistake is psychologically to set our alternatives in the aggregate while the reality is we can only choose one if we failed to reach the agreement. Another mistake is that we are too committed to reaching agreement and be pessimistic about the result.
4. Formulate a trip wire: identify one solution far from perfect agreement and better than BATNA, test this trip-wire package before accepting any agreement worse than the trip wire.
Make the most of the assets we do have so that any agreement we reach will satisfy our interests as well as possible.
1. The better BATNA, the greater our power: since the relative negotiating power of two parties depends primarily upon how attractive to each is the option of not reaching agreement.
2. Develop BATNA: by inventing a list of actions we might conceivably take if no agreement is reached, then improving some of the most promising ideas and converting them into practical alternatives, and selecting tentatively the one alternative that seems best. The desirability of disclosing our BATNA to the other side depends upon the assessment of the other side's thinking.
3. Consider the other side's BATNA: by knowing the other's alternatives, we can realistically estimate what we can expect from the negotiation.

What if they Won't play? Use principled negotiation, Negotiation Jujitsu, and one-text mediation procedure step by step.

If the other side insists on position, not merits, there are three approaches to focus their attention on the merits.
1. Focus on what we can do, change the game, concentrate on the merits rather than on positions. That is principled negotiation authors talk in whole book.
2. Focus on what they may do, and counter the basic moves of positional bargaining in ways that direct their attention to the merits. This strategy called negotiation jujitsu.
3. Focus on what a third party can do: consider including a third party trained to focus the discussion on interests, options, and criteria. One tool third party may use called one-text mediation procedure.
Negotiation Jujitsu: Don't push back for the attack. Break the vicious cycle by refusing to react. Step aside and channel the their force into exploring interests, inventing options for mutual gain, and searching for independent standards.
1. Don't attack their position, look behind it when the other side asserting their position forcefully. Treat it as one possible options instead of rejecting or accepting it. Assume every position the other side takes is a genuine attempt to address the basic concerns of each side; ask them how they think it addresses the problem at hand; seek out and discuss the principles underlying the positions; treat the position as one option and objectively examine the extent to which it meets the interests of each party, or might be improved to do so.
2. Don't defend our ideas, invite criticism and advice if the other side attack our ideas. Instead of asking the other to accept or reject the idea, ask them what's wrong with it, then examine their negative judgments to find our the underlying interests and to improve our ideas from their point of view. Channel criticism in a constructive direction by turning the situation around and ask for the other's advice. Ask them what they would do if they were in our position.
3. Recast an attack on us as an attack on the problem if the other side attack us personally. Allow the other to let off steam, listen to them, show the understanding what they are saying, and convert the attack to the problem.
4. Ask questions instead of statement, since statements generate resistance whereas questions generate answers. Silence is also one of the best weapons and use pause if needed. Some of the most effective negotiating you will ever do is when you are not talking.
Consider the one-text procedure if above strategy does not work.
1. More easily than one of those directly involved, a third party can separate the people form the problem and direct the discussion to interests and options. A third party can also suggest some impartial basis for resolving differences, and separate inventing from decision-making.
2. The mediator listens to both sides, prepared a draft to which no side was committed, asked for criticism instead of the concession, and improved the draft again and again until the mediators felt they could improve it no further, then present it as the recommendation. It is essential for large multilateral negotiations since the mediators do not have to get anyone's consent to start using the one-text procedure.
Authors present couple useful phrases and strategies to be used in principled negotiation.
1. "Please correct me if I'm wrong" makes us open to correction and persuasion, and establishes a dialogue based on reason.
2. "We appreciate what you've done for us" gives personal support to the person on the other side to separate the people from the problem.
3. "Our concern is fairness" takes a basic stand on principle and announces the intention to stick to it, while it is still open to persuasion along the lines of the principle.
4. "We would like to settle this on the basis of independent standards, not of who can do what to whom" shows more important thing is to be fairly treated without react on attack directly.
5. "Trust is a separate issue" reaffirm the appreciation while remains firm on the principle. It is not a question of trust. "The issue is the principle" direct the conversation back to merits.
6. "Could I ask you a few questions to see whether my facts are right?" Ask questions instead of statements of fact which shows threatening.
7. "What is the principle behind your action?" Question the other side about the reasons of their positions instead of either accept or reject their positions.
8. "Let me see if I understand what you are saying", or "If I've understood you correctly", " is there something I've missed or misunderstood?" restates the other side to show the understanding and ensure no miscommunication.
9. "Let me get back to you" since a good negotiator rarely makes an important decision on the spot.
10. "Let me show you where I have trouble following some of your reasoning": present all reasons first before offering a proposal.
11. "Given all the considerations we've discussed, one fair solution might be..." to present a proposal not as ours, but as one of fair options which deserves the joint consideration.
12. "If we agree... If we disagree...We feel confident we can settle this matter fairly with you to your satisfaction and ours": the trickiest part is the alternative if no agreement is reached without upsetting the negotiations.
13. "As long as we've agreed on the appropriate..., We'd be happy to see if we can leave when it's most convenient for you" shows the willingness to discuss ways of meeting the other side's interest. It also help the other side save face.
14. "It has been a pleasure dealing with you. We do appreciate all that you've done for us, and I'm pleased that we've settled this problem fairly and amicably" ends the negotiations on a final conciliatory note, and maintains a working relationship for the future.

What if they use dirty tricks? Taming the hard bargainer.

There are a lot of tactics and tricks people can use during negotiations. Most people response to tricky bargaining in two ways:
1. To put up with it: hope that if we give in this time, the other side will be appeased and will not ask for more, give the other side the benefit of the doubt or get angry and promise ourselves never to deal with them again. For now, just hope for the best and keep quiet.
2. To respond in kind to the other side: in the end either one side yields or negotiation breaks off.
There are three steps in negotiating the rules of the negotiating game when the other side seems to be using a tricky tactic:
1. Recognize the tactic since we have to know what is going on to be able to do something about it.
2. Raise the issue explicitly, bring it up with the other side can make the tactic less effective or the other side stop using it.
3. Question the tactic's legitimacy and desirability, and negotiate about the rules of the game. Focus on procedure instead of substance, while the goal remains to produce a wise agreement efficiently and amicably.
The method to deal with tricky tactics remains the same:
1. Separate the people from the problem. Don't attack people personally for using a tactic we consider illegitimate. Question the tactic, not their personal integrity.
2. Focus on interest, not positions. Look for the mutual interests.
3. Invent options for mutual gains. Suggest alternative games to play.
4. Insist on using objective criteria, and be hard on principle. Try out the principle of reciprocity on them, and frame the principle behind each tactic as a proposed rule for the game.
5. Use BATNA as the last resort, but still leave the room open for negotiation in the future.
Authors listed three main categories of tricky tactic to prepare and identify:
1. Deliberate deception: misrepresentation about facts, authority, or intentions.
  1. Phony facts: make some knowingly false statement. A practice of verifying factual assertions reduces the incentive for deception, and the risk of being cheated. Separate the people from the problem, do not trust the other side unless we have good reason, and make the negotiation proceed independent of trust.
  2. Ambiguous authority: the other side may allow us to believe that they have full authority to compromise when they don't, and announce the need to seek other approval once they've pressed the negotiation hard and we believe reached the firm agreement to give them "a second bite at the apple". So do not assume that the other side has full authority just because they are there negotiating with us. Before starting on any give-and-take, find out about the authority on the other side by asking legitimately "just how much authority do you have in this particular negotiation?" If the other side do announce unexpectedly that they are treating what we thought was an agreement as a basis for further negotiation, insist on reciprocity by saying "We'll treat it as a joint draft to which neither side is committed. You check with your boss and I'll sleep on it and see if I come up with any changes I want to suggest tomorrow."
  3. Dubious intentions: where the issue is one of possible misrepresentation of their intention to comply with the agreement, it is often possible to build compliance features into the agreement itself. Make the problem explicit and use the other side's protestations to get a guarantee, and add contingency to protect ourselves.
  4. Less than full disclosure is not the same as deception since good faith negotiation does not require total disclosure. An example is the answer to questions such as "what is the most you would pay if you had to?" can be:"Let's not put ourselves under such a strong temptation to mislead. If you think no agreement is possible, and that we may be wasting our time, perhaps we could disclose our thinking to some trustworthy third party, who can then tell us whether thee is a zone of potential agreement."
2. Psychological warfare is designed to make us feel uncomfortable, so that we will have a subconscious desire to end the negotiation as soon as possible.
  1. Stressful situations: Ask ourselves if we feel under stress, and if so, why. If we find the physical surroundings prejudicial, do not hesitate to say so to suggest the change. The best strategy is to identify the problem, be willing to raise it with the other side, and then negotiate better physical circumstances in an objective and principled fashion.
  2. Personal attacks: use verbal or nonverbal communication to make the other side feel uncomfortable. Recognizing the tactic will help nullify its effect; bringing it up explicitly will probably prevent a recurrence.
  3. The good-guy/bad-guy routine: it is a form of psychological manipulation. When the good guy makes the pitch, just ask the same question we asked the bad guy:"I appreciate that you are trying to be reasonable, but I still want to know why think it is a fair solution. What is your principle?"
  4. Threats: it can lead to counter threats in an escalating spiral that can unhinge a negotiation and even destroy a relationship. Warnings are much more legitimate than threats:" should we fail to reach agreement, it seems highly probable to me that..."
3. Positional pressure tactics: is designed to structure the situation so that only one side can effectively make concessions.
  1. Refusal to negotiate or set preconditions for negotiations: recognize the tactic as a possible negotiating ploy; talk about their refusal to negotiate by communicate either directly or through third parties and find out their interests in not negotiating; suggest some options to discuss the issues, and insist on using principles.
  2. Extreme demands: use extreme initial position to lower the expectations at the risk of undermining their credibility, or kill the deal. Bring the tactic to the other side's attention, and ask for principled justification of their position until it looks ridiculous even to them.
  3. Escalating demands: raise one of the demands for every concession the negotiator makes on another, and reopen issues we thought had been settled, to decrease the overall concession and make the other side want to agree quickly. If we recognize this tactic, call it to the other side's attention and then perhaps take a break while we consider whether and on what basis we want to continue negotiations.
  4. Lock-in tactics: it is illustrated by Thomas Schelling's example of two dynamite trucks barreling toward each other on a single-land road. The question becomes which truck goes off the road to avoid an accident. Paradoxically, you strengthen your bargaining position by weakening your control over the situation. In response to a commitment tactic, you can interpret the commitment as to weaken it, or crack a joke and not take the lock-in seriously. Always resist lock-in on principle.
  5. Hardhearted partner: One common tactic used to justify not yielding to your requests is for the other side to say that he or she personally would have no objection but his or her hardhearted partner will not allow it. Recognize the tactic, get the agreement to the principle involved in writing, then if possible speak directly with the hardhearted partner.
  6. A calculated delay: one side try to postpone coming to a decision until a time they think favorable. Waiting for the right time is a high-cost game. In addition to making delaying tactics explicit and negotiating about them, consider creating a fading opportunity for the other side. Look for objective conditions that can be used to establish deadlines.
  7. "Take it or leave it": consider ignoring it at first. Keep talking as if we didn't hear it, or change the subject by introducing other solutions. If we do bring up the tactic specifically, let the other side know what they have to lose if no agreement is reached and look for a face-saving way for them to get out of the situation.

