Examples of happy negotiations with unexpected outcomes

March 7, 2017 8:58 AM

I'm creating a training for young software engineers on the topic of quotidian negotiation within a team (so, not like buying a house or negotiating salary, but more like negotiating project scope or distribution of tasks across a collaborative team). I'm looking for examples from media (movies, TV shows, books, podcasts, sports, other things I'm not thinking of) of negotiations with happily unexpected outcomes, especially where the outcome wasn't on the initial set of proposals. But, really, any examples of high quality, collaborative problem solving would fit.
posted by spindrifter to Work & Money (7 answers total)

There's the story of a family at dinner where the 2 brothers were arguing over who gets the 1 remaining baked potato. They cut it in half; each ate their half, but then they noticed that one ate only the inside, and the other ate only the skin.
posted by at at 11:38 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Have you heard the story of stone soup?

Many, many variations. Linked to one.
posted by rw at 12:52 PM on March 7, 2017

Also, isn't this pretty much the plot of Avatar - the unexpected benefits of the tree at the end after lots of day-to-day time spent together.
posted by rw at 1:09 PM on March 7, 2017

This is maybe more of a how not to do a negotiation, but you can't go wrong with all the ways Ernie and Bert share cookies, candy, and pie.
posted by Mchelly at 2:25 PM on March 7, 2017

I feel like the episode of Mad Men where they fire themselves from the company (Shut the door and have a seat) has a lot of little negotiations like this, when they come up with the idea initially and then try to get people on board.
posted by permiechickie at 3:11 PM on March 7, 2017

12 Angry Men hits a lot of those points in interesting ways.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:23 PM on March 7, 2017

You may already know this, but Getting to Yes has several such anecdotes.
posted by brainwane at 3:12 PM on March 9, 2017