So far, the authors are talking about those knowledge we knew it all the time. However, they organize common sense and common experience in a way that provides a usable framework for thinking and acting.
Also, learn from doing so is important after we read the book.
As authors pointed out:"in most instances to ask a negotiator who's winning is as inappropriate as to ask who's winning a marriage." Remind ourselves that the first thing we are trying to win is a better way to negotiate, a way that avoids us having to choose between the satisfactions of getting what we deserve and of being decent.

In the fourth part of the book, authors answered ten real world questions how to apply the four propositions from the book.

Questions about Fairness and Principled negotiation:

Does positional bargaining ever make sense? In virtually every case, the outcome will be better for both sides with principled negotiation. The issue is whether it is worth the extra effort. Authors listed some questions to consider:
1. How important it is to avoid an arbitrary outcome? If we are negotiating over some serious issue or high stakes, we will not want to haggle over arbitrary positions no matter how much easier it might be to reach agreement.
2. How complex are the issues? The more complex the subject matter, the more unwise it is to engage in positional bargaining.
3. How important is it to maintain a good working relationship? Sometimes maintaining ongoing relationship may be more important than the outcome of any one deal, negotiation on the merits helps avoid a choice between giving in or angering the other side. In single-issue negotiations among strangers where the transaction costs of exploring interests would be high and where each side is protected by competitive opportunities, simple haggling over positions may work fine.
4. What are the other side's expectations, and how hard would they be to change? If both parties have a long history of hard-fought, we may want to set a realistic timetable for change that may span several complete negotiations.
5. Where are you in the negotiation? Bargaining over positions does the least if it comes after you have identified each other's interests, invented options for mutual gain, and discussed relevant standards of fairness.
What if the other side believes in a different standard of fairness?
1. In most negotiations there will be no one right or fairest answer. People will advance different standards by which to judge what is fair. Usually one standard will be more persuasive than another to the extent that it is more directly on point, more widely accepted, and more immediately relevant in terms of time, place, and circumstance.
2. Agreement on the best standard is not necessary. Differences in values, culture, experience, and perceptions may well lead parties to disagree about the relative merits of different standards. Criteria are just one tool that may help the parties find an agreement better for both than no agreement.
Should I be fair if I don't have to be?
1. The main purpose of principled negotiation is to get what we are entitled to while still getting along with the other side. Presented with the opportunity to get more than what we think is fair, we should not take it immediately without careful thought. In fact, we should weigh the possible benefits against the potential costs of accepting the windfall:
2. How much is the difference worth to us? Weigh the benefits against the risk of incurring some of the costs, and then consider whether there might not be better options once we are certain of these potential benefits.
3. Will the unfair result be durable? Since the other side may be unwilling to carry out the unfair agreement later, we also need to figure out the cost to enforce the agreement or replace it.
4. What damage might the unfair result cause to this or other relationship? such as the reputation for fair dealing.
5. Will your conscience bother you? Even the moral thinking of taking unfair advantage of the others makes us regret sometimes.

Questions about Dealing with People:

What do I do if the people are the problem?
1. Build a working relationship independent of agreement or disagreement. Such a relationship cannot be bought by making substantive concessions or by pretending that disagreements do not exist. Nor should we try to coerce a substantive concession by threatening the relationship. Separate people from the problem, and substantive issues need to be disentangled from relationship and process issues.
2. Substantive issues such as terms, conditions, prices, dates, numbers, and liabilities should be separated from relationship issues such as balance of emotion and reason, ease of communication, degree of trust and reliability, attitude of acceptance or rejection, relative emphasis on persuasion or coercion, and degree of mutual understanding. There should not be a trade-off between pursuing a good substantive outcome and pursuing a good relationship. Sometimes we may decide to give in based on good relationship, however, we should never give in for the purpose of trying to improve a relationship.
3. Negotiate the relationship in their merits if the people problems still exist despite the efforts to negotiate on the merits. Raise the concerns, discuss it without judging, explain the perceptions and propose external standards to determine how should we deal with each other. Frame the discussion as looking forward instead of back, and operate on the assumptions that the other side may not intend all the consequences and they can change their approach if they see the need. Always prepare BATNA.
4. Distinguish how we treat them from how they treat us. Do not emulate nonconstructive behavior. Our behavior should be designed to model and encourage the behavior we would prefer and to avoid the reward for unwanted behavior.
5. Deal rationally with apparent irrationality. Recognize the negotiators are people first and could act impulsively, and try to be rationally ourselves. Do not assume people are acting irrationally, think them as seeing the situation differently. The perception may be different or problematic, while the response to the perception is not wrong.
Should I negotiate even with terrorists or someone like Hitler? When does it make sense not to negotiate?
1. It is not a question of whether to negotiate, the answer is yes. It is the question of how should we negotiate since negotiation does not mean giving in. If questions of personal safety can be resolved, and we have a good case, we are more likely to influence the terrorists than they are to influence us, or work out an arrangement in which neither side gives in.
2. Negotiate with someone like Hitler depends on the alternatives. Some interests we have may be worth fighting and even dying for. If such interests are at stake and cannot be met by less costly means, we should be prepared to fight if that will help or even if it won't help. However, if we can achieve a substantial measure of interests through nonviolent means, we should consider the means seriously over the option of war.
3. Negotiate where people are acting out of religious conviction is a yes. Even people's religious convictions are unlikely to be changed through negotiation, or religion servers only as a handy boundary line for dividing groups of people, the actions they take may be subject to influence. Negotiation does not require compromising the principles, rather it is achieved by finding a solution that is arguably consistent with each side's principles.
4. Then, when does it make sense not to negotiate and how much effort to put into it? It depends on how good our BATNA is and how likely we think that negotiation will produce better result. Analyse and think through both sides' BATNA carefully, then decide whether negotiation makes sense.
How should I adjust my negotiating approach to account for differences of personality, gender, culture, and so on? Different people have different interest and styles of communication.
1. Get in step with the other side's way of thinking. Be sensitive to the values, perceptions, concerns, norms of behavior, and mood of those with whom we are dealing. Adapt our behavior accordingly and pay attention to the differences such as fast or slow pacing, high or low formality, close or distant physical proximity while talking, binding and inclusive oral or written agreements, direct or indirect bluntness of communication, short term or longer term time frame, business only or all-encompassing scope of relationship, expected private or public place of doing business, negotiators equals in status or the most competent people for the task, and the rigidity of commitments either written in stone or meant to be flexible.
2. Adapt the general advice to the specific situation, and implement the general principles on the specific context.
3. Pay attention to differences of belief and custom, know and respect them, but avoid stereotyping individuals and making assumptions beforehand.
4. Question our assumptions and listen actively. Be open to learning that the other are quite unlike what we expected.

Questions about Tactics:

How do I decide things like "Where should we meet?" "Who should make the first offer?" and "How high should I start?"
1. The answer is case by case. Good tactical advice required knowledge of specific circumstances.
2. Strategy depends on preparation. Firstly, strategy is a function of preparation and it suggests itself. Secondly, a clever strategy cannot make up for lacking of preparation.
3. Learn the rule of being well prepared with external measures of value. And do not fall into the trap of measuring success only by how far the other party has moved from their original position.
Concretely, how do I move from inventing options to making commitments?
1. Think about closure from the beginning, then work backwards. Focus on the goals, and imagine what it might be like to implement an agreement.
2. Consider crafting a framework agreement. Draft possible terms of an agreement as the negotiation goes to surface the important issues, keep discussion focused, give a sense of progress, provide the record of discussions, and reduce the chance of later misunderstanding.
3. Move toward commitment gradually. Seek a consensus proposal that reflects all points made and meets each side's interests on that issue as well as possible. If we are unable to reach consensus on a single option, try at least to narrow the range of options under consideration and then go on to another issue. Along the way, avoid demands or locking in, instead offer options and ask for criticism. Agree explicitly that all commitments are tentative to encourage options. Write "Tentative draft No commitments" at the top of a framework agreement.
4. Be persistent in pursuing the interests but not rigid in pursuing any particular solution. Separate the interests from ways to meet them.
5. Make an offer naturally grown from the discussion at some point. An early offer might be limited to the pairing of a couple of key issues.
6. Be generous at the end. When we sense the close to the end, consider giving the other side something we know to be of value to them and still consistent with the basic logic of our proposal. Make clear that this is a final gesture to avoid the other side raise expectations of further concessions.
How do I try out these ideas without taking too much risk?
1. Start small, when stakes are small, when we have a good BATNA, when the other side is likely to be amenable. Try new ideas and approaches one at a time.
2. Make an investment. Willing to take a fresh look at what we do or to consider changing it, at the risk of temporarily get worse, but offer more long term potential.
3. Review the performance. What worked? What did not? What might we have done differently? Keep the record.
4. Prepare! Plan how to build and maintain a good working relationship with the other side. Write out the list of interests and invent the list of options. Look for a variety of external benchmarks or criteria and think through. Even ask the partners to roleplay the negotiation.

Questions about Power:

Can the way I negotiate really make a difference if the other side is more powerful? And How do I enhance my negotiating power?
1. Some things we can't get, since no matter how skilled we are, there are limits to what we can get through negotiation. We should not expect success unless we are able to make the other side an offer which is more attractive than their BATNA. Concentrate instead on improving our BATNA and changing their.
2. How we negotiate makes a big difference between coming to terms and not, or between an outcome favorable to us or not, or good relationship or not, when there is a chance for agreement.
3. Resources are not the same as negotiation power. Negotiation power is the ability to persuade someone to do something.
4. Do not ask "who's more powerful". To be optimistic to let our reach exceed our grasp. Without wasting a lot of resources on hopeless causes, recognize that many things are worth trying for ever if we may not succeed.
5. There are many sources of negotiation power. One is having a good BATNA. Each of four elements: people, interest, options, and objective criteria, is also a source of negotiation power. If the other side is strong in one area, we can try to develop strength in another. And another source is the power of commitment.
6. There is power in developing a good working relationship between the people negotiating. Understanding, emotions, communications, people problems are all contribute to negotiation. More negotiation power for one side does not necessarily mean less for the other side. The better the working relationship, the better able each side is to influence the other.
7. Good communication and good listening helps to understand interests, other side's concerns. There is power in understanding interests.
8. There is power in inventing an elegant option. Brainstorming increase the ability to influence others.
9. There is power in using external standards of legitimacy, as a sword to persuade others, and as a shield to help us resist pressure to give in arbitrarily. Convincing the other side that we are asking for no more than is fair is one of the most powerful arguments we can make.
10. There is power in developing a good BATNA. Efforts to improve one's own alternatives and to lower the other side's estimate of theirs are critical ways to enhance our negotiation power.
11. There is power in making a carefully crafted commitment. We can commit to what we will do by making a firm offer. We can make a negative commitment as to what we will not do carefully. We can clarify precisely what commitments we would like the other side to make. Clarify what we will do and make it easier for the other side to commit. The more concrete the offer, the more persuasive. Make the offer as a fading opportunity by indicating when and how it will expire. Clarify what we will do if the other side does not accept the offer. Consider committing to what we will not do. At some point, it may be best to put a final offer on the table and mean it. Clarify what we want them to do which makes sense.
12. Make the most of our potential power, and use each source of power in harmony with other sources. Also we can be mor effective if we believe in what we are saying and doing.

Getting to Yes -- The final stop in the journey

2007-12-04T11:22:00.000-08:00

Finally I moved to book "Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In" by Roger Fisher and William Ury. It's the first published book in Yes/No negotiation series, however, it is the final results we are seeking for. We start with saying positive No to demand, then we get past No from the other side, now it is the time to getting to Yes to our desire. It was wrote two decades ago, and the principles in the book can very much still apply to real life amazingly.

The common problem in negotiation is people always bargain over positions no matter they pick soft or hard road. Although position bargain might gain what we want, it's more destructive instead of constructive way of working for the following reasons:

Arguing over positions produce unwise agreement since all attentions are paid to position and may ignore the underlying concerns and interests.
Arguing over positions is inefficient since both sides consume long time to hold their extreme position and make small concession only to keep the process going.
Arguing over positions endangers an ongoing relationship since position battles and power forces produce more negative feelings to both sides.
When there are many parties, positional bargaining is even worse since lacking of common position makes the negotiation impossible to develop, agree, and change a position.
Being nice is no answer since playing soft may show vulnerable to the other side who plays hard ball and the result may not be wise.

Thus neither soft positional bargaining nor hard one or in between is a good choice during negotiation. The author proposes a new methods: principled negotiation to deal with this dilemma and change the game.

Using Principled negotiation , all participants are problem-solvers and their goals are wise outcome reached efficiently and amicably. The solution focuses four points:

People: Separate the people from the problem: Be soft on the people, and hard on the problem.
Interests: Focus on interests, not positions. Explore interests while avoid having a bottom line.
Options: Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do and decide later.
Criteria: Insist that the result be based on some objective standard independent of will. Reason and be open to reason; yield to principle, not pressure.

Those four propositions are relevant through whole negotiation process including three stage of analysis, planning and discussion.

The second part of book is expanded with detailed explanation of four propositions list below.

Separate the people from the problem:

Remember that the other sides are people first. As a human being, negotiators and ourselves have different emotions, values, egos, backgrounds, viewpoints, and unpredictability.
Every negotiator has two kinds of interests: in the substance and in the relationship. The relationship tends to entangled with the problem. Also positional bargaining puts relationship and substance in conflict.
Thus we need to separate the relationship from the substance, and base the relationship on accurate perceptions, clear communication, appropriate emotions, and a forward-looking, purposive outlook so that we can deal directly with the people problem. Keep in mind that perception, communication, and emotion issues could come from ourselves as well as the other sides.
Perceptions: Conflict lies not only in objective reality, but also from people's different perceptions. Thus understanding the other's perceptions and the difference between ours and their helps to resolve the conflict.
1. Put ourselves in their shoes because how we see world depends on where we sit. As authors say:"People tend to see what they want to see. Out of a mass of detailed information, they tend to pick out and focus on those facts that confirm their prior perceptions and to disregard or misinterpret those that call their perceptions into questions." It reminds me the surprised match for interview process. Most of case interviewers make their minds within the first 5 minutes and spend the rest of time to confirm their perceptions about the interviewees. Sticking to our own perception will limit us into less flexible scope, like the story of the blinds who touch and feel the elephants. Everyone insists what he or she feels about what the elephants look alike is correct since he or she only touch own perceptions. Although to really put us in their shoes is a challenging job since people love to judge. We have to withhold our judgment when we try on their perceptions.
2. Don't deduce the other's intentions from our fears, since people tend to assume that the other side will do whatever we fear most.
3. Don't blame the other side for our problems, even if the other side is responsible, since it is counterproductive and make the other side defensive. Always separate the problem symptoms from the person.
4. Discuss each other's perceptions in a frank, honest manner.
5. Look for opportunities to act inconsistently with the other's perceptions to change their perceptions.
6. Give the others a stake in the outcome by making sure they participate in the process. If we want the other side to accept a disagreeable conclusion, it is crucial that we involve them in the process of reaching that conclusion. Involves the other side early, ask for their advice, and give credit generously for ideas wherever possible.
7. Face-saving: make our proposals consistent with the other's values, since face-saving reflects a person's need to reconcile the stand he takes now with his principles and past deeds. It should not be underestimated.

Emotion: Negative emotions on one side will generate negative emotions on the other side.
1. First recognize and understand emotions, including the other's and ours. Sometimes writing down what we feel and how we might like to feel helps to control our emotions. Understand what causes the other's and ours emotions helps us move forward without blocking by the emotions.
2. Make emotions explicit and acknowledge them as legitimate, including discuss it frankly with the other side. As author states:" Freed from the burden of unexpressed emotions, people will become more likely to work on the problem."
3. Allow the other side to let off steam. By allowing them release negative feelings makes it easier to talk rationally later. Author suggests a strategy to adopt is to listen quietly without responding to their attacks, and occasionally to ask the speaker to continue until he has spoken his last word.
4. Don't react to emotional outbursts. An interesting rule used before is that only one person could get angry at a time.
5. Use symbolic gestures, such as a notes of sympathy, or an apology at small cost produces a constructive emotional impact.

Communication: "Whatever you say, you should expect that the other side will almost always hear something different." There are three big problems in communication. First, negotiators may not be talking to each other, or at least not in such a way as to be understood. Second, even we are talking directly and clearly to the other side, they may not be hearing us at all. Third problem is misunderstanding or misinterpretation. To address those three problems of communication, authors bring the following strategy:
1. Listen actively and acknowledge what is being said, such as " Did I understand correctly that you are saying that....?" No wonder "The cheapest concession you can make to the other side is to let them know they have been heard." "Let me see whether I follow what you're telling me. From your point of view, the situation looks like this...." Don't be afraid of acknowledge, since understanding and acknowledge of hearing does not mean we have to agree. Phrase our understanding positively, then come back with the problem we found out in that understanding make it easier to be accepted.
2. Speak to be understood and be have to work together on a joint opinion.
3. Speak about ourselves, not about the other side, since a statement about ourselves id most difficult to challenge. "I feel let down" is better than "You broke your word.". "We feel discriminated against" sounds better than "you're a racist."
4. Speak for a purpose. Sometimes unsaid is better than speak too much. As authors point out: "Before making a significant statement, know what you want to communicate or find out, and know what purpose this information will serve."

Prevention works best: since the best time to handle people problems is before they become people problems.
1. Build a working relationship because dealing with a stranger is totally different comparing to dealing with a friend. Thus the more quickly we can turn a stranger into someone we know, the easier a negotiation is likely to become. Find ways to meet informally, arrive early to chat and linger after to meet. Authors use Benjamin Franklin's favorite technique-- to ask an adversary if he could borrow a certain book -- as an example.
2. Face the problem, not the people. A more effective way is to think both sides as partners in a side-by-side search for a fair agreement advantageous to each. It's not a one time deal. We have to keep working on it, and deal with the people as human beings and with the problem on its merits.

Focus on interests, Not positions:

For a wise solution reconcile interests, not positions:
1. Interests define the problem. The basic problem in a negotiation lies in the conflict between each side's needs, desires, concerns, and fears -- which is their interests, while position is one of possible way to satisfy the interests.
2. Behind opposed positions lie shared and compatible interests, as well as conflicting interests. It's not necessary to assume that the other side's interests are always opposed to ours due to opposite positions.
How can we identify interests?
1. Ask "Why?" to put ourselves into the other's shoes. Ask ourselves and the other side why they take a particular position for understanding purpose instead of justification of position.
2. Ask "Why not?" to think about the other's choice. Check the consequences of the decision including the impact on our interests, and the impact on the group's interests.
3. Realize that each side has multiple interests, not just the one arguing for. Understand the variety of somewhat differing interests and take all into account are important.
4. The most powerful interests are basic human needs, including security, economic well-being, a sense of belonging, recognition, control over one's life, etc. Do not assume that money is the only interests.
5. Make a list to sort out the various interests of each side in the estimated order of importance.
Talking about interests, because communication helps each other understand better.
1. Make our interests come alive since it's our responsibility to have other side understand exactly how important and legitimate our interests are, without imply the other side's interests are unimportant or illegitimate. Be specific with concrete details to make the statement credible. Give the other side chance "Correct me if I'm wrong" to show our openness and test their acceptance on the statement. Persuade them step into our shoes, and let them feel no personal attack, just problem we're facing legitimately demands attention.
2. Acknowledge the other's interests as part of the problem. Asking "Have I understood you correctly? Do you have other important interests?" demonstrates we appreciate their interests, so that they listen better if they feel that we have understood them. It also acknowledges that their interests are part of the overall problem we are trying to solve.
3. Put the problem before our answer. As authors said, "If you want someone to listen and understand your reasoning, give your interests and reasoning first and your conclusions or proposals later."
4. Look forward, not back. Ask two people why they are arguing, the answer will usually identify a cause instead of a purpose, since people are more likely to respond to what the other side has said or done than to act in pursuit of their own long-term interests. We can satisfy our interests better if we talk about where we would like to go rather than about where we have come from. Instead of arguing the past, talk about what we want to have happen in the future.
5. Be concrete but flexible. "Illustrative specificity" means developing specific options and still opening to fresh options.
6. Be hard on the problem, soft on the people. Always remember to attack the problem without blaming the people, and be personally supportive such as listen to them with respect, show them courtesy, express appreciation for their time and effort, emphasize concern with meeting their basic needs, etc. Authors bring a useful rule of thumb, which is to give positive support to the human beings on the other side equal in strength to the vigor with which you emphasize the problem. Firm and open coexist.

Invent Options for Mutual Gain:

Diagnosis: why can't we expand the pie before split it? Why are we stuck with the one-dimension positions? Authors list four major obstacles that inhibit the inventing of an abundance of options:
1. Premature Judgment hinders imagination, and we may fear to say anything to be used as commitment or disclosure;
2. Searching for the single answer means premature closure, and we may fear that free-floating discussion will only delay and confuse the process.
3. The assumption of a fixed pie treat the negotiation as either-or winning situation, and we may not bother to think further at our expense.
4. Think that "solving their problem is their problem" since both sides only concerns about their own interests. Shortsighted self-concern leads only to one side solution.

Prescription: authors also list four steps to invent creative options:
1. Separate the act of inventing options from the act of judging and deciding them.
2. Broaden the options on the table rather than look for a single answer
3. Search for mutual gains
4. Invent ways of making the other's decisions easy.

Separate inventing from deciding: Invent first, decide later. It consists of questions, not assertions; it is open, not closed: "One option is ...What other options have you thought of?...What if we agreed to this?...How about doing it this way?...How would this work?... What would be wrong with that?"
A brainstorming session with ground rule of postponing all criticism and evaluation of ideas helps to produce many ideas to solve the problem. Authors also provide some guidelines for us to execute an effective brainstorming session:
1. Before Brainstorming:
  1. Define the purpose clearly.
  2. Choose a few participants, such as between 5 to 8 people is a good number.
  3. Change the environment, to make it distinguishing from regular discussions.
  4. Design an informal atmosphere so that people relax and free to talk.
  5. Choose a facilitator to keep the meeting on track and on ground.
2. During Brainstorming:
  1. Seat the participants side by side facing the problem, instead of facing each other into argument.
  2. Clarify the ground rules, including the no-criticism rule, and more rules such as encouraging the wild ideas, making the entire session off the record, or refraining from attributing ideas to any participant.
  3. Brainstorm and just let the imagination go.
  4. Record the ideas in full view to stimulate the new idea, reduce the tendency of repeat, and demonstrate the no-criticism rule.
3. After Brainstorming:
  1. Star the most promising ideas and narrow down the ideas worth developing further by group consensus. It's not decision yet.
  2. Invent improvements for promising ideas to make them better and more realistic. Constructive criticism like " What I like best about that idea is... Might it be better if...?" helps.
  3. Set up a time to evaluate ideas and decide.
4. Consider Brainstorming with the other side. Although it may leads to the fear of disclosing confidential information, or increased risk, joint brainstorming sessions creates more benefits to take both sides' interests into account, create a joint problem-solving, and educate each side about the concerns of the other:
  1. Distinguishing the brainstorming sessions explicitly from the negotiation sessions where people state official views and speak on the record.
  2. Make it a habit to advance at least two alternatives at the same time.
  3. Put on table options with which we obviously disagree to show it's just mere possibilities, not proposals.

Broaden our options, since the key to wise decision-making lies in selecting from a great number and variety of options:
1. Multiple options by shuttling between the specific and the general: The circle chart below this section shows how to invent options in four types of thinking.
2. Look through the eyes of different experts, and try to examine the problem from the perspective of different professions and disciplines. This method can be combined with the Circle Chart to produce multiple options.
3. Invent agreements of different strengths, such as a weaker version of agreement in case a sought-for agreement can't be reached immediately. Authors listed the pairs of adjectives to show potential agreements level:
  Stronger Weaker
  Substantive Procedural
  Permanent Provisional
  Comprehensive Partial
  Final In principle
  Unconditional Contingent
  Binding Nonbinding
  First-order Second-order
4. Change the scope of a proposed agreement besides the level of strengths to fractionate the problem into smaller and more manageable units.

The circle chart:
What is Wrong              What might be done
-------------------------------------------------------
|Step 2: Analysis        |Step 3: Approaches          |
In|Diagnose the problem:   |What are possible strategies|
Th|Sort symptoms into      | or prescriptions?          |
eo| categories             | What are some theoretical  |
ry|Suggest causes.        ==\  cures?                   |
|Observe what's lacking.==/Generate broad ideas about |
|Note barriers to        |  what might be done.       |
| resolving the problem. |                            |
-----------/\-----------------------||-----------------
-----------||-----------------------\/-----------------
In|Step 1: Problems        |   Step 4: Action ideas     |
Re|What's wrong?           |   What might be done?      |
al|What's current symptoms?/== What specific steps might|
Wo|What're disliked facts  \==   be taken to deal with  |
rl| contrasted with a      |     the problem?           |
d | preferred situation?   |                            |
-------------------------------------------------------

Look for mutual gain: to avoid fixed pie thinking.

Identify shared interests, make it concrete and future-oriented, and look for solutions that will leave the other side satisfied as well.

Dovetail differing interests to reach agreement through difference. The difference in belief provides the basis for a deal. Authors also listed the common variations in interest to look for in the following table:

One party cares about:	The other party cares about:
Form	Substance
Economic considerations	Political considerations
Internal considerations	External considerations
Symbolic considerations	Practical considerations
Immediate future	More distant future
Ad hoc results	The relationship
Hardware	Ideology
Progress	Respect for tradition
Precedent	This case
Prestige, reputation	Results
Political points	Group welfare

Ask for the other side's preferences, invent several options all equally acceptable to us and ask the other side which one they prefer. Based on the choice, work more details, and present couple variants to ask for preference again. This circulation helps to improve a plan with joint gains.

Make their decision easy:
1. Pick up one identity in the other side, and think about Whose shoes?
2. What decision? Draft a few possible agreements to aid clear thinking, adapted from some precedents, present them in a legitimate way starting from the simplest one.
3. Making threats is not enough. Concentrate both on making them aware of the consequences they can expect based and improved upon offer, to evaluate an options from both sides' point of view.

Insist on using objective criteria:

Deciding on the basis of will is costly, and trying to reconcile differences on the basis of will is unlikely to reach a wise agreement. The solution is to negotiate on some basis independent of the will of either side, which is on the basis of objective criteria.

Principled negotiation produces wise agreements amicably and efficiently. The standards of fairness, efficiency, scientific merit, precedent or community practice helps to settle the problem instead of trying to force each other to back down. In this way, no weak signal for both sides, since standards is reasonable.

How to Develop objective criteria to carry on a principled negotiation? Prepare in advance, develop some alternative standards beforehand and think through their application to the case.
1. Fair standards: objective criteria need to be independent of each side's will, and legitimate and practical. It should apply, at least in theory, to both sides. Some example can be market value, precedent, scientific judgment, professional standards, efficiency, costs, what a court would decide, moral standards, equal treatment, tradition, reciprocity, etc.
2. Fair procedures: we can use fair standards for the substantive questions, and fair procedures for resolving the conflicting interests. One sample can be to share the pie, one cuts, the other chooses. A variation on this procedure is for the parties to negotiate what they think is a fair arrangement before they go on to decide their respective roles in it. There are quite some basic means of settling differences such as taking turns, drawing lots, flipping a coin, letting someone else decide, etc
How to negotiate using objective criteria? Focus on it firmly but flexibly.
1. Frame each issue as a joint search for objective criteria. Ask the other side "What's your theory?" for their proposals or positions. Agree first on principles or standards to apply.
2. Reason and be open to reason as to which standards are most appropriate and how they should be applied, because insisting that an agreement be based on objective criteria does not mean insisting that it be based solely on the criteria one side advance.
3. Never yield to pressure, only to principle. Pressure can be a bribe, a threat, a manipulative appeal to trust, or a simple refusal to budge. The principled response is to invite them to state their reasoning, suggest objective criteria we think apply, and refuse to budge except on this basis.

Negotiating From Confrontation to Cooperation

2007-11-14T14:41:00.000-08:00

After I finished reading the book "The Power of a Positive No" from William Ury and learned how to root from ourselves, it's quite nature I would like to revisit his book "Getting Past No" to review how to negotiate our way from confrontation to cooperation.

After we stay in our shoes and give our proposals, we want a Yes back. In the real life, it's rarely happen in a smooth way, moreover, the answer back is No. How can we pass through this No constructively? William Ury's book tells about that almost two decades ago and it is still valid in today's world. I love his statement, especially "soft on the people, hard on the problem" tells the smart way to maintain the relationship while solving the problem.

Thinking about negotiation, immediately we may have a picture of two group of people sitting on the two sides of long table, face to face confronting each other. That's not the case. A better picture could be two group of people sitting together, side by side solving the problem jointly. Identifying the problem to be solved -- the interests from both side --instead of the position of each side --then we can start to explore the options to satisfy both sides' interests. Does that sound too simple to be true? Certainly easier said than done. To solve it, Ury listed some real world barriers preventing us from cooperation or tract us back confrontation situation:

Our Reaction: we, as human being, can react differently to the No response, which could direct the renegotiation to an undesired emotional way.
The other's Emotion: Even if we controlled our reaction, the others may not, which can lead to further distrust relationship.
The other's position: Not everyone understand the benefit of looking at interests instead of position. The other side may stick to their position and want us to give in.
The other's dissatisfaction: A mutually satisfactory agreement may not be all the interests from the other side. The deeper interests, such as fear losing face may lead to dissatisfaction.
The other's power: Even we are treating negotiation as win-win situation, the other side may only want to win it by beating us up. The power play could prevent the other from any cooperation.

After we understand what kind of barriers we could face, Ury describes a five-step strategy to break through those barriers. Using indirect action, we can create an environment and help the other side learn how to break through their resistance by themselves. The five steps describes below:

Prepare:

Prepare is not a formal step, but it's crucial before any step. The more preparation we put down before the negotiation, the more likely we can achieve what we want. Ury listed five important parts in the preparation process:

Interests:
1. Find out our own interests, and prioritize the list.
2. Find out the other's interests, Instead of just facts, try to understand their perceptions of the facts
Options: After we know the interests of both sides, we can start to brainstorming the possible options without judgment, then evaluate those options to see if they satisfy the interests of both sides. Put "That won't work" criticism aside while we let the thinking go wild.
Standards: To avoid give-in from either side, we could use some standards to resolve the conflict fairly. The useful example of standards could be market value, equal treatment, the law, or the historic cases, etc.

Alternatives:
1. BATNA(Best Alternative to a Negotiaed Agreement) can be executed without the other side. It's the base of evaluation of our negotiation, and the power during the negotiation. The weak our BATNA to our interests, the less power we can leverage during negotiation.
2. There are three simple questions to explore our BATNA: What we can do to achieve our interests without the other side? What we can do to the other side so that they start to respect our interests? What we can do to the negotiation, such as bring in the third party, to extend our interests? The answer which satisfy our interests best is our BATNA.
3. After we find the possible BATNA, we can think and develop the way to strength our BATNA to make it better and more powerful.
4. If our BATNA is better than any other agreements we could reach with the others, why should we keep negotiating with the other? If we have correct idea about how powerful our BATNA is, BATNA is a great tool to help us decide if we should negotiate in advanced.
5. Identify the other's BATNA. The old saying from Sun Tzu said:
  "Know thyself and thy enemy, victorious (work required to put knowledge to good use).
  Know thyself and not thy enemy; 50:50 chance.
  Knot not thyself and not thy enemy; defeat."
  (知己知彼，百战不贻；不知彼而知己，一胜一负；不知彼不知己，每战必败。)
  Knowing the other's BATNA can help us develop the agreement to beat their BATNA, also, it gives us the idea how to count their BATNA.
Proposals:
1. Proposal is not only an option. It should be a possible agreement we can say Yes to. We can prepare multiple proposals in our mind before the negotiation.
2. The good proposal should meet our interest and the other's interests, better than our BATNA, and beat the other's BATNA.
3. Start with proposal " What do you aspire to?" as the best case scenario which satisfy both sides' interests easily and still be realistic.
4. Consider with proposal " What would you be content with?" as the possible result which still satisfy both sides' interests but far from perfect.
5. Stop at proposal "What could you live with?" as the last choice which just marginally beat our BATNA. If this proposal cannot be accepted, it's time to take our BATNA.

After all those preparation work, we gain enough knowledge in our mind. Now it's time to rehearse our mind in real before the real play. Keep playing until we make everything right. It's no doubt to caught some mistakes during the rehearsal instead of the real one.

Go to the Balcony -- Don't react:

To break our reaction, we have to stay focused on what we want to achieve. Go to Balcony can help us regain the mental balance and keep focus on the problem.

When we react to the confrontation, there are three common reaction without thinking:
we either strike back with our negative emotion; or we just give in our interests we will regret for; or we even break off the relationship with the other side.

None of those natural reaction helps to solve the confrontation effectively. If we lose our control, it's easy to lose our insights and objectives, thus lose our interests eventually. Even worse, it gives the other side best excuse and power to continue what they are doing. Ury explains it in a humorous way: "By reacting, you become part of the problem. Just as it takes two to tango, it takes two to tangle."

Thus, at any time during the negotiation that we want to react impulsively, we should go to our mental balcony to cool us down. Keep the prize in mind when we control ourselves. But how can we be aware of the situation? Identify the other's tactics and name the game. There are three common type of tactics we need to be prepared:

Stone walls: It is an obstructive tactic showing the other side refuse to budge. Some cautious statements list below:
1. "What's done is done! IT can't be changed."
2. "I can't do anything about it. It's company policy."
3. "We'll get back to you later."
4. "Take it or leave it!"
Attack: It is an offensive tactic trying to intimidate the other side and make the other side uncomfortable. Some samples to insult, badger, or bully the other list below:
1. Threaten: "Do it or ....!"
2. Attack the proposal: "It's way out of line!"
3. Attack the person and credibility: " You haven't been in this job long, have you?"
4. Attack the person status and authority: "I only talk to the real decision maker!"
Tricks: It is a deceptive tactic to trick the other side. Some common tricks list below:
1. Manipulate the data by using false, phony, or confusing figures.
2. "No authority" play: misleading by fake authority
3. "Add-on" play: Throw last minute request into the request.

If we understand how those tactics play, we could react to it in a neutral way instead of nature reaction being played by those tactics. Of course, understand ourselves, and know what is our emotional susceptibilities, or "Hot Buttons", can prepare us without losing temper after we figure out the tactics the other side use.

Then we need buy us some time to go to balcony -- think. Ury lists some methods to get us more time:

Simply pause and say nothing, which helps us go to balcony, and may help the other side cool down. A useful way Thomas Jefferson describe: "When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred."
Rewind the tape can buy us more time, which gives us chance to clarify with the other side and slow down the process. It also shows we are active listening to the other side:
1. "Let me just make sure I understand what you're saying."
2. "Hold on. Let's back up for a minute and review..."
3. Take careful notes: "I'm sorry, I missed that. Could you please repeat it?"
4. "I am not sure I'm following you. Correct me if I'm wrong..."
Take a time-out if we need more time to consider. Find a good excuse to take a break:
1. Excuse to take a break: "We've been talking for some time now. Before continuing, let me suggest a quick coffee break."
2. "That's a good question. Let me find our and get back to you right away."
3. Set up a separate caucus with own team.
4. Temporarily change the topic to other stories.
5. Bring along a partner to watch out each other, and get time out when the partner talks.

There are many ways to get ourselves move to balcony in our mind. The Rule of thumb is always: Never make an important decision on the spot. It's much better if we can sleep on a decision if all possible, or at least step outside before the conclusion. Test deadline and relax it if possible is another way to buy us more time.

I love to use the statement from Ury:

"Remember that agreement required your assent. Your worst enemy is your own quick reaction; only you can make the concession you will later regret."

"Don't get mad. Don't get even. Get what you want."

Step to their side -- Don't argue:

To defuse the other's negative emotion, we can step to their side, listen to them, acknowledge their points and feelings, and show them respect by agreeing wherever we can.

Active listening to the other side, give them chance to talk first, then reflect back and ask for the corrections:
1. Don't interrupt even if we disagree or feel negatively.
2. Let the other side know we are listening by maintaining eye contact, nodding, responding with "uh-huh" or "I see".
3. Give the other side chance to finish by asking: "Is there anything more you would like to add?"
4. Encourage the other side express all their thoughts by asking: "Yes, Please go on." or "Then what happened?"
5. Paraphrase the other's talk and ask for any possible corrections. It ensures that we understand the other, and makes the other feel understood and satisfied.

Acknowledge with confidence the other's points even disagree to create the climate for agreement.
1. Acknowledge is not an agreement, it only means that we accept it as a valid point of view among others.
2. Recognize the other by saying: "I can see how you see things." or "You have a point there." or "I understand exactly what you mean."
3. Preempt the other by saying: "If I were in your shoes, that's the way I'd see it."
4. Acknowledge the other's emotion such as angry or fear, show that we understand why they feel as they do by saying:"I appreciate how you feel." or "You think...I can understand that. I'd probably feel angry too." and expressed in body language and tones sincerely.
5. Apology for our share even the other side is the main cause:"I'm sorry you've had this problem. You're one of my favorite customers and the last person I'd want to see unhappy. What can we do to make it up to you?"

Agree to the other side wherever we can. Look for any opportunity to agree.
1. Agree without conceding. Focusing on the agreed part which is the common ground for both sides, although it's natural for people to focus on the differences which cause the problem.
2. Look for any opportunity to say Yes, such as "yes, you have a point there." or "Yes, I agree with you." At the same time, try to get as many Yes as possible from the other side. Turn even the controversial questions into a possible Yes answer instead of letting the other side say No.
3. Observe the other side's communicative manner, and try to tune in their wavelength. Adapt to their communication tone, volume, and posture. Find out the sensory focus from the other, such as visual, auditory, or feeling, then connect with them by the similar language. An example could be: "Can't you see what I'm saying?" or "Let's focus on that." v.s. "I do see your point" or "I can picture what you're saying." is a visual pair. "Listen to this" v.s. "I hear you." is an auditory pair. "That doesn't feel right to me." v.s. "I'm not comfortable either." is a feeling pair.

Acknowledge not only the other's points, but also themselves personally.
1. Remember that we have to treat person and behavior separately. As Ury said in his book: "Reaffirming the person does not mean reaffirming the behavior."
2. Based on fact instead of purely flattery, acknowledge the other's authority or competence. Some examples are saying "You're the boss.", or "I respect your authority.", or "I've been told that you are the most knowledgeable person on this policy.", or "Your presentation was succinct, persuasive, and to the point. I don't think I've ever seen it done better."
3. Build the positive working relationship with the other, so that they will more incline to our benefits.

Express our views without provoking: After we've done all listening and acknowledging work, we now start to get our voice heard.
1. Use "Both...and..." instead of "Either...or..." minds. The differences can coexist after the reconciliation. Present our views in a cooperative situation instead of defeating each other.
2. Use "Yes...and..." instead of "But,...". "But" is often interpreted as "I think you are wrong for the following reasons." "Yes...and..." let the other side feel more inclusive and agreeable. Present our views in an addition to rather than a direct contradiction to the other's view. Some good examples are "I can see why you feel strongly about this, and I respect that. Let me tell you, however, how it looks from my angle...", or " I am in total agreement with what you're tryint to accomplish. What you may not have considered it...".
3. Use I-statement instead of You-statement. I-statement shows the other our experience and feeling impacting by their behavior or request. I-statement offers the other another angle to see the topic instead of challenging their views. It is our feelings, views, needs, concerns, and desires, instead of the other's issue. Some useful phrases are: "I feel...", or "I get upset when...", or "I'm not comfortable with...", or "The way I see it is...".
4. Acknowledge the other's view, but stand firmly up for ourselves. Don't just give in to fall into the accommodate trap.
5. Acknowledge the differences, and express optimism that the differences will be resolved. Affirm our interest to reach the agreement, and assert our belief that a satisfactory solution is feasible.

All in all, what we are trying to do in this step is to create a favorable climate for negotiation.

Reframe -- Don't reject:

To disarm the other's position, we can take their position and explore the interests behind it by active listening. Instead of stick to the inflexibility of the other's game, try to pull them into our game by not rejecting the other's saying and reframe it as a start to resolve the issue.

To change the game, change the frame by redirecting the other's attention from position to interests identification, available options or standards of faireness. A good example to shift the conversation can be: "That's interesting. Why do you want that? Help me understand the problem you are trying to solve." It is the power of positive perception.
By asking problem-solving questions, we can redirect the other's attention to the problem. Thus questions will be answered by their opinions instead of ours, which is more acceptable by the other.
1. Ask "Why?" indirectly until we find out what kind of motivation behind the request. Invite the other to tell us more by asking: "Help me to see Why is it that you want that?" "I am not sure I understand What is the problem?" or "I'd be interested in understanding What are your concerns?"
2. Ask "Why not?" if the other side does not reveal their interests and Why question doesn't work because people love to criticize. "Why not do it in this way?" or "What would be wrong with this approach?" gives the other chance to criticize our proposal and reveal their interests. Asking "If I understand what you're saying, your interests are ... Is that right?" People will be love to correct our misunderstanding of their interests by responding :"That's not exactly right. You've forgotten about..." and on and on.
3. Build the trust between us and the other side can help the other more willing to reveal their points to us. Show them our interests and ask for theirs little by little, we can build the trust incrementally.
4. Ask "What if?" to engage the other side in discussing options without challenging their position.
5. Ask for the other's advice to engage them in discussing options. Ask "What would you suggest that I do?" "What would you d if you were me?" or "What would you say to my boss if I...?"People are flattered by asking for the advice and hard to resist the temptation to teach others. It also give us opportunity to educate the other side our problems.
6. Ask "What makes that fair?" to protect us from unreasonable request. "You must have good reasons for thinking that's a fair solution. I'd like to hear them." We may need to propose the standard before asking for the fairness. Even if the other side rejects our proposed standard, we can still ask them to come up with a better one, so that the whole topic is around the fair outcomes instead of the positions.
7. Make our questions open-ended and eye-opening. We do not want to ask questions build in with No as answer. So avoid the questions prefaced by "is", "Isn't", "can", "can't", instead prefaced our questions by "how", "what", "why", "why not", or "who".
8. Tap the power of silence. Do not push for the answer immediately after our problem-solving questions. Give the other side time to engage themselves into problem-solving minds. Persistently Ask countless questions until we reach the answer.
Reframe tactics to be used:
1. Go around Stone Walls: How can we deal if the other side draw a firm line: "take it or leave it"? Ury listed three ways to go around to reframe:
  1. Ignore the stone wall and continue on the problem. If the other side are serious about it instead of just bluffing, they will repeat.
  2. Reinterpret the stone wall as an aspiration or target, and redirect attention back to the problem.
  3. Take the stone wall seriously, but find reasons to test it. Try to turn the other's stone wall into our advantage.
2. Deflect Attacks: How can we deal with the other's threats, insults, or blame? Here are some useful ways to deflect attacks:
  1. Ignore the attack and still focus on the problem. If the other side see their abusive tactics do not work, they will often stop.
  2. Reinterpret an attack on person as an attack on the problem, and ignore the attack on person part.
  3. Misinterpret an personal attack as friendly show of concern. Humorous interpretation helps bring the trust back.
  4. Reframe from past wrongs to future remedies, from who was wrong to what can be done to make it right and solve the problem. Admit the error and ask "How can we make sure it never happens again?"
  5. Use "We" instead of "you" and "me" create a shared atmosphere for the common goal.
3. Expose Tricks by playing alone with it. We can response as if the other side is in good faith and not playing tricks with us, but we need to act slow and ask probing questions to test if that's trick. If there's no trick, no harm to probe. If there's trick, no confrontation directly and they can pretend it's mistake or misunderstanding.
  1. Ask clarifying questions to check and clarify the other side's assertions, and watch for ambiguities and outright evasions in their answers. However, we should pretend confused and ask for explanation even if we spot some contradiction. Try to ask some questions we've known the answer, and observe the behavior. For fake authority trick, ask "Am I correct in assuming you have the authority to settle this matter?" and make sure we get the specific answer. If the other don't have full authority, ask who else have to agree and how long it takes to get the answer. For last minute throwing demand trick, ask "Are you suggesting that we reopen the negotiation?" If the answer is no, then "well then, I think we should just stick with the agreement we've already reached." If the answer is no, then "All right. We'll treat it as a joint draft to which neither side is committed. Let's meet tomorrow to discuss possible changes after we both check with our boss." to buy more time.
  2. Make a reasonable request that the other side should agree if they are in good faith as the other side pretend to be cooperative, then decide the next step based on their response to the request. For another stakeholder trick, we can request to meet including that stakeholder and follow up from there.
  3. Turn the trick into our advantage since the more pretending the trick plays, the harder they can reject what they just pretend.

If all above efforts can not turn the game, we have to negotiation the rule of the game explicitly, which is the negotiation about the negotiation.
1. Bring it up so that the other side can stop the tactics since we've known what they are doing. Be careful to present it as an interesting contribution instead of an underhanded trick to avoid attack feeling. Ury gives some examples to politely bring the tactics up: "It sounds like you're having a rough day." to rude response; "You are not intending to threaten me, are you?" to threats, or "You guys are terrific! That's the best good guy-bad guy routine I've seen in years. Did you plan it, or was it just a coincidence? Seriously now, let's see if we can establish a fair price for the books." to tricks.
2. If bringing it up doesn't work, then we have to negotiate about negotiation first. Negotiate the process by identify interests, generate options for how best to negotiate, and discuss standards of fair behavior so that we can get back to the negotiate about substance constructively and productively.

Reframe helps to turn the game from positional bargaining into joint problem-solving.

Build them a Golden Bridge -- Don't push:

To satisfy the other's dissatisfaction, we can build a connection from their position to a mutually satisfactory agreement, build the bridge to fill the gap between their interests and ours.

There are some common reasons behind the stalled agreement. Ury lists four common reasons below:
1. Not their idea
2. Unmet Interests
3. Fear of losing face
4. Too much too fast -- overwhelming

Instead of pushing the other side who may resist further, we could build the golden bridge across the chasm of dissatisfaction, uncertainty, and fear so that the other side can easily step across towards to our preferred direction. The following are steps to disarm common resistances.

Involve the other side -- to avoid the feeling "not my idea". The process of negotiation is as important as the result, so we have to work together with the other side.
1. Ask for and build on the other's ideas. We need to resist the temptation to tell the other side what to do, instead, we should ask for their ideas before we tell so that we get the other side involved and understand better their interests. Then we can build on their ideas by selecting most constructive part, starting with them, heading to the direction we want to go. "Building on your idea, what if we...?" or "As a follow-up to our discussion, it occurred to me that..." can show the other side how those proposals origin from their ideas so that they will buy in easily.
2. Ask for constructive criticism. Encourage constructive feedback by asking problem-solving questions such as "which interests of yours does this approach fail to satisfy?" "In what respect is it not fair?" "How would you improve on it?" or "is there any way we can make it better for your side without making it worse for mine?" The asking--revising process can be repeated multiple times until all parties are mutually agreed and see the draft as their own.
3. Offer them a choice. If the other side does not tell, we can start to ask small decisions with option provided such as "if this option better for you than that option?", "Which approach would you prefer?" or "Would you prefer to meet at your office or mine?". Offer list of alternatives so that the other side can choose from and turn the proposal into the other's idea.

Probe deeper, and Satisfy unmet interests:
1. Don't assume the other side is irrational and never satisfied. So don't give up and complaint about inflexible. Try to step into the other's shoes and probe the deeper unmet interests.
2. Don't overlook basic human needs, and always assume the other side only want money. There are a lot of other intangible motivations behind such as security, recognition, feel important, control, etc.
3. Don't assume a fixed pie. It is not necessary to assume the more the other side, the less on our side, to satisfy the other's needs by frustrating ours. Be creative to look for low-cost, high-benefit trade by identify what's low cost for us, but high benefit to the other side, then trade it for items low cost for them, but high benefit to us. Or use "if...then" formula to avoid fighting the other side's skepticism: " what you want is the base, but if ...change, then you agree to ...change?" Take advantage over expanding the size of pie instead of fight for a fixed pie.

Help the other side save face so that they or their constituents do not feel giving in or look like losing the deal.
1. Help them back away without backing down. Saving-face is not a cosmetic effort. It is the combination of people's self-worth, dignity, desire to look good, and ego.
  1. Explain how circumstances have changed although they may have been right originally.
  2. Ask for a third party recommendation
  3. Point to a standard of fairness if third party is not available.
2. Help the other side write their victory speech to present to their constituents, to whom they care. Try to give them credit even that's purely ours.

Go slow in order to go fast -- to avoid the overwhelming feeling that too much needs to be decided in too short time. Break the process into small stages, pace them and stop if necessary, and look back periodically at how far we have come together.
1. Guide them step by step, and break agreement into small steps, can make things impossible into possible. By moving progressively from the easier to the more difficult issues, we can get the other side into the habit of agreeing. Start with experiment or pilot before the final move on. Pause at each step to sum up progress and look at the rest of task shrinking.
2. Don't ask for a final commitment until the end. If the other side is reluctant about step-by-step approach worrying that if they give an inch, we'll take a mile, don't press for an immediate concession. We can affirm them nothing is agreed until everything is agreed and they need not make a final commitment until they can see exactly what they will get in return at the very end.
3. Don't rush to the finish if the process comes to the end. Take a moment to sum up:" let's make sure we both have the same understanding of what we have agreed on." Then go over each issue carefully. Put it in writing if possible. Encourage the other side consult with their constituents.

Building a golden bridge for the other side cross the chasm make it easy for them to say yes.

Use Power to Educate -- Don't escalate:

To dissolve the other's power, we can show our power to educate them the winner in the power game can not be them alone. The win-win situation is the only solution for both sides. If we use power to escalate and force, we could easily end up with lose-lose situation.

The power paradox tells that "The harder you make it for them to say no, the harder you make it for them to say yes." To overcome this power paradox, we could make it easy for them to say yes by providing golden bridge, and still make it hard for them to say no by exercising power. As Ury says: " Use power to bring them to their senses, not to their knees." Ury also lists many ways to bring the other side back to the table.

Let the other side know the consequences:
1. Ask Reality-Testing questions such as:
  1. Ask "What do you think will happen if we don't agree?": "Are you aware how serious the consequences will be for both of us if we don't settle this issue?" If the other side might have misunderstood or ignored the consequences.
  2. "What do you think I will do?": "What will you advise me to do if you were in my position?" or "what do you expect me to do to satisfy my interests?" If the other side may underestimate the strength of our BATNA, use questions to show them we are not as vulnerable as they thought.
  3. "What will you do?": "What are you likely to do in the absence of agreement? How will that satisfy your interests? How much will that cost you?" If the other side may overestimate their BATNA, use questions to probe its negative parts.
2. Warn but not threaten. Let the other know directly what will happen before we adopt our BATNA and give them last chance to reconsider. Be objective and respectful instead of subject and confrontational to avoid backfire.
3. Demonstrate our BATNA to educate the other side. Walk out the table peacefully and leave the door open for them to change the mind by saying:"I'm sorry, but the way in which we have been negotiating is not likely to lead to a constructive outcome. I'm ready to negotiate anytime you are. Here's my contact. Please give me a call when you're ready. Until then, I guess I'll have to pursue my alternatives." Prepare the BATNA is another way to demonstrate our BATNA.

Use our BATNA to defuse the other's reaction. The more power we use, the more we need to defuse the other's resistance.
1. Deploy our BATNA without provoking the other side, keep in mind the goal is to bring them to negotiation table. Use the minimum power necessary to deploy, or use legitimate means so that less negative reaction arise.
2. Neutralize the other's attacks instead of striking back and keep in mind the goal is to show them that they can satisfy their interests only by negotiation, not punish them.
3. Tap the third force to leverage:
  1. Build a coalition, identify potential allies who most likely to sympathize with and lend support to our cause, or the other side's constituency, or the neutral people in the middle.
  2. Use third parties to stop attacks.
  3. Use third parties to promote negotiation. They could induce the other side return to negotiation, or settle dispute by mediating.
Keep sharpening the contrast between consequences of no agreement and the golden bridge. Keep sharpening the other's choice, still leave our generous offer on the table in full view and provide them an attractive way out.
1. Let them know they still have a way out. It reminds me the old stories of "背水一战": while the people are forced to die, they will fight for their lives with largest power.
2. Let them choose between the contrast and make their decisions.
3. Even if we can win, we still try to negotiate. Not only will the other side resist more, but also they may try to undermine or reverse the outcome as much as they can.

Forge a lasting agreement:
1. Keep implementation in mind to induce the other side to keep their words and protect us if they don't, since the other side may failed to carry out the terms even if we reach the agreement. Act independently of trust.
  1. Design the deal to minimize our risks. Make sure we don't need to carry out our side until the other fulfill theirs, and build guarantees into the agreement.
  2. Build in a dispute resolution procedure.
2. Reaffirm the relationship. Be generous at the very end. Resist the natural temptation to claim the victory. Gracious words and symbolic gestures can help, or a signing celebration for both sides.

Overall, we need to keep in mind that we're aiming for mutual satisfaction, not victory on our own. We use power to educate instead of fighting.

That's all for five-step breakthrough. As Ury says: " The goal is not to win over them, but to win them over. "The five-step breakthrough strategy plus patience and persistence will lead us to the successful cooperation and agreement more likely. Thus we can turn face-to-face confrontation into side-by-side joint problem-solving by turning negotiating adversaries into partners.

Actually a lot of points are repeated in Ury's newest book "positive No". Does that sound repeating and wasting of reading time? Absolutely Not. In my point of view, reaffirming those points is a great practice to make it our natural response.

So, what will be the next? Buy the book for all the others to save the trouble of renegotiation? Probably a good idea. LOL.

What's the real world project management?

2007-11-09T17:37:00.000-08:00

Finally I got time to read the new book "Scrappy project management" from Kimberly Wiefling. I knew it will be a great book and I wanted to read it immediately after I knew her new book will be published. Why? Kimberly is a very energetic lady who motivates people around her. I love her style and admire her rubber chicken. Oh, did I tell you the story about rubber chicken? I had one cute rubber chicken at my desk. I still remembered the time Kimberly dropped the rubber chicken to the ground and asked us why the chicken dropped. So many answers presented. Earth gravity for sure. The most powerful answer I even got is:" I let it go!" The rubber chicken won't drop if we would not let it go! The impossible task won't be accomplished if we would not try!

I was reassured that point after I finished the preface. PMBOK is a good start to learn what should happen for a project from start to finish. It is neat and ideal in a sanitized world. "Real projects are messy!" How can we achieve most and take advantage of PM knowledge while we are dealing with the real world case? Kimberly showed us a scrappy world where we lived in.

Here's the scrappy project management checklist Kimberly presents:

Be completely and unrepentantly obsessed with the "Customer".

Provide shared, measurable, challenging and achievable goals as clear as sunlight.

Engage in effective, vociferous and unrelenting communication with all stakeholder.

Ensure that roles and responsibilities are unmistakably understood and agreed upon by all

Create viable plans and schedules that enjoy the team's hearty commitment.

Mitigate big, hairy, abominable risks and implement innovative accelerators.

Prioritize ruthlessly, choosing between heart, lungs and kidneys if necessary.

Anticipate and accommodate necessary and inevitable change.

Challenge assumptions and beliefs, especially insidious self-imposed limitations.

Manage the expectations of all stakeholders: under-promise and over-deliver

Learn from experience. Make new and more exciting mistakes each time!

Attitude of gratitude: celebrate project success and some failures, too!

[Edit: to be continued.]

No is today's biggest challenge

2007-10-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

William Ury's new book "The power of a positive No" describe a big challenge in today's society. He provides great advice on negotiation on his book series. Firstly, you need to understand yourself and be able to say no to defend your interests, which is the focus of "The power of a positive No"; secondly, you need to know how what is the interests of the other side, which is the focus of "Getting past No"; and finally, you need the both side working together to reach the agreement, which is the focus of "Getting to Yes".

Saying No means the possible stretch on relationship, while saying Yes means the possible stretch on yourself. The book starts with Three-A Trap description:

Accommodate: do you ever have time to say Yes to your boss while you actually want to say No? That's the time you sacrifice yourself fearing to lose relationship;
Attack: do you ever have time to say No to your partner angrily with a lot of hurting words you will be regret saying while you recover your sanity? That's the time you focus only on yourself and behave destructively on relationship without calm;
Avoid: do you ever have time just keep silent while you really should speak out your opinions no matter it's Yes or No? William Ury quoted a great statement from Martin Luther King Jr., " Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Do we always need to trade off between our interests and our relationships? Is there any way we can adopt to affirm what we want without comprise the relationship? William Ury's answer is a positive No, which he illustrated as a "Yes! No. Yes?" paradoxical tree below:

Yes!: The root of tree comes from a Yes to your deeper interests which sustain the tree; This is a Yes to your own interests and to explain the reason you are saying No.
No.: The trunk of tree comes from a No to assure your limit and power; This is a No expressing where you are standing.
Yes?: The next Yes is the branches, foliage, and the fruits grown based on root and reach towards outside on top of the trunk of No. That is the positive balance between relationship and interests, which is the win-win situation we wanted for negotiation. This is a Yes to question a new proposal or an alternative to solve the result of No.

One good lesson we learned while we're searching for the deepest needs is Never response on angry or fear or any negative feeling. As Ury stated: " Anger can blind, fear can paralyze, and guilt can weaken." Thus it's easy to get into Three-A trap since anger leads to attack, fear leads to accommodate, and guilt leads to avoid. No wonder people always say the biggest obstacle to get over is yourself. To avoid react on negative emotion, we can take some time out, just wait a minute, listen and control our emotions.

Sometimes, the internal interests are not obvious reason to say No. There is a useful way to find out the deepest interests by digging deeper to Five Whys. Ury listed the five most common basic human needs are:

Safety or survival
Food, drink, and other life necessities
Belonging and love
Respect and meaning
Freedom and control over one's fate

Similarly, there are certain values are common for individuals, such as honesty, integrity, respect, tolerance, kindness, solidarity, fairness, courage, and peace, which could provide motivation for your Yes. What really matters to you is the root of Yes.

On the way achieving a positive Yes, there are a lot of rule of thumbs to follow, such as:

To transform negative emotion into positive intentions, we need to observe and accept the negative emotions, conserve the energy, then release it constructively towards positive actions.
Our No is for our needs, not against the other.
Prepare a Plan B, BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement), if Plan A -- Acceptance is not possible. Plan B is not an option for agreement, but rather an alternative to agreement. Thus Plan B can be executed without the cooperation from the other, while an option need acceptance from the other and depends on the other. Alternative plan B can be do it yourself, or exit the scenario, or look for the third side instead of the other. Also, it's not direct jump from agreement nonacceptance to Plan B. We need some smaller intermediate plans before we arrived at the ultimate plan.
Seek likely allies and build a winning coalition are great way to empower the positive No.
Before express the positive, reassess our decision by checking if we have the interest in saying No; if we have the power in saying No; and if we have the right in saying No. If all answers are yes, consider the worst case scenario and prepare the alternative plan. Sometimes, plan B is not necessary to attack the others. It's more effective to remove the ability of the others to attach us.
Start with self respect, we can respect the others because of who we are. Respect is an expression of ourselves and our values. Act with respect, we are able to observe the others and their interests.
Active listen and ask questions to clarify the needs and problem of the other, which helps to show our respect to the other. We only say No to the request itself, and we should never say No to the person no matter we like the person or not. Acknowledging the request and needs of the other is the best way to show the respect and recognition of the other.

When we construct our Yes, we can use three kinds of statement to empower our Yes.

The-statement is the fact based statement focusing on problematic behavior without confronting people: Stick to the fact; do not tell the other should or should not do something; do not use judgmental or subjective words; be careful of using "always, never, nothing, or everything" to categorize a person negatively.
I-statement tells your interests and needs rather other's problem. Describe the fact and express the feeling, then describe the interests.
We-statement shows a common ground for the shared interests

It is challenging to say No in a clear, honest, and respectful way. The No needs to be assertive but not being too aggressive. Polite with calm tone is a good choice to say No. There are couple useful way to say No, such as:

Direct saying firmly with "No" or "No, Thanks";
Showing No is not a special against to the other: "I have a policy";
Showing No honestly: " I have other commitment or other plan";
Soften the focus when you are in doubt: "Not now";
Acknowledge the limits clearly:"I prefer to decline rather than do a poor job"
To express your rights and power by saying No firmly, clearly, and politely to wrong behavior: "Please stop/No";
Interrupt the wrong behavior to call for a pause:"Hold on/Whoa/Wait a minute";
Clarify the policy in a neutral announcement:"That's not OK/That's not appropriate/That's not allowed";
Frame not OK as I-statement without hurting the relationship:"It's not OK for me/This doesn't work for me";
Setting up the limit clearly. It's time to stop:"That's enough";

A good strategy in saying No is to reframe the No into a Yes with implied No. Using a positive statement with a clear boundary defined by saying what is possible under what kind of condition.

Do not stop at saying No. Step further by proposing other options to get Yes. "I do not want this" or "I will not do this" is no better than "Although No, I want that" or "Although No, I can do that". A win-win situation should address the interests of both sides. Here are couple technique we can use:

Invent an option for mutual interests
What about later?
We can agree if you satisfied the following conditions, etc
Suggest a problem solving process to figure out the common point.
Positive proposal or constructive request has to be clear, precise, be specific, positive, respectful, and doable.

People tend to choose from one of the choices when they were asked. Given an example: "Do you want to buy a pie?" may leads to answer No or Yes, while "Which one you want: an apple pie, a peach pie, or a pumpkin pie?" will likely leads to one of kind pie purchase instead of no purchase.

Curve of acceptance derived from Kubler-Ross's research shows the general stages when people are facing No: starting from avoidance to No, to the denial of No, then anxiety or even anger feeling towards No, next bargaining started if threat doesn't work, then the sadness feeling leads to final acceptance. We can adopt the following techniques to lead the confrontation of No passing the curve and leading to the acceptance as soon and smooth as possible.

Stay calm without attack or avoidance.
"Save as draft" instead of "Send" to let the emotional response elapse, and regain the self-control.
Figure out the tactic the other used to defend or attack, and name it in mind before response.
Physically pinch the palm to stay clam and focus on the right thing.
Sometimes not reacting and letting the other express their feeling and waiting for the chance to response is powerful.
Be an active and respective listener but not an insider. Be empathized while listening to show your understanding instead of sympathized to feel the pain with the other side.
Slowing down the discussion by repeating or paraphrasing what others said of your understanding could fast track the process of understanding and negotiation.

"Let me make sure I understand what you are saying."
"If I hear you right, you are saying that."
"Help me understand. If I hear you correctly."

Acknowledge the point but not give in. Let the other express their feeling and respect it without conceding ours: " I understand your point. It is a valid point. I happen to see the situation differently."
Use "Both...and..." mind-set instead of "Either...or..." choice. "Yes,...and..." is easier to gain the agreement instead of the contradicting feeling of "but...".
For people who used to be accommodate to the demands, "Oh?So?No." response is a great way to avoid the accommodating mistake:

Oh? to acknowledge the other's words in a neutral voice;
So? to let the other explain their needs and feeling and play all the tactics;
No. to stay firm with our core interests.

If others do not respect our No, do not react with the rage. Try to repeat our No to the other many times so that people can hear that your No means No. If that does not work, then educate the other the consequences of not respecting our No to show the power. If none of the positive methods are working, deploying the plan B as the last resort. Ury used a word from Sun Tzu: "The best general is the one who never fights." (不战而屈人之兵）

Repeat No consistent and persistent.
Find some Anchor phrases to use often, such as:

"This doesn't work for me."
"No thanks."
"I am not comfortable doing that."
"I am sorry, but I'm not interested."
"We have already chosen a few charities where we want to focus our giving."
"I am sorry, but I don't feel comfortable discussing that right now."
"I would prefer not to."

Use intentional repetition to let the other understand that your No really means No.
Ask reality -testing questions so that the other can figure out the logical consequence of rejecting your No instead of just telling the other the result. Use warning if necessary instead of threating.

"What will happen if..."
"Have you thought about how this will affect... if..."

What we really want in the end is a Yes of positive outcome. Thinking more about "Both...and..." or win-win situation to satisfy interests of both sides. To get to the final Yes, we need a Yes to the agreement from the other, we also need a Yes to approval from the other side, and eventually we need a Yes to maintain great relationship between us and the other.

To get the agreement, stay firm to our essential interests without giving in, while we can try our best to understand and satisfy the unmet interests from the other.
Our job is not done after we get the agreement from the other. We have to step into the other's shoe and think how the other gain the approval and support from their constituency, such as their boss, family, or even themselves. Use an "Acceptance Speech Test" to address who's their constituency, what are the key themes or arguments of their acceptance speech, what is the most likely criticisms to speech, such as "Why did you give up?", "What did you give up?""What about our needs?", etc, and what are the best responses we can help to prepare to criticisms. The help to get approval should be presented to the other in a respective way. Saving Face is important to achieve the approval and maintain the relationship.
Saying No might comprise the relationship between us and the other. It is important to acknowledge the other, express the apology or regret sincerely to reach to the other and rebuild the trust and confidence. Looking for the opportunity to refill the Goodwill account after the negotiation. Acknowledge the difficulties or regrets, thank the other, and end with a positive future to show the respect. Here is a great example from Ury's book:

"I know dealing with this issue hasn't been easy for either of us. I just want to thank you for your efforts to respect my needs in this situation. And I look forward to working with you on this issue and many others."

Reading this book was a great pleasure and enjoyable journey. I would recommend this book to whoever want to improve his or her ability to negotiate. It's not the book sitting on the shelf lonely. "Yes! No. Yes?" approach seems to resonate with real life all the time.

I would like to end this reading note with Ury's statement:
"There is no doubt that delivering a Positive No requires courage, vision, empathy, fortitude, patience, and persistence. But is is within the reach of everyone every day, and the rewards are potentially enormous."
"In closing, I wish you the kind of success that can come only from being true to yourself and respectful to others!"

Life is endless. Time is the best cure.

2007-09-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

Time goes so fast. I didn't try to write anything down for a while. Now when I look back, I can talk to others normally about my loss, and I can think to prepare for the next one. No wonder people always say time is the best cure.

I still do not understand why. None of us has bad habits such as smoking, drinking, or drug. I didn't miss any regular check, and I ate all stuffs no matter I like them or not. The worst comes worst is I didn't feel any problem. It is not like I saw a spot, or I felt the pain. Nothing. It is gone silently. I heard the heart beat before, the next exam told me no more heart beat detected. The doctor told me that it is called "missed miscarriage" and it is nothing abnormal. Suddenly, my world was turned upside down.

Even though the modern technology develops a lot, doctor has no clue why I had it. She just gave me two choices: either medicine or D&C. I picked D&C because I don't want to flush my precious baby down to the toilet. It is unbearable to think about that. The procedure is a small, fast outpatient surgery. I lied with clear mind, my husband stayed with me all the time. There are some bleeding, and cramps afterwards. But there is not much pain, or I can not feel it physically. I just felt empty all by myself, and that drove me crazy. It took me long time to go through that kind of emptiness.

Half year past by. I thought the pain will never end. It is still with me, but not that dominant. Life continues. I was told to move on and I have to look ahead. I attended another baby shower. I can even prepare the baby shower for my friend without tears down in my face. Inside my heart, nobody will see. I can look at all baby stuff on the shelf, and try to pick the best as the presents. Although I am in deep deep jealous while I looked at happy one, I felt guilty to envy their happiness. I would guess what will that be if I didn't have that damn missed miscarriage. It is expected time if I am still happy one.

The good thing is not much people know my loss. I hate people asking me how am I doing although that is friendly concerns. I hate to answer " I'm doing better, thanks". However, that can be another devastating start. On and on and on, people ask when you will have your baby during the baby shower. I hate it too. I thought I was mentally prepared before the shower. I am not. Attending the baby shower and preparing for the baby shower are the most difficult things I have ever done after the miscarriage. Sometimes I was wondering that women may suffer much more than men. My husband didn't show much emotional responses for the shower. Or maybe I am wrong since I didn't show up in my face too. I know I am healing, but the scar in my heart will stay with me forever.

With all my hearts, I hope all expected mother will not experience the pain. But if you do, you have all my support, friendship, and wishes. You can talk all your grief, loneliness, depression, and healing with me or here. I felt silent in my grief. It is a pain nothing else can compare. You have to overcome by yourself. I, like a lot of other grievers, am always here for you.

In theory, it might be good thing for my baby because scientists said that the root cause comes from some defects of fetus. In real life, I blamed everything I can blame, including myself. I should not get cold, I should not eat this or that, I should do more exercise before the pregnancy, etc... Nothing can take the time back and return my happiness to me. The only thing I can do is to let it go and keep a secret garden for my baby in my heart forever. We do not have predestined relation. That is the fate.

At least I have the courage to share my feeling, and contribute to others. I collected a lot of websites on my way. Here is the link to those information about miscarriage:
http://del.icio.us/puzzle/miscarriage
I hope those information can help people understand more and stop blame themselves. Accept the fate and move on. I hope my precious baby will come back to me. The same wishes to all of you who suffered.

缘起缘灭，渠会永无缘。

Stronger	Weaker
Substantive	Procedural
Permanent	Provisional
Comprehensive	Partial
Final	In principle
Unconditional	Contingent
Binding	Nonbinding
First-order	Second-order